Money flows towards the author

This is the basic definition of Yog’s Law (see here for origins of the term) and it should be carved on the heart of every author. You can rewrite it slightly to read ‘Money (such as it is) ...’ but otherwise it’s pretty sound. Publishers pay authors. Authors do not pay publishers. But there is a certain breed ...

They’re called vanity publishers, though many prefer ‘subsidy publishers’ as vanity is such a nasty word. You see their adverts everywhere if you look closely. Writers’ magazines, small ads. “Authors! Send us your manuscript! All categories considered for publication!” What will they do? They will take your manuscript and turn it into typeset pages (which any fool with InDesign or Quark can do at the drop of a mouse), bung a cover on it (ditto), pick a print run out of thin air and charge you for the privilege. You are left with a pile of unedited, uncritiqued, uneditorialised books that you are expected to shift all on your own and for which you have paid a great deal of money.

But they couch it in such reasonable terms: a joint venture, shared risk ... No. Wrong. Absolutely not. Don’t touch them. If they want your money, don’t go there.

Marketing? No, your problem. Distribution? No, your problem. But you said my book would be available in Amazon and 100,000 bookshops around the world! Well, of course it is ... if they order it. Just don’t expect us to tell them of its existence. So how will they know to order it? Sorry, your problem.

And even if the bookshops do hear of it, chances of picking it up are slim. For every book that comes to them from a real publisher, they know that the publisher has put themselves on the line for it. The bookshop’s opinion may differ, but at least they know the publisher thinks the book is good and ought to sell. The publisher’s editor will have discussed it with the author and worked on making it as good as the publisher thinks it can be. It will have been copy edited, and proof read, and marketed, and distributed all at the publisher’s own expense. The publisher has reasonable grounds to think they will get all that expense back through sales. That’s quite a vote of confidence in the product.

What does getting a book from a vanity publisher say? It says the author thinks his manuscript is pretty good (duh!) and has more money than sense. Not a glowing recommendation.

Not that a bookshop won’t order a vanity publication, if you go in and ask them to. Hey, a sale’s a sale. But they won’t stock it.

It’s less of a problem (I think) over here than over there, i.e. the US, but there is a thriving industry of publishers that charge authors for the privilege of publishing their books, taking the money and running. There is also a related industry of agents who charge for the privilege of representing their clients or even just reading their manuscripts, stringing the poor saps along forever and never once actually making a sale. Except sometimes they ‘sell’ the book to a vanity press in which they have a share, and guess what, the author is stung yet again into putting some cash up front. And, unless they actively break the terms of their cleverly yet loosely worded contract, it’s all legal.

Sometimes authors can fight back ... and the happy tale of Atlanta Nights is well worth reading.

BOCTAOE, as Scott Adams would say. If your book is a pictorial history of Bury Street, Abingdon, from 1950 to 1960 then no commercial publisher will ever pick it up, and no bookstore outside Abingdon will sell it. And, you may say, what about someone like G.P. Taylor, who self-published Shadowmancer and is now a millionaire? Sometimes you need to pay for the publication of your own book.

Well – quite apart from the fact that on the basis of Shadowmancer, G.P. Taylor is a man who badly needs the services of a good editor, however well the book sold – the key is that term ‘self-published’. Nothing wrong with self-publishing. Nothing at all.

You walk into self-publishing with your eyes open, fully aware that you will come out the other end with a book product which is then your responsibility. Maybe you’ve written for a very specialised niche market, and know it; maybe you just can’t get a traditional publisher for your manuscript (and don’t get me started on the possible reasons for Shadowmancer not making it this way). A vanity publisher will lure you in with promises that never materialise, claiming to do all the jobs that a publisher should do, for a fee – and you’re lucky if the finished product is worth anything. A self-publishing outfit will print your books for you, and that’s it. They won’t even pretend to perform any other services, and they are completely up-front about the fact. With modern print-on-demand, you won’t even need to have a pile of books left over at the end (though unit costs may well be cheaper if you do). Firms like UPSO and lulu.com (not lulu.co.uk which is completely different) exist to facilitate the process.

If you can’t write, if you haven’t had it copy edited or proof read, then the text between the covers will probably still be rubbish; and unless you’re a good self-publicist, like Mr Taylor (and kudos to him), then the only buyers will be close friends and family who love you. But that’s your problem, and you will know it, and so will everyone else. No one has been lied to or ripped off.

All this has been on my mind quite recently with the thought that I might reissue my out-of-print work. Print on demand only – I won’t even try to get it into bookstores. And e-books. It’s just that every now and then I get a plaintive e-mail from someone who has read one of my in-print titles and wants to read more. So it shouldn’t be hard.

Maybe when some genius comes up with a clever way of getting more than 24 hours into a day. But watch this space.