What exactly is subsidy publishing?

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/

Let's talk about subsidy publishers...

If I never hear the term vanity publisher again, I will be a happy writer. It's an archaic term left over from the early late 19th and 20th centuries before we had home computers. They way it worked was if you had enough money, you could pay someone to "publish" your book without benefit of editing, decent design, or even a good product. One was considered vain to have "just anything" published rather than having it done by a reputable established publisher. A writer who paid to have their book published wasn't viewed as a "real" writer. They were desperate, they were shunned, their book was of inferior quality and their vanity knew no bounds.

Turn the world ahead to the online, internet connected, blogging, twittering, keyboarding late 20th century and you will notice that the everyday use of computers has produced generations of people who write. Because we have programs like Word, WordPerfect, MacWrite and others, we can write, edit and publish to our heart's content. That's not saying that it is good writing or editing, but that is not stopping us. To post a blog such as this or a tweet or have your own website is commonplace today and does not make us vain. We simply have something to say and better communication venues in which to share our comments.

My point is that companies like Lulu, iUniverse, Xlibris, Wordclay and Trafford are not vanity presses. They are in fact Subsidy Publishers whom you pay to publish your book. You are subsidizing the publication of your book. It's legal, socially accepted and can be affordable. It does not make you vain.

I'll be exploring subsidy publishing over the next few posts. If you have any questions, post a comment here or at http://www.selfpublishing.ca/.

Should I use a pen name?

A pen name, or nom de plume, is the pseudonym an author uses to conceal his or her true identity. Often famous authors will use a pen name when writing in another genre than that which they are known for. Sometimes famous people use a pen name because they do not want the book to be associated with what they do, or they do not want to use their fame to sell the book (which begs the question, "Why not?"). Should the average self-publisher use a pseudonym? Probably not.

When you are an unknown author, you will only mask your identity by using a pen name. How do you expect to sell books if you do not give your real name? You want to garner fame...and that won't be possible if no one knows who you really are. In my experience self-published authors tend to use odd pen names anyway. One fellow used his high school nickname and it really wasn't very flattering. My advice is that unless you are already well known for something else and don't want your real name known, do not use a pseudonym. It is not helpful when you market your book.

What Moral Rights mean to you

Moral rights mean that the work cannot be changed to detract from the author’s relationship to that work, even if the copyright is owned by someone else. In other words, if someone else uses your material, even legally, they cannot change it from your original intent. These rights preserve the integrity of the work and no one, including the copyright holder if that is not the creator, can alter, distort or mutilate the work.

You are the creator. If you intend a work to be a discussion about immigration for example, no one can change the work (or the words you have written in the way you have written them) to make the work seem like a racist commentary. Anymore than a gallery can alter an artist's painting, no one can alter your work.

Moral rights are always held by the author of a work regardless of who owns the copyright. Canada recognizes these rights in its Copyright Act. NO ONE can change what you have written exept yourself. This gives the creator a lot of empowerment when it comes to their work.

Registering Copyright

When you decide to register copyright of your book, you will also want to make sure you keep proof of your work. This is done so that your claim of original work has something to back it up. If there is ever a dispute about who created the work, it may end up in court. You will need evidence from those who saw the work in progress and previous drafts of your work. Some of the evidential items you might want to have would include the following:

Dated drafts and outlines
Dated research records used to create the work
Names of those you shared the work with at different stages
Written records of any agreements made concerning creation of material or ownership of copyright material

The Canadian Copyright Office is handled by the federal government Business Development Centre. You can register either online, by fax or via regular post. The form is on the website at www.bdc-canada.com. The time it takes to register your copyright will depend on whether any revisions or corrections are required, but normally it would be five business days for filing. Under normal circumstances, you should receive your registration certificate within four to six weeks from the time the Copyright Office receives it. Make sure you plan copyright registration into your timeline.

There are currently three price packages for registering copyright – Basic, Standard and Professional Copyright Registration Packages. Each one comes with a different price tag. At the time of this printing the cost of the Basic Package was $118.90, broke down as:

• BDC fee of $50.00 which includes completion of government forms and filling of copyright application
• Government filing fee of $50.00
• Shipping & handling fee of $15.00
• GST $3.90

The website gives the cost breakdown of all price packages. It is full of information and provides the answers to most questions you may have.

To copyright or not?

One of the first things new authors ask is how to copyright their material. It is not necessary to register the copyright in order to have protection in Canada. The symbol, author name and year give protection. Many authors want to register their book because they want the certificate that is issued. Some authors think that you should do this as a matter of course. Others believe that if your work is available only in Canada or your province or just your local community, that the expenditure is not necessary. Like many aspects of self-publishing, this is a personal decision.

Copyright protection begins when the work is created and ends 50 years after the death of the creator. It last for the lifetime of the author. It can be sold or gifted, which is why it is important for authors to read the fine print in contracts to ensuer they are not giving away their copyright. Never assign your copyright to a publisher, whether it be trade or subsidy. Copyright can also we willed to your heirs. This means that authors need to make sure their will is updated every time they create a new work and register it.

To copyright or not is a personal and business decision. I will discuss it in further detail in future posts.

My updated website goes live on October 5

Tomorrow my updated website goes live. We have been working on it for some time and finally we have it completed. We want to change the focus from selling Self Publishing in Canada (ISBN 978-1-894208-00-0) to being a destination for self-publishers worldwide.

In my experience, most writers who either have self-published or plan to tend to work in solitude. We want to give you a place to go for help. We will be offering a Free Report on Getting Your Book Into Print and a monthly newsletter. We keep current on what is happening in the publishing industry because it affects the independents too.

Stop by www.selfpublishing.ca and check out the updated website.