Martine77

@mgcrow · 03 Jan 2021

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Vanity publishers

#vanity #publishers #uitgeven

Today, there are many writers who would like to see their book published. There are also many publishers that respond to this need. However: this market is saturated and many publishers no longer take the risk of investing in new homegrown talent.
The big publishers are mainly concerned with the big names, which they know are going to sell enough circulation.
Now new publishers have come up, which will publish just about any book, as long as the author pays.
So the new trend is that many publishers will ask for money for your book, or offer a paying service, such as an editorial course, to publish your book.
This is what we call vanity publishers. These amounts often reach more than 1000 euros.
Why? The costs for editorial work, a cover and the pressure have to come out. It takes hands full of money to publish a book. If you used to go with a good story to a legitimate publisher, it invested in it. Then he paid the editors and everything for you and won that double and thick with the sale of your books.
To edit a book, to print a circulation and distribute it among the shops, then to promote it again... That's a nice cost. Many publishers don't do that anymore, because there's so much competition nowadays that there's no guarantee that a book will sell enough.
If the publisher asks the author for the money, he runs the least risk. If you paid for a book to issue, be sure to read the fine print. What do you get in return for that price? Often a vanity publisher doesn't care if your book is selling or not. Sometimes they do not care if the quality is good or not. They will usually go through with the spelling correction, but editors often leave much to be desired, which means that you may spend a lot of money to market a lesser quality book.
Also read the financial terms of your contract. Often they promise you that you will earn that money back by selling your books. You often have to do the promotion and the sale yourself. The books of many small, regular publishers now find their way to the physical bookstores.
So if a publishing house asks you excessive amounts to publish your book, don't sign it. Actually, they self-publish your book in disguise, but you have fewer rights. They have your money, and if they don't work through POD, you might still be stuck with a high pile of books.
More about POD or print on demand: see link on this.
A known example of a vanity publisher working through POD is Boekscout.
My advice: almost every publishing house will ask for money to spend your book. Read the contract carefully and don't sign too quickly. Do you really want to spend that much money on your book, consider whether self-publishing can be nothing for you.