The perils and pitfalls of getting published by Ann Evans

You’re never too old to get duped. After more than 30 years in the writing business,- and 17 books published I thought I’d spot a vanity publisher miles off. But what I shock I’ve had this year after discovering the American publishing company who were interested in my crime novel were a vanity publisher after all.

I can’t say their name but I've since found them mentioned on a website called ‘Writer Beware’ and only wish I’d looked there before signing the contract. It would have saved me a year of wasted time and effort – because if I knew then what I know now, I would have ditched them long ago and kept up my search for a reputable publisher.

Ho hum! You live and learn. Fortunately I’ve got out of the contract and I thought I’d try and turn a horrible experience into something positive by making a list of things to watch out for when dealing with an unknown publisher.

Here are my thoughts – forgive me if it smacks of teaching your granny to suck eggs, so if you don’t want to wade through all my points, the main thing I would mention is not simply to read your contract thoroughly for what’s in it but also search to see what ISN’T in it.

So how do you know if you are being conned? Few, if any of these vanity publishers advertise themselves as such. So you might be able to pick them out because they actually claim not to be a vanity or subsidy publisher. They might even offer you a small advance, which mine did, although it never materialised.

To be fair, some ‘author assisted’ or 'subsidy publishers' are up-front about the fact that they expect you to pay towards the publishing of your book. Some however are devious and avoid telling you that until you're pretty much ensnared. Additionally, there are some fake 'publishers' who are total frauds and exist only to extract money from hopeful writers.

If you do get as far as reading a standard contract, look to see if it contains a clause that prohibits its authors from complaining about its staff, services and products – ever. Then ask yourself why they would put such a clause in.

Look in the contract at what the publisher promises to do. However, it’s all very well them listing what royalties you’ll get on trade copies, translation rights, book clubs etc., this all looks very convincing and wonderful; but be sure they will actually be printing your book and these places will have the opportunity to buy.

Be aware that the contract may well deliberately miss off important points, so no matter how you scrutinise a contract, you won’t be able to scrutinise anything that isn’t written there. So as well as looking to see what they are offering, have your own check-list of pointers that you want agreement on.

So, how do you know that a publisher is legitimate? First off, check out the Writers and Artists Yearbook? If they aren’t in, it certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t legit by any means. It just means you need to delve a bit deeper.

So, look at their website, Check that they are at the address they say they are. By simply putting the address into Google, it should throw up who is residing there. And it might surprise you to find it’s just a post box or a postal annex as the Americans call them.

Look at their backlist of published books. Find them on book store websites such as Amazon, Waterston’s, and WH Smith. Scroll down to the details of these books, and check if the book was actually published by that publisher and not someone different or self published.

Do they have a catalogue of forthcoming books that you can view? Does it look convincing?

Google the publisher's authors and see if they are genuine people. You could even email one or two to ask if working with that publisher was a good experience.


Google the name of the publisher and see what comes up, don’t just look at the first page of results, but delve deeper to see if people have blogged about they experiences with them. Check website such as Writer Beware. (www.victoriastrauss.com/writer-beware)

If all you find is good comments and lots of info on the publisher, that’s a good sign. If you can’t find anything on them, that’s a bad sign.

Before agreeing to sign any contract, ask them if you will be expected to pay anything towards the publication of this book. Be sure to keep their reply. Should they ask you for money later on for anything you will have this correspondence as evidence. And if it turns out they are in breach of contract it will be easier for you to terminate the contract.

If you haven’t already found out through your research, ask which bookshops they distribute to. Try and find out which distributors they use, then go to that distributor’s website and see if there’s a facility to search on it for the publisher’s name.

If you go ahead and agree to be published with them, read the contract through thoroughly whether it’s your first contract or your twenty-first. Be sure you understand and are happy with every single clause.

Read carefully what you are agreeing to. The contract might say you are responsible for your own publicity and marketing. Fine unless they omit to mention the fact that they want you to buy a minimum number of your own books to send out, at a cost that reaches thousands of pounds.

In my case it was suggested I buy 100 or 300 - but I'd get a better discount if I ordered 1,000! At only approx $22 dollars per book what's the problem??

This folks, is where I realised I'd been duped! All the other points listed above are things I did afterwards and realised just how badly I'd been fooled.

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How to negotiate your publishing contract - David Thorpe

You've got an agreement from your publisher to publish your book. Hurray! Congratulations!

At some point afterwards they will be sending you a contract to sign. You might be overjoyed to receive it but you must still remember to check especially the terms of the advance and royalties before signing.

If the terms are not as pleasing as you would like, and you don't have an agent to negotiate on your behalf, you mustn't be afraid to be assertive, stand up for yourself and say what you would like it to contain.

(Often, nowadays, terms are so keen that what you might gain an advantage and financial return by having an agent to negotiate for you, you might lose because they will take their 15%.)

The publisher can only say no to your requests. At this point, having said yes, they are not going to refuse to publish the book, nor should you worry about getting a reputation for being difficult.

In these negotiations the publisher obviously wants to get the best deal for themselves, and so do you.

Therefore they will almost always start by offering terms that are more favourable to them than they are to you. They actually expect you to come back and disagree about something.

The point of the negotiations is to reach a position that agrees is reasonable.

These days, a frequent point of contention is often the level of royalties considered to be reasonable for electronic versions of your book.

Without mentioning any names, I'm going to let you in on what happened in negotiations with a contract I signed this week.

This is my fifth book for the same publisher, and I know they were particularly pleased with this proposal.

However, I also recognise that times are hard for publishers and over the years my advances have more than halved, accounting for inflation.

In return I have managed to secure from them a rising scale of royalties depending on sales numbers.

But this time around they began by offering an even lower advance. When I pointed out (as I always do) that I make all of my money from writing, and without a higher lump sum upfront I could not write the book without starving, they agreed to give me the same amount of advance as before, this time all of it upfront, with a further amount upon publication.

In return, I waived royalties on the first two years' sales, representing, in their eyes, two print runs.

I also secured some other concessions from them. So far so good.

Then I noticed that in the contract was a zero percentage for royalties on all electronic versions, forever.

I sent a note saying that I found this disturbing, particularly since on average these days half of sales are for electronic versions, and this proportion is rising.

In the end they suggested a percentage I was happy with and I signed the contract.

Perhaps I could have got up a higher percentage. Some people, like the Society of Authors, argue that royalties on e-books should be 50%, since costs for publishers are lower.

I'm not so sure, since in my experience correspondingly more needs to be spent on marketing of e-books in order for them to secure attention in an increasingly competitive market.

The moral of this story is: don't be afraid to ask for what you think is rightfully yours.

If you need support, and you're a member of the Society of Authors, you can obtain legal advice from them for free, without the need for an agent.