Beware! The Publishing World is Full of People Who Want Your Money.

There are many people who have written a book and discovered that their dream of publishing success is actually a good way to lose money.

Here's what you need to beware of to keep yourself safe from the wolves... 

• Beware of the vanity publishers. I've talked about these 'con artists' before. In 14 years of publishing I have yet to come across any author who has vanity published and has felt happy with the services offered. As soon as a so called 'publishing firm' asks for money - walk away. The only possible use I can think for a vanity publisher is if you already have a captive audience and a guaranteed market for your book. Possibly a university professor publishing a book essential for a course. You won't be doing your students any favours though since there are better ways which will cost both you and your students less. You won't be giving away any of your rights either.
• Beware of the expensive courses which promise to make you a 'best seller'. Remember the term 'best seller' does not mean 'profitable book'. Brent Underwood proved that with his book 'Putting my foot down'. It took him less than an hour to write it, publish it and promote it to being a #1 best seller. There are worthwhile author courses though. You'll need to be able to pick these 'gems' out from the fakes.
• Beware of the book promotion services which offer to promote without explaining how they will do this. I suggest you be particularly cautious of any email from a gmail or other free email account which offers such promotion. Such emails are inevitably affiliate promotions and often offered by questionable sites.
  
  Had this person actually looked at the book they would have discovered it already has a 'high-impact video that ignites curiosity and leaves readers eager to devour the book.' As to BookToc, the site this email was promoting, I always check any promotion offers with the promoting service name and add the word 'scam'. Try it.
• I've seen sites offering to promote your book on Twitter/X but they have thousands of fake followers there. Some offer to list your book on their website - which no one visits. Others offer to promote to an e-mail list but don't tell you how often and when such an email is sent out. I would subscribe to such an email list first to see if it's appropriate.
• Beware people offering to make a cover of your book at low cost. Some are actually good but many have no idea of book cover design techniques and will use images they (and you) have no right to use. Designing good covers can make a huge difference to sales but few people understand what makes a cover stand out.
• Remember that no book or ebook promotion will work if you have not perfected your cover and book description. There are 'experts' offering to help for a fee but who have no idea of how to go about this effectively.

How do you spot the wolves amongst the sheep?

If there was a real wolf amongst a flock of sheep, it wouldn't be hard to spot them - the sheep would all be running away.

It's much the same in the publishing world. A scammed author is not a happy author and many are happy to complain, posting about their experience. If you are offered an author service then do an Internet search for the publishing/promotion firm plus the word 'scam'. Check the search results carefully, remembering that sponsored results are not likely to be useful and that the scammers are quite likely to produce glowing fake reviews of their services.

There's a wonderful website which will help. Writer Beware. Although this was primarily aimed at science fiction authors, authors in other genres should take a look at it. Any search result which leads to one of their pages, is a page to look at. Writer Beware produces a useful blog page which defines and lists many of the worst vanity publishers and tells authors what to avoid. Find it here.

Next: Why you need a literary agent for traditional publishing.

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