Beware of publishing companies wanting your money!

If you're writing a book, or a friend of yours in writing a book, please read this before considering your publishing options.

The Author Exploitation Business

Posted on May 4, 2013 by davidgaughran

Writing is a glamorous occupation – at least from the outside. Popular depictions of our profession tend to leave out all the other stuff that comes with the territory: carpal tunnel syndrome, liver failure, penury, and madness.

Okay, okay, I jest. I love being a writer. Sharing stories with the world and getting paid for it is bloody brilliant. It’s a dream job, and like any profession with a horde of neophytes seeking to break in, there are plenty of sharks waiting to chew them to bits.
Publishing is a screwed up business. The often labyrinthine path to success makes it much easier for those with nefarious intentions to scam the unsuspecting. But it doesn’t help that so many organizations who claim to help writers, to respect them, to assist them along the path to publication are actually screwing them over.
Before the digital revolution made self-publishing viable on a wide scale, the dividing lines were easier to spot. Traditional publishers paid you if they wanted to buy the rights to your novel. Self-publishers were people who filled their garages with books and tried to hawk them at events. And vanity presses were the scammers, luring the unsuspecting with false promises and roundly condemned by self-publishers and traditional publishers alike.

Today it’s very different. The scammy vanity presses are owned by traditional publishers who are marketing them as the “easy” way to self-publish – when it’s nothing more than a horrifically expensive and terribly ineffective way to publish your work, guaranteed to kill your book’s chance of success stone dead, while emptying your bank account in the process.

Some of you might think: hey, it’s just business. Caveat emptor and all that. And don’t these people know how to use Google?
That’s easy to say from our position of experience. Do you remember how naive you were at the start? Do you remember just how badly you wanted to get published? Do you remember the crushing grind of the query-go-round?

I’m not surprised people get scammed. When you want something so badly, and you can’t seem to make progress towards that goal – no matter how hard you work – you start to go crazy. You get desperate.

And it’s much harder to tell the scammers from the legitimate organizations when they are owned by the same people.

Take Penguin-owned Author Solutions, one of the worst vanity presses out there. Here’s how they hoodwink inexperienced writers into using their horribly expensive service.
If you Google a term like “find a publisher” the results are littered with sites like FindYourPublisher.com (which I’m not going to link to because that will help their SEO, but you can cut-and-paste that address).

The website purports to be an independent resource, helping to pair you with the most suitable publishing company. Or as they put it:

dedicated to helping both first-time and experienced authors identify the most suitable indie book publishing company for their book. With the information you provide about your book and goals, FYP makes a recommendation as to which indie book publisher has the best publishing package to help you reach your publishing objectives.

Below this message is an online questionnaire asking you about your book. When you have completed that and handed over your phone number, the site makes a recommendation based on your answers.

Except the only companies recommended are Trafford, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, and iUniverse – all of which are scammy vanity presses, all owned by Author Solutions. And, fitting with the rest of the pattern, FindYourPublisher.com is just one of many (many!) such sites owned and operated by Author Solutions, purporting to make independent recommendations, but only recommending Author Solutions companies.

I have sympathy for those hoodwinked by awful companies like Author Solutions. The dividing lines aren’t as obvious as they were. And inexperienced writers naively assume that a company like Penguin has their best interests at heart. Maybe it’s the cuddly logo.

Newsflash: Penguin doesn’t care about writers
When Penguin bought the world’s biggest vanity press for $116m last July, many people in the publishing business gave them a pass. They claimed that Penguin would clean up the cesspool. But instead Author Solutions CEO Kevin Weiss was given a seat on the Penguin board.

A seat on the board!

Emily Suess wrote an excellent guest post here back in February, detailing how the slick Author Solutions scam hadn’t changed one bit since the Penguin takeover.
It’s now almost a year since Penguin bought the company (instead of buying, say, Goodreads, but I digress). It should be clear to everyone now that Penguin has no intention of changing Author Solutions’ scammy approach. In fact, Penguin just announced plans to take the scam global.

Penguin has been looking under the Author Solutions hood for 10 months now. Its conclusion was this: we can make this bigger. We can take this scam on the road and start exploiting writers all over the planet.
And Penguin is still getting a pass for this crap.
The Penguin Omerta
The Publishers Weekly piece on Penguin’s aggressive expansion plans for Author Solutions makes no mention of the company being a universally reviled vanity press that has cheated 150,000 writers out of their savings.

This is something I’ve been noticing for a while, and Publishers Weekly isn’t alone. The pieces in The Bookseller, GalleyCat, and Digital Book World also make no mention of the widespread criticism that Author Solutions has attracted, nor do they mention that the company is currently the subject of a class action suit for their deceptive practices.

More disturbingly, my comment pointing this out appears to have been scrubbed from The Bookseller, is stuck in the moderation queue on Digital Book World’s piece (despite explicitly stating that they had posted it).

The reaction at the London Book Fair was similar. No-one from traditional publishing wanted to talk about Penguin’s ownership of Author Solutions. No-one wants to talk about how a supposedly legitimate publisher now owns the most successful author scamming organization on the planet.

These guys are probably taking their cue from the New York Times, who won’t mention anything remotely critical about Author Solutions, but are happy to spend lots of time showing them in a positive light (like here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Writer Beware
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has done sterling work over the years warning writers away from people like Author Solutions both on their own site, and through their industry watchdog Writer Beware.
However, I would love to see them go one step further.
Remember those awful Random House digital-first imprints? Public pressure forced Random House to change the horribly one-sided terms it was offering writers. That result was achieved after Writer Beware blogged about it, SFWA president John Scalzi followed up, and SFWA itself threatened to de-list Random House as a qualifying market.

What Author Solutions is doing to writers is far, far worse.
Isn’t it time to do something about this? Isn’t it time to threaten to de-list Penguin as a qualifying market if they don’t clean up Author Solutions?

Hands Up If You Don’t Own A Vanity Press
There’s only one problem with this approach. Where do you stop? Because you would have to threaten to do the same with all these guys too:
1. Simon & Schuster hired Author Solutions to run their own scammy vanity press – Archway Publishing. If that wasn’t enough, they then offered a bounty to bloggers to lie about the company.
2. Harper Collins-owned Thomas Nelson have their own crappy vanity operation called West Bow Press – also “powered” by Author Solutions.
3. Harlequin, never afraid to turn down a penny, jumped in the game a few years ago. Author Solutions provided the white-label vanity operation for them.
4. Showing that it’s not just the larger publishers, Hay House contracted Author Solutions to set up Balboa Press – another scammy, crappy, overpriced vanity press.
If it was down to me, I would threaten to de-list all these guys until they cleaned house, but Penguin would be a good start, given they (a) it all comes back to Author Solutions, (b) Penguin owns Author Solutions, (c) Penguin has shown no interest in addressing concerns, and (d) Penguin is planning a massive expansion of the Author Solutions scam.

Writers Digest & Lulu
I’m sure Digital Book World’s reluctance to mention the problems with Author Solutions has nothing to do with the fact that they are owned by F+W Media, which also owns yet another crappy vanity press – Abbot Press (which has some of the worst prices out there).
In a refreshing change of pace, this crappy vanity press is not actually powered by Author Solutions. Abbot Press is a division of Writers Digest. Yes, that Writers Digest.

If that catches you by surprise, I’m sorry to say that Writers Digest went over to the dark side a few years back, and now spam their subscribers with crap like this.

I’m sure Author Solutions was disappointed to miss out on that deal but at least they can console themselves with the new partnership they struck with  Lulu last month to provide premium (i.e. overpriced and ineffective) marketing services to Lulu customers.
That’s right. Lulu made a deal with the devil.

How Can We Fight Back?
Penguin think they can continue to ride out the storm, ignoring the criticism and collecting their ill-gotten gains, but if we make enough noise, they will have to respond. That starts with sharing this post, or, even better, blogging about it yourself.
But it also means reaching out to inexperienced writers and trying to steer them away from these crooks. We need to get the message out that self-publishing is not the impossible task it’s painted as. Sarah Woodbury has a helpful post on the basics here, and I have another here. Feel free to point newbies to them, or write your own.

Each time you see an article talking about Author Solutions and not mentioning all the issues, comment underneath and call them on it. Even if the media don’t change their one-eyed approach, readers will see the comments.

If you’re a member of a writers organization like SFWA, RWA, or MWA, ask what they are doing about Penguin. Ask them why they haven’t threatened to de-list Penguin. And keep pressing them! The SFWA (and the RWA) were really strong in response to Random House. We need the same from them again.
150,000 writers have been screwed over already. I think that’s enough. Don’t you?

CORRECTION: Abbott Press (the Writers Digest vanity press) shares the same address as Author Solutions so I think it’s safe to assume it’s being run by them. The packages are all quite similar, as is the marketing. Indeed, Emily Suess names Abbot Press as being powered by Author Solutions (scroll down to bottom). More profit for Penguin! Hooray!

 

 

 

 

 

It Takes a Village...to write and publish a book

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

     If someone had told me three years ago when I started writing my memoir, it would take this long to write, edit, polish, rewrite, edit, rewrite and edit some more, I wouldn’t have believed them. I’d have said, “Oh, not me … I can do it faster!” 

     NOT.

     I’ve pretty much completed my work with Linda Joy Myers, from the National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW). She played a valuable role in coaching, teaching, editing and encouraging me for nearly a year. As I entered her last edits into the manuscript at 4:00 pm on April 28th, I emailed her to say, “I’m done!”

     NOT.

     She kindly emailed back, saying I wasn’t “done.”  In fact, she said I now need to find a line-editor to go through the manuscript again. Yes, AGAIN—to see if there are any grammar problems, misplaced comma’s, em-dashes, elipses out of place…” (And, yes, I now know what em-dashes and elipses are!)

     I about fell off my chair. “THERE’S MORE???”

     YES. 

     So here’s where I am in the process. 

Ø The manuscript (which by the way grew from 86,000 words to 107,000 words during this last year), is in the hands of a New York editor. YES! A New York editor.

Ø My nephew Ric and his company, Superior Website Services, are creating my website—at the family discount rate, thank goodness.  I will let you know when the website is up and running.

Ø My writing friend, Quentin, told me about his fabulous illustrator, Yoko, and she will be working with me to design the front and back covers of the book.

Ø Through a local ad, I found a man who restores pictures and he now has my 37-year-old pictures and newspaper articles from The House of Hope, and is getting them ready so I can include them in the back of the book.

Ø And two friends of mine are reading the manuscript checking for flow, pace, and overall interest.

     Who would have thought all of this went into getting a book written, edited and published?

     There’s more. Although I’ve been encouraged by several professionals to seek an agent and through an agent find a traditional publisher, I’ve decided not to follow that route, at least not right now. From my research, I’ve learned agents seldom agree to represent a new, unknown author who has little or no social media platform—meaning thousands and hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, FB followers, Blog followers, etc.

     And that’s okay—heart-breaking, but okay.

     The good thing is that in today’s digital world there are lots of ways to get a manuscript published and that’s what I’m researching right now, with the help of my writing buddy, Leo and others.

     Stay tuned. From Tears to Triumph, My Journey to The House of Hope is nearing completion! And yes, “It takes a village,” to write, edit, and publish. 

     What are your experiences in this journey of writing? Send me an email or post a comment. I would love to hear your story.

("It takes a village" picture from cps.regis.edu)

The next step for “From Tears to Triumph, My Journey to The House of Hope.

After nearly three years of daily feeling, thinking, praying, writing and editing I sent my “baby” to my writing coach, Linda Joy Myers (NAMW) for a complete examination. When she’s through reviewing the 418-page, 104,000-word manuscript, I’ll be one big step closer to the end project ─ a book in my hands (and hopefully yours). I see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is bright and shiny, and yet scary.

As you know, this has all been new to me. When I started out to write this memoir nearly three years ago, I really thought it would be relatively easy. I mean, after all, it’s a true story and all I needed to do was put my memories onto the written page.

RIGHT, but WRONG.

Each “memory” comes with a feeling and I had to dig deep and hard to surface the feelings and events surrounding the memories. And sometimes I didn't WANT to remember certain events and the associated feelings--it was gut wrenching. That’s called memoir writing. It’s different than fiction.

In writing fiction, the author uses their imagination and creativity to bolster the story percolating in their mind. In memoir writing you need to write the truth or as close to the truth as you can possibly get…and since I don’t have every conversation and event from all those years ago embedded in my memory bank, I need to relate how it most likely happened, staying true to the story. 

The journals, cassette tapes and letter to my parents that I have had in hand during the process, have been incredibly valuable. It wasn’t always easy, but it’s been so worth the journey.

Stay tuned. And thank YOU for joining me in your hearts and prayers during the last three years!  

(Photo by Ciarán Ryan)

Waiting to Give Birth

 

From Tears to Triumph, My Journey to The House of Hope

 

I definitely see a correlation between waiting for a book to be published and waiting for a child to be born.

 

I've been in Santa Rosa this week with my 21-year-old daughter, Patricia, as we wait for her contractions to start and for her first child, Laila, to come into the world. In those moments when I'm not hanging out with Patricia, bonding, laughing, shopping, walking and planning, I'm on my laptop editing and polishing the final chapters of my book.

 

I started seeing a correlation. 

* Laila is overdue. We all feel she "should have been here by now."

* I expected to have my book finished and published by now…"it feels like it's overdue."

* Every morning I receive calls, emails and text messages from loved ones asking, "Is there a baby yet?"

* Frequently on my Facebook page or in conversations with friends I hear, "Isn't the book ready yet?"

* Patricia is listening to others and researching natural ways to speed up the birthing process--with no luck. As her doctor says, "The baby will come when she's ready."

* I've also looked for ways to "hurry up" the editing and polishing process...but the experts tell me to, "slow down."  

 

We both have to be patient and let the creative process happen.

 

* Patricia and Melchor’s baby has a beautiful name.  They thought about names for months, trying out different ones, and then came up with “Laila Daniley.”

* I’ve thought about names for my book for years. At first it was, “Dear Mom and Dad.” Then it became, “Dear Mom and Dad, Please Send Money,” followed by “House of Hope, Love Without Borders,” and then Unstoppable, My Journey to The House of Hope. The most recent book title is, “From Tears to Triumph, My Journey to The House of Hope.

 

And so it continues. There is no hurrying up the process.  I do believe that what is worth having is worth working on and waiting for… but even so…hurry up already, Laila!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CLEANING AND PERCOLATING

                 

UNSTOPPABLE, MY JOURNEY TO THE HOUSE OF HOPE continues to occupy my heart, mind and time. I’ve been “cleaning” and “percolating” in preparation for publishing. As I read through the manuscript, I find words, phrases, paragraphs and whole chapters that although interesting, seem to slow the pace of the story, or aren’t relevant.

Some of these paragraphs and chapters (like when the FBI came knocking when I was sixteen, looking for my boyfriend who’d escaped from jail), will be in the back of the book under “excerpts.”   That’s the cleaning that’s been occupying my time.

Then there’s the percolating. My mind and memory run hot as I ruminate over a word or sentence while walking down the street or trying to fall asleep at night─and a new, better, more concise word or sentence will pour forth, begging to be substituted for said less-concise word or sentence. 

Yes, this is the life of an author. I didn’t know this when I started, but here I am, some ten chapters from the end of the arduous editing process.

A new writing friend, Quentin, has read two of the three-part manuscript. Here is his humorous (but oh, too true) summation:

       

Recipe for a Life…..take one teen-age girl, give her red-hair, excess weight, add a dash of naiveté, and a spoonful of Christian teaching, shake and blend and empty into a street mold in San Francisco, leaving it unprotected until it jells into the first layer.

Next inject a filling of college courses with a syringe to induce a modicum of self-respect, add one boyfriend who sells drugs, be offered a rewarding summer internship as a street hooker working for boyfriend, allow brain to expand like the big-bang to the point of intelligence where internship is summarily turned down, discard empty boyfriend container, mix in a potpourri of doe-eyed religious friends, stir brains slowly until partially curdled.

Carefully pour this malleable cerebrum into a rigid religious cult mold and bake 24/7 until you produce the “I-obey-without-question” second layer.

Saturate layer with a spicy bottle of Spanish language, move concoction 4,000 miles to an open air taco oven deep within Mexico, move dish to different Mexican cities adding local corn and vegetables to fashion the fruitcake-like third layer while praying fanatically and gathering acolytes to help you carry the unique cake of experience-forged-resolve.

Eventually cut a teeny-tiny wedge from the triple layer, feed it to the new Costa Rican President to remind him of his conscience and that God is watching and ask for money to distribute the almost finished layered product, being certain not to disclose individual ingredients of the multi-layer cake, to said President, turn down government offer and move forward looking for guidance to finally co-found and direct The House of Hope for the wayward, adding lavish frosting, sprinkles and candles.

       Win well-earned awards and praise. Reflect often on recipe missteps by gazing into a mirror using the words…what the heck was I thinking?

Hola from Mexico. Thanks to each and every one of you who have supported me in my writing over the last two and a half years. I appreciate you! 

A well-written book needs fresh ingredients: flavor, spice, nutrients, color. Scenes need to be palatable, visual, enticing. That is what I've been doing over the last couple of years. Learning to write well. Learning to have the right ingredients in my Memoir.

Unstoppable is divided into three main parts and the first two are DONE and ready to be published. I’m here in Mexico polishing the third section.

The book title continues to evolve. The newest one is, “Unstoppable: Rebellion, Renewal & Redemption, My Journey to The House of Hope.”  

This title ties into my three-part true-life story. Part one of the memoir is “Rebellion” (my early years), part two “Renewal” (my Children of God years) and part three “Redemption” (the House of Hope years).

Over the next few weeks, I'd like to invite each of you to write part of a scene from Unstoppable.  I’ll start the paragraph and let you fill in how you think it ended or should end. 

Here we go:

#1 (scene from chapter 1) :  "…Just then, the jail door opened and three angry-looking policemen shoved the missing six commune brothers, including Watchman, our leader, into the cell. Two of the boys had bruised faces and swollen eyes. 

“What happened?” Peter asked.

“You won’t believe it,” Watchman said, finding a place to sit in the cell. “Twenty-five policemen showed up at the house, broke through the front and back doors, and tore the house apart. They questioned all of us and beat up Joshua and Matthew.”

I watched his face flush with anger while his voice remained calm, even, controlled.

“Why? What do they think we’ve done?” I asked in disbelief.

 The first shades of fear shuddered through me.

“They were looking for drugs,” Watchman said. “They kept shouting something about ‘hippies and drogas.’”

“Drugs? We’re just young people here in Mexico helping other young people,” Mayra said. “That’s not a crime, is it?”

Suddenly, the overhead light bulb that had struggled to illuminate our area flickered and died out, leaving us in semi-darkness. The moon, peeking through two small windows near the ceiling, provided a sliver of light..."

Now your turn…Complete the scene from your imagination by writing it as a comment. I'll publish your responses on the blog. Enjoy!

Chapter One

My writing journey continues as I polish scene after scene, chapter after chapter of my manuscript, Unstoppable. My Journey to the House of Hope. I am honored to be working with Linda Joy Myers from the National Association on Memoir Writers (NAMW). Her coaching is making me dig deeper into memory  and I am learning to write vivid scenes, not just "the facts." Scenes that will allow you, the reader to see, smell, hear and feel with me. Below is what may be the first part of Chapter One. I say "may be" because the writing is not over until it's in hardback. I'm looking for a chapter that will hook the reader (you) into wanting to read more.  Please check out this beginning and tell me what you think. I  look forward to hearing your comments. Thank you!  Linda   

CHAPTER I

October 19, 1972

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m in jail. We were arrested last night after singing to a big crowd in the town square here in Merida, Mexico. After our last song we talked to the teenagers gathered in the plaza and then walked back to our vans, laughing and talking. We were suddenly surrounded by armed policemen who ordered us into the vans and drove us here to the jail.

I’m sitting on a filthy, cold, concrete floor in a small, narrow holding area with three other girls. We’re outside a jail cell occupied by six brothers from our commune. The drunk-tank is on my right. It reeks of alcohol, urine and vomit. We don’t know why the police arrested us or how long we will be here. I have to use the bathroom, but there is only one toilet and it is out in the open.

                                  Your daughter, Linda

“Mayra, are you awake?” I whispered. “I need you to hold up this newspaper for privacy while I use the bathroom.”

“Mayra’s asleep,” Esther whispered back. “I’ll go with you, I need to go too.”

Toilet duties completed, we lay back down and tried to sleep. I took in short, shallow breaths to avoid inhaling the fetid air around me. A symphony of snores from the drunk-tank broke through moments of silence. The old newspapers, my bed for the night, offered no cushioning on the damp cement floor.

I didn’t feel fear, just confusion as to why we’d been arrested——and I wondered when the police would let us go. Mayra, Esther and Sarah, my commune sisters, huddled nearby, equally uncomfortable.