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.
Anybody with an Ingram account (like the resellers listing it on Amazon) can pick up Ingram’s feed, and can list the book for sale on Amazon, or anywhere else, including sites like ebay. By the way, I checked and your book IS for sale on Ebay as well.
Many of those resellers have thousands of books for sale and they really don’t care if a book is later inactivated. They also don’t appear to care about the accuracy of their listings since there are countless errors appearing on Amazon.
Fortunately, I found BookLocker, who published NLD From the Inside Out in both POD and ebook formats, with a generous royalty rate. Angela and Richard and their whole team provided excellent customer service: helping me navigate all the pitfalls of a novice author, and even went to bat for me when Amazon.com started causing problems for publishers
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 […]
What are the two or three (or more) resources you would recommend as absolutely essential to a self-publishing novelist?
I read that my current reviews would not transfer to the 2nd edition’s page. What are your thoughts on this?
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.
Playing on an author’s vanity is one of the most common marketing ploys used in the publishing services industry. From promises of wealth and fame to ridiculous “your book can be a movie!” promotions, there is seemingly nothing these clowns won’t do to dig deeper into their authors’ pockets.
Being self-published, and trying to see your creation become successful, can be a daunting task – especially if you have no one to counsel you. I’ve written several books and have close to a hundred book signings under my belt. The result is a traditional publisher signed me to a multi-book contract, and these books are carried by Barnes and Noble and several other chains now. In addition, my first book is now under consideration by a film company. That’s the good news.
