Oh, look ...

... Freeloaders.

AI generated. I’m a thug, not an artist — deal.

I have stated multiple times on multiple platforms that authors are some of the most parasitised organisms on this little green dirtball. Once you start writing you quickly discover that there are jackals and blood-suckers lined up around the corner waiting for the opportunity to milk you dry of every last bit of money and work that you have created.

As an everyday example: a publisher showed up at the local writer’s group, and offered to pay the authors $250 for their work. Which sounds really good for a beginning author, until you read the fine print in the contract which said that she was buying the entirety of the IP in perpetuity, and would be listing herself as the sole author¹. Bad as that was, that wasn’t the shocking thing — what was shocking was how many of the authors present were seriously considering taking her up on the offer.

This happens at every level — someone needs to explain to me just exactly why traditional publishing hasn’t been the subject of multiple rounds of RICO² investigations — but of particular interest to me are vanity presses.

A “vanity press” for the purposes of this conversation is a company where you — the author — pay them to publish your work. If you send your publisher a cheque along with your manuscript to “facilitate the publishing”: They’re a vanity press. And they’re a parasite. They want to milk each and every author of as much money as possible, without taking the risk of actually having to, you know, work to sell the books.

Author James D. Macdonald has long had a case of the hips at vanity presses, and coined what is referred to as “Yog’s Law”, which is simply: “Money flows toward the writer.”

Clear, concise, simple, and true. Any publisher should make their money as a share of the profits from selling your book. Your brain-sweat goes into writing the book, their brain-sweat goes into editing and marketing your book; and y’all split the proceeds.

In response to the growing backlash against vanity presses, a lot of the little tapeworms have restyled themselves as “hybrid presses”; and they say that the authors aren’t paying for publishing, they’re paying for “a la carte” services.

In other words, you’re not “paying for publishing”, you’re paying for editing. You’re paying for a cover.

Some folks feel this is fair.

As far as I’m concerned, as a small publisher … I’m still suspicious. They’re still parasitic little vanity presses until they prove to me that they’re not.

If you have sent your publisher a cheque, then they’ve made their money. They don’t give two hoots in hell about your book — they’ve already made a profit. And it really, really annoys me.

Other folks in the industry feel that the “hybrid press” “a la carte” model is actually a fair and viable system.

It can be — but a lot of them aren’t.

It is perfectly normal to pay someone else to edit your manuscript — for a reasonable price. $1,500 to download your manuscript to Word and spend 20 minutes brainlessly right-clicking on all the red squiggles is not editing³; and is damned sure not a reasonable price. It’s leeching.

Paying someone else a reasonable price for cover art is not only a damned fine idea, I recommend it — however, $1,000 for a photo-chopped mish-mash of clip art⁴ that took five minutes to sling together isn’t reasonable. One of the first things I do when someone tells me about their publisher is look at their collection of published works. If those covers are a milquetoast collection of bland, regurgitated pablum, I advise the author to run — screaming — the other way.

Marketing. Gods. I hate marketing, I can see the allure in having someone else do it for you — but mentioning you I-don’t-care-how-many-times on their Facebook/ Instagram page doesn’t cost them a thing, and it isn’t reasonable for you to pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for that “service”.

If the press is truly offering “a la carte” services, then you should be able to pick and choose those services. If you have to buy⁵ a “package deal”, when all you want is editing — it’s a vanity press. And you should scrape them off of your shoe.

Finally, author Dan Thompson offers the “Self Publishing Corollary to Yog’s Law”: “Money and rights are controlled by the author” — if you’ve decided that a “hybrid press” is right for you, and you’re okay with giving them money along with your manuscript, I ask only that you check one more thing: do they want the rights to your work?

In other words, are you paying them to take your rights? Are you paying them⁶ to take your intellectual property?

If so, they’re a vanity press; they’re a parasite, and you have a duty to starve the little bastards out of existence.

That is all.

Ian

1. Jim Curtis and I savaged her fee-fees pretty badly, and she’s never been back.

2. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.

3. I recently walled a book from a fairly famous small press because the protagonist’s name changed — drastically — in one chapter, before reverting for the rest of the book. Seriously?

4. Cover art has to have cues and clues keyed to the genre of your book — among other things. A pretty picture just doesn’t cut it.

5. “Have to buy” includes any hard sell or heavy pressure to buy a package.

6. And if their website offers financing to buy their “packages” — don’t. Just … don’t.