I’d just finished a book for a traditional New York publisher and was waiting on a promised contract from another publishing house. Because I knew I’d be working on a book soon, I didn’t want to get involved in a major project…but I also wasn’t sure what to do to scratch my creative itch – or contribute to our family funds.
Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve received reports from authors that another well-known P.O.D. publisher recently kicked the bucket. In their email notice (which used the word “regret,” but offered no apologies, nor an explanation), they told authors to pay them ($250 to $300 per author!) if they wanted copies of their production files and an ISBN. That’s right. AFTER those authors paid upwards of $1,000, $2,000 or even more to get published, the publisher is trying to drain their wallets further…as they’re kicking those authors out the door…
GUEST POST FROM BRIAN WHIDDON Brian Whiddon, the new Operations Manager at WritersWeekly.com and BookLocker.com, recently went undercover to try to get some hard-to-find answers from some POD publishers. We think you’ll enjoy some chuckles while reading about his experience! At BookLocker, we have a specific set of standards for vetting manuscripts. Unfortunately, not every […]
I read that my current reviews would not transfer to the 2nd edition’s page. What are your thoughts on this?
We were recently contacted by an author who was unhappy with BookBaby, and wanted to move his book to BookLocker. But, after sending us his files, and discussing formatting, etc., he asked about how to terminate his contract with BookBaby. I told him to read his BookBaby contract, find the termination clause, and follow the instructions there. He found his contract, read it, and wrote me back, not at all happy with what he discovered…
What is an Author Mill? The term was originally coined by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware. It described publishers that focus on quantity, not quality. However, she limited the term to describing “publishers” that didn’t charge authors up-front fees, but that still published anything and everything, quickly pushing large volumes of sub-standard books onto the market. Unfortunately, many authors later learned that this type of publishing isn’t really “free” at all.
Here is our annually updated POD Price Comparison!
There’s a fix for this problem for online book and ebook sales that’s not that complex and that would also let authors and publishers develop useful marketing data…
When I see the words “free publishing guide,” I think somebody is going to send me a free ebook that is an actual, factual, non-biased guide about the publishing industry, and/or the publishing process. I don’t think, “Wow, I’m just going to get a big, boring advertisement in exchange for all my contact information!”
I was just wondering, is it pretty easy to get started on your website? Do you give details of how to do it or is it like a “self learning” book I would read?
