Popular advice states that in any publishing relationship, money should flow toward the author. It’s easy to see how that applies in the case of notorious vanity presses like Author Solutions, Austin Macauley, and Outskirts Press, companies with a reputation for extracting as much money from authors’ pockets as possible. However, the idea that paying for any publishing service is inherently bad is emphatically not the case.
So, when should you pay to publish your book, and how does the ‘money flow toward the author’ rule apply?
A La Carte Services:
The term ‘self-
For money to flow toward the author it doesn’t mean you should never pay someone as part of your book’s production. It only means that those services must be cost effective and add to the author’s bottom line. Authors must be confident that any money invested will return in the form of sales.
A la carte services can be essential to maximizing your book’s sales. It easy to see the value of these services when they are part of an isolated transaction. You pay a company x, you receive y, and the value received for your purchase is determined. It’s that straightforward. If the work pays for itself in a reasonable time, then money is flowing toward the author, and you have received value for your investment.
Publishing Packages:
A full-
Don’t purchase a publishing package without a clear idea of how many copies of your book you’ll need to sell to recoup the cost. And the evidence that you’ll be able to do so in a reasonable amount of time. If most of a company’s books are tumbling into the bottomless pit of obscurity, question if you can trust them to elevate yours?
All-
ISBN numbers -
Copyright filing -
Inclusion in catalogues and websites:
Few services have the reach and fan base to promote your book this way, particularly an obscure small press or relatively unknown service provider. But keep in mind that quantity isn’t everything as the ultimate goal of any marketing is not just to reach large numbers of people, it is to reach the specific audience most likely to buy your book. 3 million Twitter followers won’t make a difference to your book’s sales if those followers are not interested in your genre. Or they are spammers and bots looking for a ‘follow back.’
If the publishing package you’re considering is holding these services up as valuable considerations, reflect on how much of the fee can be broken down into the discrete services whose value you know. You may be better served by an a la carte service where you can shop for the best value, and know exactly what those services are costing you.
These services may be a useful investment in the production of your book, but being able to determine whether money is indeed flowing back to the author is the key to separating a good service from a substandard one.
Pay-
Readers pay little attention to the publisher or the imprint of the books they select. Factors like cover appeal, description, and reviews carry far more weight than the publisher’s name, particularly a smaller imprint that’s not widely recognized.
Under no circumstance should an author pay solely for the right to be published under an imprint. This is the essence of vanity publishing, and a key difference between a contracted self-
If the ability to pay is the primary criteria used to determine whether someone will be published under an imprint, then that publisher cannot make any claim to the prestige of their imprint. And if they are curating what they publish on the basis of profitability, and are confident in the success of the book, why are they demanding the author pay?
Which brings us to the final category…
Subsidy/Hybrid Publishing:
Subsidy publishing, also known as hybrid publishing, claims to offer the benefits of traditional publishing arrangements, but requires the author to pay some or all of the publishing costs. In theory, the author receives a greater percentage of royalties in compensation.
Because there are countless bad actors attempting to reframe vanity publishing as ‘hybrid publishing,’ the ALLi Watchdog Desk advises extreme caution when presented with this type of arrangement. There are some reputable hybrid publishers and small presses operating in this way, but distinguishing this ethical minority from the exploitative majority can be quite a challenge. The ALLi Watchdog’s chief concern about hybrid publishing is that it can disproportionately shift the burden of risk onto the author without there being any compensation.
In traditional publishing, the publisher bears the responsibility for ensuring that a book is profitable. They undertake the cover design, editing, the production, distribution and other publishing responsibilities, but keep most of the book’s sales as compensation. If the publisher fails in their responsibilities and the book does not sell, it’s the publisher who takes the loss. Therefore, they have a strong incentive to ensure the success of the book.
In self-
With hybrid publishing arrangements, the author pays the publisher up front, and thereby assumes nearly all the risk. If the publisher fails to deliver on their promises, and the book does not sell, it is the author who bears the cost, and the loss. Worse, the publisher already has their profit in hand, so has that much less incentive to invest in the book’s success. And to cap it off, many hybrid publishers also retain a significant chunk of the royalties. The author is financing the production of the book and absorbing the risk, just as they would in self-
Hybrid publishing is an important example of why the ‘money flows toward the author’ statement is a crucial guideline. In traditional publishing, that assurance in built into the contract. Money either flows from the customer to the publisher then to the author, or it doesn’t flow at all. And, the publisher’s profit is dependent on selling the book. But in hybrid publishing and self-