buyer beware!

Recently I got an email from a reader interested in publishing his book. He wasn’t interested in pursuing traditional publication (smart!), but he was too busy to self-publish due to a demanding job. He found a small company that would self-publish his book and handle all of the marketing for 50% of the royalties, and wondered what I thought.

My initial response was, of course: run away! There’s no reason to fork over 50% of the royalties for the term of the contract, especially when you can do all the aspects of self-publishing by yourself, or hire someone to do it for a one-time fee.

I would also be dubious about the “we’ll do the marketing” claims. When a publisher says they’ll “handle” the marketing, what that usually amounts to listing the book in a catalog and putting a page on their website. Or printing bookmarks or something – there is no book marketing technique less effective than printing bookmarks. Recently, Bookbub had a blog post about a writer named Brenda Novak, who got on the USA Today bestseller list with her traditionally published book. Good for her! But here’s the punchline – she did all the marketing by herself (and it was a LOT of work)! The publisher really wasn’t involved.

Realistically, both self-publishing and tradpublished writers will have to do their marketing themselves. So why not self-publish and keep more of the money?

Additionally, when it comes to business, a “small” company isn’t always synonymous with “good”. Americans in general tend to respect small or family businesses more than big ones, but the unfortunate truth is that small business can be just as corrupt as a large corporation like Facebook or Disney. This can be especially true with local businesses who don’t have any competitors, who can become both crooked and lazy. With big businesses, there is at least a higher authority to whom you can appeal. If you get screwed at the local big box store, you can complain to the district manager or someone higher up the food chain. If Bob’s Local Family-Owned Business screws you over, your options are more limited.

In that vein, small publishers tend to have a very good rep in the publishing/writing communities. Nobody likes the big faceless publishers, but small publishers have real live people who care about their authors! Alas, just like small businesses, this is only sometimes true. Some of the biggest crooks in publishing previously (or currently) operated small presses. Nor is this a new tradition. Science fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback, for whom the Hugo Award was named, was so notorious for screwing over and stiffing his writers that HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith called him “Hugo the Rat.”

It is probably fitting that the most famous award in tradpub SF was named for a man who was basically a crook. (Which pretty much sums up my opinion of tradpub right there.) Publishing, alas, both self-publishing and traditional, tends to attract all kinds of con artists.

So, if you do sign with a company that will self-publish your book for 50% of the royalties, you’re basically taking a big leap of faith that the money will come on time, that the royalty statements won’t “accidentally” be off, and so forth. Or that the contract will have a sneaky little clause that says the author only gets paid after “expenses” are met without bothering to define what expenses are. And that’s assuming the company is competent. I know of one small press that went under because the owner spent all her company’s money on surgery for her ailing cat. And even if the company is competently and honestly managed, if the owner dies suddenly, all bets are off.

To sum up, my initial react to the question at the top of the post is not just no but heck no.

That said…

If the company in question is actually honest and well-managed (a big leap of faith), then I can understand why someone would sign with them. I say “do it yourself” like it’s no big deal, but that’s because I have the skillset for it. Right now I’m contracting out some home repairs, and I know that would appall some readers.

“What?!?” they’d say. “Why are you hiring someone to build your front porch? You can do it yourself with some lumber, an electric drill, a power saw, wood screws, and a Saturday!!!”

They say that, but I don’t have that skill set, and I don’t have the time to spare to learn it. It’s the same reason I never read my own audiobooks. I could, theoretically, teach myself to narrate legibly and edit and master audio, but that would take too much time. Additionally, even if I learned that, my voice is still unpleasant – me narrating my own audiobooks would be like a 100 pound man deciding he wants to be an NFL linebacker. There would be a measure of self-delusion involved!

So I understand that laying out your own ebook or making your own cover (or hiring it out) would beyond the skill sets of some people, even though it’s comfortably in mine. In those circumstances, I can understand signing up with a company like the one described above.

But I would still be very, very, very, very wary, and I’d think my email correspondent would still be much better off self-publishing in the long run.

-JM