From David Gaughran:

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.

. . . .

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.

. . . .

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.

. . . .

[T]he 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.

. . . .

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 Publishers Weekly piece on Penguin’s aggressive expansion plans for Author Solutionsmakes 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.

. . . .

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.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

Some might wonder if there is really all that much difference between Big Publishing and Vanity Publishing with regard to how each treats authors.

From Salon:

In 2001 when my first novel, “Slab Rat,” was published and I was important for about eight weeks.

. . . .

[L]ast year, my third novel, Pocket Kings was published. As best as I can remember, it did not receive one negative review. There were some flat-out raves, too. TheWashington Post loved it and it was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review.This was the first time that the Times had liked a book of mine. They cold-bloodedly butchered the first and fatally wounded the second.

“Pocket Kings” got positive reviews, but the problem is it just didn’t get too many of them. As far as I know, only one newspaper west of the Pecos (the Dallas Morning News), reviewed it. Newspapers don’t cover books anymore, of course. And then there’s the lack of a readership on my part, I’m just not that prominent, etc.

. . . .

“Pocket Kings” took so long to actually get published that before it finally hit the stores and Amazon, I’d already written another novel, called “West of Babylon,” and was ready to shop it around. My agent and I had decided, however, to wait and send out the newer book in the wake of “Pocket Kings.” Our hope was that “Pocket Kings” would get positive reviews and that publishers would then chomp at the bit for West of Babylon.

But it didn’t work out that way. Editors passed on “West of Babylon.” It got some great, encouraging rejections but still, nobody wanted it. (I would rather have a discouraging acceptance than an encouraging rejection.)

. . . .

My agent — my real agent — and I agreed that “West of Babylon” was too good to just forget about. I’ve written many books but only three have gotten published — the others are either somewhere under my bed or somewhere on my hard drive. “West of Babylon,” I felt, did not deserve that fate. So we decided I should self-publish the book in electronic book format only. I would be publisher, editor, publicist, regional sales manager, mail room guy and everything else. (My wife designed the cover in return for a $50 gift card to the Gap.)

I can tell you that self-publishing is not fun.

As I write these words, I am now in my seventh week of attempting to spread the word about “West of Babylon.” I have sent emails to many newspapers, from the Boston Globe down to the Miami Herald across to the San Francisco … well, to just about everywhere. I’ve sent emails to newspapers and magazines in England, too, and to websites and book blogs.

. . . .

Sometimes I get replies. Overwhelmingly I do not.

When I hit the send button, I assume that nothing will come of it.

. . . .

By this time, I had already sent email to several National Public Radio shows (“Fresh Air,” “Weekend Edition,” etc.) trying to spread the word, and hadn’t gotten any return email from them. (NPR stands for, I now realize, No Possible Reply. They are dead to me now, and I only wish I was a frequent, generous donor so that way I could now stop donating to them.)

. . . .

I’ve sent two emails to the editor of the New York Times Book Review and have not gotten a return email.

. . . .

Now, I happen to know a few people at magazines and newspapers; I’ve had novels published and I have an agent. But what is this experience like for Jane and John Q. Self-Publishing Author way out there in South Podunk, who don’t know anybody at all and who have zero connections? My heart goes out to them.

Link to the rest at Salon and thanks to Tom for the tip.

On Jane Friedman’s blog, Jane interviews book designer Joel Friedlander:

I’m a firm believer in the power of design. I think it affects purchasing not just in obvious ways, but also on a subconscious level. So it often frustrates me when independent authors do their own design work to keep costs low. But I also understand the need to limit financial risk. Let’s say we have to make a compromise. What do you think an author might be able to accomplish reasonably well on her own (that has least potential to adversely affect sales), and what’s the No. 1 thing an author should hire a designer for (because of its potential to increase sales)?

Great question, Jane. Lots of authors want to “own” the process of creating their books, want to have a say in the overall look and feel of the book. After all, what good is having these great bookmaking tools if we don’t use them?

For people who write fiction, memoir, or narrative nonfiction, this question is easier to answer. Creating book interiors for these books is not as demanding, and the result won’t rely quite as much on the typographic sophistication of the designer.

Outside the typographic part of the design, it’s critically important for authors to construct their books properly. There are conventions that are hundreds of years old in book design, and expectations readers bring to books that must be recognized and respected.

So outside what font she uses for the text of her novel, your author will want to make sure all the other details of bookmaking, like the treatment of other page elements like running heads, page numbers, display pages like chapter openings, and so on, are treated properly.

Clearly, the one area where your author should look for professional help is in cover design. This is a specialized type of graphic design that demands good type treatment, the proper font usage, and an understanding of how browsers interact with the words and pictorial content on most book covers.

Because your cover is so important in positioning your book and attracting interest, it really pays to hire a pro.

What are the most common mistakes you see authors make when they design their own book interiors?

Here are some of the mistakes I see most often in self-published books:

• Not using full justification for their text, so that both the right and left margin square up and create a rectangle on the page
• Not hyphenating the text, resulting in gaps and spaces on the page
• Putting the odd-numbered pages on the left, when they should always be on the right
• Leaving running heads on display pages like part or chapter openers
• Margins that are either too small to allow the reader to easily hold the book, or that don’t take the printing and binding of the book into account
• Publishing a book with no copyright page

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman and here’s a link to Joel’s blog, The Book Designer

From The New York Times letters to the editor:

Re “New Publisher Authors Trust: Themselves” (front page, April 17):

Authors who choose to self-publish as a recourse to rejection from, or frustration with, traditional publishing houses subject themselves to further disappointment when they try to publicize and distribute their books themselves.

We see this every day in our independent bookstore: writers dropping off unsolicited work in the hope that we will stock books that have had little or no editing, and few reviews or distribution beyond Amazon (always a nonstarter).

With rare exceptions, it is unrealistic to expect busy booksellers, who conduct business with hundreds of established vendors already, to take them on: reading, evaluating and setting up separate vendors for each title.

Link to the rest at The New York Times and thanks to Elizabeth for the tip.

From David Gaughran:

I was at the London Book Fair last week – and I’ll be blogging about that soon – when the news broke that David Mamet is to self-publish his next book.

His reasons? ”Publishing is like Hollywood—nobody ever does the marketing they promise.”

While I think it’s great that someone as high-profile as David Mamet is self-publishing, I was very disappointed to find out the way he’s doing it.

. . . .

Literary agents in particular must be worried about what that means for their future, which explains their ludicrous reactions when someone like Barry Eisler states the above. However, a company called Argo Navis – a publisher-owned distributor – has come to their rescue, providing them with a way to re-insert themselves in the chain between self-publishing author and reader. And get their cut of course.

Mamet is represented by a major literary agency – ICM Partners – who are just one of many agencies to have signed a deal with Perseus Books-owned Argo Navis.

What Do Argo Navis Offer?

Essentially, Argo Navis are a distributor. They offer a portal through which authors’ work can be distributed to all the various retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo.

In exchange for this relatively trivial service, Argo Navis take a 30% cut. You read that right. After the retailer takes their standard cut (usually also 30%), Argo Navis take another 30% before passing on payments.

Obviously, this is massively overpriced compared to distributors like Smashwords or Draft2Digital, who only take 10%, and especially so when you compare the cost of going direct to retailers like Amazon (it’s free). But the problems with Argo Navis don’t end there.

Services like cover design, editing, formatting, scanning, and conversion are not included in this hefty price tag – but are available for a premium. Who provides those services? According to their website, it’s “third party specialists.”

. . . .

Why Are Literary Agents Using Argo Navis?

Argo Navis has been very clever with how they market their service. It’s pitched as agent-curated self-publishing - hey, it’s a step up from assisted self-publishing. Argo Navis don’t (and won’t) deal with authors directly, and will only accept titles for distribution submitted by literary agents.

This in turn allows agents to tap into what I call The Myth of the Segregated Marketplace - where authors believe that the visibility challenges resulting from the open nature of digital distribution are exclusively faced by self-published authors. Of course, those challenges are faced by all authors – however they publish. And given the abysmal rankings of books published via Argo Navis, it’s not a challenge that they are handling well.

But what’s in it for the agent? For starters, royalty checks come to their offices first (after Argo Navis have taken their considerable bite). This allows the agent to deduct their 15% before the author sees any money. Of course, it allows unscrupulous agents to take a little more – something enabled by Argo Navis only providing sales reports to agents rather than directly to authors – but I digress.

. . . .

At this point you would be forgiven for thinking that no reputable literary agency would go for this. Well, I wish that was the case. Here’s a list of agencies that have signed up with Argo Navis:

• Writers House
• ICM Partners
• Carol Mann Agency
• Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency
• The Hartnett Agency
• Paul Bresnick Literary Agency
• Pinder Lane & Garon-Brooke Associates
• Curtis Brown (US)
• April Eberhardt Literary
• David Black Agency
• Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency
• Folio Literary Management
• Levine Greenberg Literary Agency
• Liza Royce Literary Agency
• Melanie Jackson Agency
• Janklow & Nesbit Associates
• Joëlle Delbourgo Associates
• Arcadia Literary Agency
• Harvey Klinger
• APA Talent and Literary Agency
• Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
• Irene Skolnick Literary Agency
• FinePrint Literary Management
• Donald Maass Literary Agency

. . . .

What’s In It For Authors?

There’s no upside to being funneled into this program. Participating authors get lower royalties, no sales reports, slower payments, and lose the ability to make quick changes to things like pricing – which is essential for marketing.

The money is the big one though, so I’d like to focus on that:

• An author self-publishing direct with KDP will receive up to 70% of list price.
• An author who self-publishes via Argo Navis will receive 41.65% of list price.

Link to the rest, including links to some Argo Navis books so you can check the covers and sales rank at Let’s Get Digital

From Charlie Stross at Charlie’s Diary:

Left to my own devices, in a good year with no major disruptions (which, alas, don’t come along as often as I’d like) I can write around 200-240,000 words of finished fiction — a pair of 330 page novels or one big doorstep plus a novella.

. . . .

However a modern trade-fic publisher is an organization dedicated to handling the work-flow of book production. Over the past 30 years they’ve ruthlessly outsourced everything that isn’t a core part of the job of publishing — including many tasks that an outsider might think were core competencies. Copy editors work freelance, paid by the book. Proofreaders ditto. Typesetting is carried out by DTP agencies. Printing is the job of a printer, not a publisher.

The stuff that remains in-house is editorial, marketing, accounting, and (occasionally) sales. “Editorial” in this context means workflow management — someone to ride herd on the pool of copy editors and proofreaders and to make acquisition decisions (in their spare time). “Marketing” includes book design, blurb writing, ARCs/review copies, presence at trade shows, glad-handing the big chain buyers, commissioning advertising, organizing signing tours and author promotion, and so on. (There’s also a “production” side, sometimes subsumed under editorial, whose job it is to organize typesetting and printing and the business of turning the manuscript into a physical product. Generating ebooks slots into this workflow in place of “send PDF file to printer, order x thousand copies”).

. . . .

So, I estimate a book takes roughly 2 months of publishing company employee labour to produce.

. . . .

When you add it all up: if I’m as efficient as a trade publisher, it would take me roughly 3 months to produce a book that also took me 6 months to write. More realistically, I’m likely to be less streamlined and efficient than a publisher who specializes in this job. This supposes I’m sufficiently plugged-in to commission my own copy-editor, book designer, cover artist, and typesetter. I then have to handle the contractual, accounting, and tax side of things.

Link to the rest at Charlie’s Diary and thanks to Ant for the tip.

Passive Guy received a warning about a new British site that makes it easy for indie authors to publish and distribute their work. The name of the site is Autharium.

The warning was about Autharium’s terms of service. Following are some excerpts from the Terms and Conditions:

1.1          By submitting your Work to Autharium and accepting these Terms & Conditions, you grant to Autharium the exclusive right and licence to produce, publish, promote, market and sell your Work in any Digital Form (as defined in paragraph 1.4 below) in all languages throughout the world for the entire legal term of copyright (and any and all extensions, renewals and revivals of the term of copyright).

1.2          You agree that Autharium shall also be entitled to license retailers, distributors, agents, licensees, sub-contractors and other third parties to exercise the rights you have granted to Autharium under this Agreement.

. . . .

13.1       You may remove your Work from sale on the Website and by all our retailers, distributors, agents and other third party sellers by emailing Autharium at support@autharium.com. Within 90 days of receiving your email, Autharium will remove your Work from sale on the Website and request all our retailers, distributors, agents and other third party sellers to remove your Work from sale. If you wish to re-enable Autharium and our retailers, distributors, agents and other third party sellers to sell your Work you can re-enable sales by emailing Autharium at support@autharium.com.

13.2       Please note that your removal of your Work from sale in accordance with paragraph 13.1 above will not terminate this Agreement nor cause the exclusive digital publishing rights that you have granted to Autharium pursuant to paragraph 1 above to revert to you. You maintain copyright of the Work at all times.

13.3       If you wish to sell your Work in any Digital Form through any other publisher, distributor or means then you will need to contact Autharium atsupport@autharium.com to agree transfer of the digital publishing rights to your Work.

Link to the rest at Autharium Publishing terms and Conditions for Authors and thanks to Catherine for the tip.

Yes, the excerpted language does mean what it says.

By distributing your book through Authariam, you are giving Authariam exclusive world-wide ebook rights to your book for the full term of the author’s copyright, which PG is informed is the author’s life plus 70 years under British copyright law. British law governs this contract.

You can remove your book from Authariam, but Authariam still owns world-wide rights.

To make certain there is no mistake, we have Paragraph 13.3 which explicitly says that if you decide you would rather distribute your ebook with Amazon under its KDP program or with Barnes & Noble under Pubit or if a big New York publisher offers you a seven-figure advance for your book, you will have to persuade Authariam to release its contract claim. Undoubtedly, this will require that the author pay Authariam some pounds sterling to gain the release.

PG would appreciate comments from those with knowledge of UK law as to the enforceability of contract provisions PG believes to be unconscionable in the context of an online click-contract (sometimes called “click-through agreements,” “click and accept” or “web-wrap” agreements.

To the best of PG’s knowledge, this is the first online distribution service that includes such nasty contractual traps for the unwary author. Unfortunately, he suspects it will not be the last.

From author April Hamilton:

Simon & Schuster Is Trying To Bribe People Like Me …to refer people like you to their new vanity imprint, Archway, which they formed in partnership with AuthorHouse (aka “ASI”) late last year. A couple of days ago, I received the following, kind of astonishingly brazen email from a Simon and Schuster staffer:

————————————————-

Simon & Schuster recently launched Archway Publishing as a new type of offering for self-publishing authors. With services delivered by Author Solutions, Archway was developed to help authors achieve their publishing goals and reach their desired audience. S&S has provided guidelines on book design, introduced certain unique self-publishing services, designed packages tailored to meet specific author objectives, and will monitor titles for potential acquisition.

Your blog is an important resource to help authors navigate the variety of self-publishing options. We believe Archway is a unique new service for authors, and would be valued by your readers.The Archway Affiliate Program enables partners to earn a $100 bounty for each author they refer who publishes with Archway*. Click here to learn more about the affiliate program. In addition, we’d like to extend to your audience a 10% discount off any Archway package, when referred though affiliate links on your site. We can also create contests, webinars, and creative for your site, or discuss other ways to work together.

. . . .

Anyway, it’s obvious that this person has zero familiarity with me, aside from the fact that I own and operate a site that’s very popular with writers, authors and publishing professionals. Anyone who bothered to peruse this blog would’ve very quickly discovered there’s no way I’d ever sign on for such a thing, and I’d be inclined to publicize the offer.

. . . .

I hit Reply on that email, and this is what I said:

————————————————-
I have always advised indie authors to avoid vanity publishers, and AuthorHouse is one of the most notorious among them. The reputation of AuthorHouse as an overpriced, under-performing scam agency far precedes its name. I have warned many a writer away from AH in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.

. . . .

So if anyone on any site you frequent is starting to advertise Archway, refer site visitors to Archway, or running content or contests provided by Archway, in all likelihood it’s because that person said “yes” where I said “no”.

Link to the rest at Indie Author and thanks to Bridget for the tip.

From author Jamie McGuire:

It appears that Amazon has sent a mass email to everyone who’s ever purchased the self-published version of Beautiful Disaster. They are encouraging readers to request a refund. When asked why they are offering this refund, Amazon customer service has given several different reasons, the most common is problems with content. THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH THE CONTENT OF BEAUTIFUL DISASTER, and it makes no sense for them to encourage a refund for a book that has already been read and enjoyed 6+ months later, but that is the only information I have for now.

Customer service admits that if you do NOT get the refund, your copy of BD will NOT be affected. If you get a refund, they are offering to reimburse the $4+ difference it costs to purchase the $7.99 version, but what they aren’t telling you is that **I** am paying for every refund.

Last week, I sent an email to Amazon asking why the self-published version of my book is still experiencing returns. Returns are only allowed for up to 7 days after purchase. 6 months after the self-published version of Beautiful Disaster went off-sale my account was still seeing negative amounts for returns. I’m not going to assume the reasons behind this mass email, but it appears that Amazon customer service is now encouraging these returns.

Link to the rest at Jamie McGuire and thanks to Becca and many others for the tip.

Passive Guy will not that he has taken a book off sale at Amazon and nothing like this occured. In PG’s case, the book disappeared and that was that.

He will note that there are two versions of this book, Beautiful Disaster. The first was self-pubbed and is the one that was taken down. The second was published by Simon & Schuster and is currently available. One possibility that occurs to PG is that the S&S version was substantially edited/modified and is much different from the original indie version but he doesn’t understand why Amazon would feel it necessary to offer a refund to those who bought the indie version.

UPDATE: PG received the following from Amazon’s PR department: “I wanted to let you know that the initial email sent to customers re: the availability of “Beautiful Disaster” was an error. We’ve since sent a follow-up email to those customers to clarify that there’s no action required for them to continue enjoying the book.”

From Bloomberg:

Stephen King rocked the publishing world when he began distributing books online in 2000. J.K. Rowling roiled the industry again in 2011 when she decided to self-publish her Harry Potter series through her own platform, Pottermore. Such big names join thousands of others who are self-publishing books — though many do so because it’s their only option.

More than 235,000 books and e-books were self-published in 2011 in the U.S., four times the number in 2006, according to Bowker.

. . . .

Over the years, says Michael Prescott, who self-published “Deadly Pursuit,” a few readers have complained of spelling mistakes. A good editor may have found those errors. Still, Prescott, who has sold about 1.3 million e-books, can’t bring himself to hire one, though he hires a proofreader. “Editors feel like they have to make all kinds of suggestions,” he says. “I’m not in the mood for that.”

. . . .

Getting a book into a brick-and-mortar chain bookstore is near impossible, even for traditional publishers. If you publish an e-book, distribution is as simple as uploading your manuscript to, say, the online bookstores of Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. If you don’t want to deal with quirky software, a service such as Independent Publishers Group will take your manuscript, format it for every site and distribute it for you. The downside: You won’t get instant sales reports, and the distributor takes a cut.

Link to the rest at Bloomberg