You can detect a subsidy publisher by the very fact that you are expected to pay to have your book "published." You pay to have the PDF of your manuscript printed on a digital printer, bound, and placed for sale on the subsidy's online bookstore. If you want editing or design services, that will cost you extra. You can put out as much as $1200-1500 for as few as 20 books. That works out to a unit price of at least $60 per book. How on earth can you sell your book and make some money? Simply put, you can't.
Subsidies make their money on the front end. For them, there is little or no money to be made by authors reordering books to sell. They are constantly on the lookout for fresh "meat" so to speak. If they are not constantly bringing in new clients and new books, they would not be a profitable business. That is the harsh reality of subsidy publishing. Over two years ago I sent for one of those How To Get Published e-books put out by one subsity and they have been phoning and emailing me since. I have given up pointing out that I do it myself and am not interested. I am in their data base for life.
The current trend has been for one large subsidy, Author Solutions, to buy up their competition. They now own well known subsidies AuthorHouse, Trafford, Xlibris, WordClay and iUniverse. These branches of Author Solutions still operate under their original name and novices will have the impression they are separate businesses, which they aren't. Author Solutions needs a larger piece of the pie in order to find authors so they can be profitable. The unfortunate part is that the authors themselves are not profitable.
Next post I will talk about the quality - or lack of - that you will find with most subsidies.
http://www.selfpublishing.ca/
2 comments:
You make it sound like traditional houses are saints. By saying 'they are constantly on the look out for fresh meat' makes it sound inhumane and disrespectful.
Traditional publishers just don't know a good thing when they see one. Not all traditional publishers actually made the BEST decision when it comes to choosing books. Do you know that several best selling authors have been turned down by publishers? Stephen King, author of Gone with The Wind and Chicken Soup have been rejected by publishers and were not even given the second glance.
Now does that mean these Bestsellers are AMATEURS? I don't think so. Self-publishing is not for everyone just like traditional publishing MAY NOT BE for everyone.
I think you misunderstood, Kristine. I am talking about subsidy or "vanity" publishers, not traditional publishing houses.
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