How Not To Get Published #2

Yesterday’s tip for how not to get published dealt with a way to avoid being published altogether. Today’s tip isn’t quite as good, because it will result in you getting published, only in a highly undesirable way.

You may have been flipping through the back of a magazine at some point in the past and seen an ad that said something like "Writers Wanted!" or "Get Your Novel Published!" or "Be A Published Author!"

Today’s tip is this: Answer those ads!

Why? Because professional writers never do, which means you won’t be in competition with the professional writers. In fact, it’ll be easy to get the publishers who place these ads to accept your manuscript. These publishers need amateur authors. Otherwise, they won’t stay in business.

Why don’t the pros answer these ads? Well, there are two reasons. One is that they usually don’t even see these ads, because they aren’t placed in the kind of trade journals that writers read (if they read any such journals). The other reason professional writers don’t answer these ads will become obvious.

Here’s what’ll happen if you do answer one:

1. You’re likely to get a brochure explaining how exciting and prestigious it can be to be a published author.
2. This brochure will hint that you might even write a bestseller (you never know . . . ).
3. Your manuscript will be evaluated for free!
4. If accepted, your the publisher who placed the ad will edit it, typeset it, proof read it, print it, and market it for you!
5. All you have to do is send in your manuscript!
6. Oh, and one other thing: Because of the high cost of doing all the things that the publisher does, you’ll need to reimburse him for a fraction of these costs, to prove you’re serious about the project. Otherwise, he can’t afford to print your bestseller-in-the-making.
7. What are you waiting for???

So you send in your manuscript and get back a note saying that the publisher is very excited about your manuscript, which the publisher feels has great potential, and he is anxious to start working with you. All you need to do is send in your check to help him underwrite his costs. Payment plans are available if you can’t send it all at once.

So you send in the money, and once it’s all in the publisher starts work on your manuscript. A long time goes by, and eventually you get a shipment of books in the mail.

Your book is in print! Yay! Hooray!

It’s not that attractively designed, and the text is hard to read, and the binding will fall apart as soon as the book is opened, but IT’S STILL IN PRINT and, what’s more, YOU  are a PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!! Yippie!!!

It’s at this point that things start to go wrong.

Your "publisher" doesn’t fulfill on the publicity and distribution that he promised for your book. It’s all up to YOU to get the thing sold. But you didn’t want to be a publisher, you wanted to be an author, and so after giving away a few copies of the book to friends and relatives, most of the ones you got end up sitting in your attic or garage. . . . for YEARS. Nothing ever happens with them. They never make the bestseller list. Nada.

Still, it flatters your vanity to say that you are a published author, and that’s why the kind of publishers who place those ads are called VANITY PRESSES.

Real (i.e., non-vanity) publishers don’t place those ads. They don’t need to advertise for authors (especially in magazines that have nothing to do with writing). They get more manuscripts than they can publish. Remember the slush pile?

Real publishers make their money by selling books to large numbers of readers. They then take a portion of this money and pay royalties to the author. The author himself doesn’t pay anything because the publisher doesn’t make his money off the author but off the readers. Authors like working with this kind of publisher since (a) the author doesn’t have to pay anything up front and (b) the publisher has a track record of getting his books sold to enough readers that he can stay in business (which is more readers than the author himself can usually sell to).

Vanity presses, though, make their money on authors. And the money the author pays isn’t just part of the costs of publishing the book. It’s the whole amount. Often it’s inflated above what a real publisher would have to pay to get the same work done.

The vanity publisher, for his part, has little interest in producing a quality book for the readers (if there are any) because that’s not where he makes his money. As a result, he spends as little as possible on publicity, distribution, printing, binding, typesetting, editing, and anything else involved in book production. He doesn’t care if the hypothetical reader would like the book at all because that’s not where he makes his money.

Instead, the vanity press’s publisher wants to please the author by telling him how great his work is, how much potential it has, etc.–anything to get the author to cough up the money (usually in the thousands of dollars).

Vanity presses are the Dark Side, the quick and easy path to getting published and leads to ruinous results. They presses are the bottom-feeders of the publishing world. As a result, professional authors don’t want to have anything to do with them.

In fact, if you are an aspiring author and have had any dealings with a vanity press, you are well advised not to mention this fact in your cover letter to a real publisher, as it will brand you as a sucker and as someone who doesn’t know how the industry works and, further, as someone who probably can’t write.

Now, not all vanity presses operate in the ham-fisted manner I described above. Not all of them are total scams. Some are even semi-legitimate. There’s a kind of grey zone in which vanity presses blend into simple printers who authors that want to self-publish go to. (Self-publishing being a venture that can be profitable and respectable–or a total disaster.)

But if getting unhappily published is your goal then, by all means, answer those ads!