Q –
Angela,
I don’t have any publishing experience, and frankly speaking, I need your advice.
One thing that has been worrying me is that, if I share my manuscript with a publishing / self-publishing company, I want to ensure I am keeping the rights of my text. As I said, this manuscript is extremely important to me and it’s basically the culmination of my own life-long research.
How do I know they won’t take my rights, or steal my manuscript from me altogether?
Should I worry about anything? (I am very inexperienced in this!)
Thank you.
A –
Most of the firms that are charging authors to publish their books are author meat markets, meaning they’ll publish pretty much anything and everything. (Our firm, BookLocker, is selective about what it publishes.)
Author meat markets are primarily in the business of sucking as many authors through their virtual doors as they can, and then draining as much money out of those authors’ pocketbooks through aggressive upselling on (what I consider primarily worthless) products and services (that aren’t likely to lead to many, if any, additional book sales for the author).
After researching and publishing WritersWeekly’s Whispers and Warnings for over a decade, and after publishing more than 8,000 books in 18 years, we’ve never heard stories of any of the well-known print on demand/publishing services firms making it a practice of stealing manuscripts to sell later, without the author’s knowledge. Those make far too much money selling services to authors than they would investing their own money in publishing they’ve stolen book from an unknown author.
To see a comparison of how much these firms are charging authors, click HERE.
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You might want to consult with a lawyer about this, but one form of protection is to copyright your manuscript before sending it off to any outsider:
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/legal-questions/how-do-i-copyright-my-manuscript
That’ll protect your book-to-be from any thief who gets a copy and not just a dubious self-publisher who, as Angelia notes, is often more interested in your money than anything else.
Since there are likely to be some differences, you’ll need to also copyright the published version when it comes out.
–Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books