Self Publishing Scams
they'll take your money if you let them...
Have you ever seen comments like these on web sites of companies offering to help you self publish your book? Some may be legitimate services, but often you can take care of these matters yourself and save huge amounts of money!
"Self publish with our company and we will make your book 'available' to over 20,000 bookstores!"
I am "available" to serve as the president of the United States, but that doesn't mean the Republican or Democratic party will soon be beating my door down trying to put me on the ticket!
A lot of print on demand publishers and vanity presses will offer to make your book available to 20,000 or so bookstores if you pay for their service. What they are talking about is registering your title with Ingram (www.ingrambook.com) or some other large book wholesaler. They may do this, but beware that Ingram will not promote your books! Yes, bookstores can place wholesale orders through them, but YOU will be responsible for driving customers to bookstores to order your book. Having your book 'available' to bookstores in no way means that even one bookstore will order your book!
Ingram owns Lightning Source which is a huge POD book printer. You can contract with Lightning Source (www.lightningsource.com) yourself and save a ton of money.
Also be aware that the vast majority of bookstore chains simply refuse to do buiness with POD publishers, mainly because they do not allow return of unsold books. You are not told of this up front.
"Self publish with our company and we will make your book available in our huge on-line bookstore."
Big deal! Again, making your book "available" doesn't mean any will sell! Very, very few individuals paying for a "self" publishing service (a POD publisher) will sell more than a dozen or so (if that many) books a year through their on-line store.
"We will give you huge discounts when you purchase copies of your book through us."
Many print on demand publishers will give you about a 30% discount when you order your own books through them. You can then re-sell them on your own. Wait, what if your book retails for $15.00 and you can buy copies for $10.50? You find a big catalog company that wants to sell your book, but they want a 50% discount off from the $15 cover price–that is, they will pay you $7.50 per copy. You will lose three dollars on every book you sell them!
"We will send out press releases to radio and television stations and get you booked for author interviews."
They may send out a few boilerplate releases, but media outlets get flooded with this junk and 99% will be tossed into the circular file before they are read. Hey, my Big Money Writing Little Books manual contains the most detailed techniques for getting booked for media interview you can find anywhere–and I show you how to get these bookings at no cost to you whatsoever.
"We will promote your book to Barnes & Noble stores and help you get lined up for book signings."
You can do this yourself: I show you exactly how in my Big Money Writing Little Books manual. And–I give you inside techniques you won't learn from print on demand publishers or vanity presses.
I did a book signing at a B&N bookstore outside of Grand Rapids, MI a few years ago. There were three authors there that evening. One young man had driven from Detroit (about a 150 mile drive) to do the event. His vanity press had set the signing up for him. He had paid over $12,000 to have them publish his book, and in the past 12 months he had sold a total of 19 books by doing almost 30 book signings!
Your goal is not to do a lot of hard work selling your book–you want to incorporate large and powerful entities to sell your book for you. My BMLB manual shows you exactly how to do this. Book signings are fun, but you will NEVER get rich doing them!
"Publish your book with us and our editorial staff will proof read your book and correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes for you."
I've got a better idea! Download my Extreme Self Publishing Desk Reference on my index (main) page for free. Follow my suggestions for improving your writing and your book will have more polish than a hundred pimply-faced, just-out-of-college editors with a bad attitude and a bad hair day will ever provide you with. Hey, my Desk Reference is FREE! Download it now!
"Publish your book with us and we will submit your web site to over 200
search engines."
Wonderful, but the only problem is that only three search engines or directories make any difference: Yahoo, Google, and MSN. These utilities will account for 98% of the traffic to your site. Here are the addresses you can go to in order to sumit your URL to these directories...
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Consider checking out my Big Money Writing Little Books manual. I can show you how to save 95% of what you will pay a print-on-demand publisher and end up with far, far more sales.
The End
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