May 6, 2025 • 31 mins
I heard recently about a publishing scam that would be hard to detect by an average consumer and that preys on the vulnerabilities of new, hopeful authors. And yet with just a little bit of publishing context you can arm yourself with enough information to sniff out the fakers and find a publishing path that works for you.
I hope this episode finds you before the scammers do!
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life who put them
back together with the words you write, all the beauty
and piece and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold. It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about a publishing scam that I heard about recently from
my producer. Actually, and when I heard about this scam,
it immediately stood out as a scam to me. There
were red flags all over it. But I also have
(00:46):
a ton of experience in the publishing world, so this
is not a scam that I would have fallen for.
But because the average consumer doesn't have a ton of
experience in publishing, it is a really brilliant scam that
many many people would fall for. So I thought if
I could give you a quick twenty minute rundown on
the publishing industry and how it works, it would save
you from ever falling for a scam like this and
(01:08):
hopefully save you from any kind of pain and suffering,
especially if you're someone who wants to write your story.
I think anybody who wants to write their story is
particularly vulnerable to this kind of scam, which, by the way,
is not new in publishing. I'll talk about a little
history of the publishing industry and how these scams slash.
I mean, there's a great area here. They're not always
(01:29):
scammers who are doing this, but scams slash vanity publishers
have been around for a really long time, and it's
just important that you read the fine print and know
what you're getting yourself into. Not every hybrid publisher is
a vanity publisher, and I'll talk about in a minute
what a hybrid publisher is. Not every hybrid publisher is
a vanity publisher, and not every vanity publisher is a scammer.
(01:50):
But what I want you to know is this, which
is that if you want to write your story, you
are particularly vulnerable to this type of scam. So tune
in for that episode, learn the little bit that I'm
going to teach you about the publishing industry. All you
need to know is the most basic information, and when
a scam like this comes across your path, it's going
to ring all the bells and you will not be vulnerable,
(02:12):
and I promise you will not fall prey to this scam.
The first thing that feels important to do is to
teach you about the two main publishing paths. There actually
are three main publishing paths now, but just to give
a little bit of historical context, I'm going to back up, like,
let's say twenty years so to the turn of the century.
Let's say the early two thousands. These are the two
publishing paths that were at play. I'll talk about those
(02:32):
two and how the third one has formed over the
course of the last twenty years, and how that third
lane has also evolved over the course of the last
twenty years. So the two main publishing paths are traditional
publishing and self publishing. Traditional publishing is the kind of
publishing you probably think of when you pick up a
(02:53):
book from the bookstore, or when you think about an
author getting a book published. There are five main publishing
houses there. Let's see Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, Simon, and Schuster.
I'm blinking on the last two, but five main publishing
houses that each have several subsidiary publishing houses. So when
(03:14):
you pick up a book. If you wanted to know
who published the book, you could open, you know, to
the first inside cover and you could read the publisher
right there, or you could flip over to the backside.
You could also look on the spine of the book
and you'd be able to see the book publisher there.
It's usually if you're buying the book from a major bookstore.
If you've walked into a Barnes and Noble or Books
a Million and you're buying a book there, usually you're
going to see either one of those big five names
(03:36):
on the spine of the book, or you're going to
see a subsidiary of one of those big five. Now
there's hundreds of subsidiaries for some of these, so there
may be a publishing house that you don't recognize. More
than likely, if you're reading that name inside of a
brick and mortar like you know, one of the bigger
brick and mortar stores, more than likely, and also like
(03:57):
independent bookstores are similar, more than like, the name that
you're reading is going to be a subsidiary of one
of those big five publishers. That's not always true, and
it's becoming less and less true over time, but it
is you know, eighty five percent of the time mostly
true when you're inside of a major brick and mortar
store picking up a book. Now, the flip side of
that traditional publishing coin is self publishing. So a similar
(04:21):
thing happened in books that happened in music, although in
books it happened a little bit behind the music industry.
So maybe like, let's say, a decade behind the music
industry where authors started to say, Okay, what am I doing.
I have this art that I want to make, I
want to put it out in the world. But I'm
sitting here with this beautiful thing that I've created, waiting
(04:43):
for some big publisher, some big label in the case
of music, to come and find me, to come and
tell me that I'm enough, to come and tell me
that my art is good, and to then you know,
take me on their roster, invest their money in me,
promote me to the world, and then they take ninety
percent of the royalties and I take ten percent of
the royalties. How is this good for me? One of
(05:04):
the reasons self publishing started to become so popular at
the turn of the century is because there were also
at that time so many people blogging, and I was
a part of this blogging revolution. Blogging has in many ways,
you know, fallen off. The curve has fallen off, but
now it's been replaced by substack or other ways, you know, newsletters,
other ways of communicating with your audience. But in the
(05:25):
early two thousands, or when I entered the scene in
two thousand and eight two thousand and nine, blogging was
like the it thing to be doing if you wanted
to become an author, and so many of us that
were blogging at the time we were really trying to,
you know, write something that would connect with our audience,
write something that would become popular enough that it could
catch the attention of not just people who are reading,
(05:46):
but also maybe an acquisitions editor at a publisher, or
just create some sort of proof in the marketplace that
what we were writing about mattered to people, and that
what we were writing about was important in the market
at the time, so that we could catch the attention
of a publisher and get a publishing deal. And also
many of us were talking about this at the time.
I was in a tight knit group of other bloggers
(06:08):
who were all saying, hey, wait a minute, I have
this thing that I'm doing. I know I'm a talented writer.
I have an audience that I could directly sell to.
So why would I sit around and wait for a
publisher to approve of me or a publisher to sign
me on when I could compile my work in whatever
way that I wanted to and I could publish it
on my own. The other thing that took place around
(06:31):
this time was that Amazon released their own self publishing
platform that was called create Space at the time. It's
something different now, but once create Space was released, it
was like, well, why would you wait for a traditional
publisher to notice you, to pick you out of a crowd,
to write you a contract that may or may not
(06:52):
be favorable to you when you could use create Space.
This made it much easier for authors to immediately publish
their work, to make it available on Amazon, and to
have much more creative control over their projects all at all.
A couple of things to note, there's still at this
time in the early two thousands, were a lot of
drawbacks to self publishing. There still are today a lot
(07:14):
of drawbacks to self publishing. One of the drawbacks is
that most new authors, who are the people in many
cases who are considering self publishing, most new authors don't
have the first clue where to start as it relates
to publishing a book. They've never done a cover layout before,
they've never done an interior layout before. They don't know
where they would find an editor to edit their work.
(07:36):
You know, they don't know how to get an ISBN number.
They aren't sure how to file for a copyright. They
wouldn't know when in the process to do any of
these things. You know, they've never been through the process
of writing and publishing a book before. And also, many
authors are in a position where they're like, I don't
even know if what I'm writing is interesting enough or
good enough, or if it would even be if a
(07:58):
reader would even find this interesting, were to self publish
it and put it on the internet, would anyone even
purchase it? And that's a big risk for an author
to take, especially when they're brand new. And so I
think one of the things that many of us were
weighing at the time, and that authors are still weighing,
is what are the benefits to having a traditional publisher
on your team. There is the more emotional benefit of
(08:20):
knowing like, Okay, well, if the publisher picked me, they
believe in me, they think that what I'm writing is
interesting and that it's going to be interesting to a reader.
And so it's easy as an author to be able
to kind of lean on that and rely on that.
And this is a big part of what I want
to talk about today, because this is where authors and
new authors become extremely vulnerable to scams, is we really
(08:43):
want someone to validate us in our work. We want
them to tell us like, I think what you are
doing is great and I want to publish you. And
the need that we have for someone to tell us
that makes us extremely vulnerable. The need is also incredibly human.
And for anybody who has did any amount of time
or energy in their art, you can understand this basic
(09:05):
human need. You just like want someone to tell you like,
that's great, You're doing a great job. You know. I
think about with my daughter who's four, sitting at the
table working on an art project, like she's like, Mom,
what do you think? What do you think? Do you like? This?
Is this pretty? You know? And I'll try to do
the thing that a lot of parenting coaches will say
to do now, which is instead of immediately saying it's beautiful,
(09:26):
you're incredible, which is true, I'll try to be like,
what do you think about it? Do you like the color?
And it doesn't matter how much I try to deflect
the question back to her, she still wants to know.
But what about you, mom? Do you like it? Do
you think this is pretty? She really does want that
external validation, and I think that's just a basic human
need that so many of us have. We can supplement
(09:49):
the need by learning to anchor inside of our own
selves and give it to ourselves the way I'm trying
to teach my daughter to do, to go, yeah, I
love the color. I picked this color. This is my
favorite color, or to say, I'm proud of this. I
put a lot of energy into this and a lot
of work into this, and I'm proud that it's mine.
But at the same time, we're human beings and we
do need and crave that external validation. And what I
(10:12):
want to linger on throughout this episode is that that
basic human need that you have makes you extremely vulnerable
to a publishing scam. So I want to just make
you aware of that if you're someone who wants to
write your story, who is working on a book, or
who would love to get published someday, I want to
just bring this into your conscious awareness so that you
(10:32):
don't fall prey to this publishing scam like this friend
of a friend of mine did. Okay, I got on
a small tangent there, But back to the story. In
the early two thousands, many of us were blogging, We're
all trying to catch the attention of a publisher. We're
(10:54):
all trying to decide should I self publish or should
I traditional publish? And we're all bumping up again, and
these pluses and minuses of both self publishing and traditional publishing.
If you self publish, you get total control, total creative
control over your project. You get to decide when it releases,
you get to pick the editor, you get to design
(11:15):
the cover yourself. You get to make it look and
feel however you want it to feel. And also that's
a lot of pressure. It's like, how am I supposed
to know how to do all these things or when
to do all of them, or what's going to work
and what's not going to work. It would really feel
nice to have the partnership of a publisher who has
done this before. So traditional publishing you have less control,
You keep less of the profits from your artwork once
(11:39):
it publishes. In most publishing contracts, the author keeps ten percent,
the publisher keeps ninety percent, and you keep ten percent
until you buy out your advance on royalties, which is
a whole other conversation, and then once you buy it
or sorry, the publisher keeps one hundred percent until you
buy out your advance on royalties. And then once you
buy out your advance on royalties, then you get to
retain your ten percent royalty. So there are benefits and
(12:01):
drawbacks to both ways of doing it, and many of
us were trying to decide, you know, which one should
we try. And I have had experience with both traditional
publishing and also some with self publishing, and so I
have firsthand experience of the benefits and drawbacks of both. Now.
Somewhere around this time, honestly, probably about the time that
I started blogging, I'm guessing it was like early, like
(12:24):
twenty eight nine, ten. Somewhere in there, someone really smart
looked at the current landscape that authors were having to
make a decision between self publishing and traditional publishing, and
that many of these authors you know, had their own platforms,
were building audiences on social media, that were building audiences
via a blog and they had this impossible choice to make.
Self publishing wasn't a great option because you know, you
(12:46):
basically have to administrate and project manage your entire book launch,
and traditional publishing wasn't a great option because you're giving
away the majority of your creative control, the majority of
your intellectual property, and the majority of your profits on
your project. And so someone goes, oh, let's come up
with a middle option. Let's come up with a hybrid
(13:08):
publishing option. And so you saw a lot of these
hybrid publishing options entering the picture. A hybrid publishing option
was an option where you could pay a publisher a
fee to help you publish your book. They would basically
help you project manage the whole thing. They would help
get your ISBN number, they would you walk you through
the process. They would get you an editor, they would
(13:30):
get you a cover designer. Every hybrid publisher was a
little bit different, but they would essentially hold your hand,
walk you through the publishing process. You paid them a
fee for that, and then they would help you to
self publish your book at the end of the process,
so your book would be published. It would be published
under this hybrid publisher's name, but you would get to
keep the majority of the royalties from your project. You
(13:51):
would maintain one hundred percent creative control, you would get
to keep in most cases your intellectual property, and this
hybrid publisher would simply just help you through the process
and you would pay them a fee for that. And
so hybrid publishing was this amazing third way that entered
into the picture in the early two thousands, somewhere where
authors didn't have to pick between just self publishing all
(14:13):
by themselves or waiting around for a traditional publisher to
pick them. They could engage the service of this hybrid
publisher and pay the fee, and they could get their
book published. A few problems entered into the scene along
with hybrid publishers. In fact, many times I would hear
these hybrid publishers called vanity publishers, and I think the
(14:37):
nickname or whatever you want to call it, is fair.
And let me talk about why. One of the reasons
that they were called vanity publishers is because these publishers
would often appeal to your vanity in order to get
you to pay their fee. Depending on the publisher, sometimes
their fee was as low as one dollar. Yeah, I know,
that's kind of a weird thing, but sometimes their fee
(14:57):
was as low as one dollar, and the entry, the
point to entry was more like, send us a copy
of your manuscript or send us a piece of sample writing.
We'll decide if we want to work with you or
not based on, you know, what we think about your
writing and what we think about your book idea. And
then you pay us the fee of a dollar and
will walk you through the process of getting your book published.
And then you keep fifty percent royalties and we keep
(15:18):
fifty percent. So that was one kind of way or
structure that a hybrid publisher could look like. And then
another structure that a hybrid publisher could have would be
more like something like this, where they would say, you
don't need to send us a sample of you're writing.
You're in send us a check for seven thousand dollars
or send us a check for ten thousand dollars or
(15:39):
twelve thousand dollars or something like that. That's your fee
that you pay us to get you published, and we're
going to walk you through the process. We're going to
stroke your ego, we're going to tell you you're amazing,
We're going to be like you are going to crush
it out there in the marketplace because we don't really
care because we have your money. And once we have
your money and your book is public, then you're kind
(16:01):
of on your own and you can figure it out.
The second model that I'm describing, where there's a high
fee paid up front and no screening process for bringing
in the manuscript, is not inherently bad or wrong, but
it did appeal to the vanity of the author, which
is why it's called a vanity publisher. And the other
(16:21):
thing to think about with this second model is that
the publisher doesn't require you to succeed in order for
them to get their money. So in a traditional publishing model,
the publisher requires the author to succeed in order to
get paid, so they need you to sell books in
order to get their paycheck, so they have a vested
(16:41):
interest in helping you to succeed. In that vanity publishing
model that I described to you, where you pay a
high fee upfront and then they help you get your book,
you know, on Amazon or in a bookstore or whatever,
and then they've been paid, so they don't need you
to succeed. They don't have as much of a vested
interest in your success because they've already been paid their fee.
(17:04):
And so what started to happen, and the reason that
these publishers, many of them, earned the nickname vanity publishers,
is because they would swoop in, they would do a
bunch of sales calls. They would appeal to your vanity.
They would tell you, we think you're amazing. We saw
your blog online. You know, we really believe in you.
We want to publish your book. And of course you're
(17:24):
just like, oh my gosh, someone wants to publish my book.
That's incredible. And then they would say, all you need
to do is send a check for X amount of
dollars to this address, or wire the money or whatever
you're however you're going to pay us, and then we
will help you get your book published. So you can
see how this made a group of authors who were
really hoping to get noticed by a publisher extremely vulnerable
(17:46):
to what I wouldn't necessarily consider a scam. They're trading
a service for a fee, which is not a scam
in my in my mind. And yet I also can
see where the term vanity publisher came from. And it's
a well earned nickname. And here's where things get tricky
because vanity publishers and the way that hybrid publishers operate
makes the average consumer extremely vulnerable to a publishing scan
(18:11):
Because imagine that you're a person who is working on
writing your story. You're extremely invested in getting this story
out into the world. You're wondering if you have what
it takes. You question yourself every day, you feel crazy.
You're working hard on your story. You're hoping that someone
is noticing. You're trying to post on social media. You
maybe have a substack or a blog or something where
(18:31):
you're putting your work and an email pops into your
inbox one day from Penguin Random House, or so it says,
and the email says, dear so and so, we believe
in you. We think you're amazing. We've been reading your
blog or a subscribe to your substack. What you're working
on matters. It's really important. The world needs it. We
(18:53):
want to help you publish it. We have this new
publishing division called X where we're going to publish your book,
and all you need to do as a wire as
five thousand dollars. Even though to me, with my experience
in the publishing industry, this looks like a scam. It
smells like a scam. It smacks like a scam. There's
no way that I would fall for this. But I'm
telling you two thousand and eight, Ali would have fallen
(19:15):
for this. I was in my twenties, I was newly
trying to, you know, get my writing business off the ground.
I was blogging every day, I was trying to write
a book. I was really wanting to be published. And
if this email had come into my inbox in two
thousand and eight, I guarantee you I would have fallen
for this scam. I may have shown it to my
parents first at that point in my life. I wouldn't
(19:36):
do that now, but at twenty something I might have
been like, Mom, Dad, look at what I got. And
I can see my dad being like, no, that's a scam.
But if I didn't show it to anyone, if I
just was like, you know, immediately responded and went to
go wire the money, I could see myself falling for
a scam like that. And so this is why I
think it's important to have just a little bit of
(19:56):
historical context to the publishing industry. If you're someone who
wants to write your story and also to have awn awareness,
a consciousness of your own hunger for external validation, because
having just the slightest awareness of that that there's nothing
wrong with wanting external validation. I'm a firm believer of that.
If you want a publisher to tell you you're amazing, you're
(20:17):
doing great. Everybody wants that from their spouse, from their parents. Still,
even though we're you know, we're grown, from your friends,
from a publisher or whatever it is, we all want
external validation. But having the consciousness that, oh, I'm aware
that I want that external validation from someone, so that
(20:38):
you don't receive the external validation unconsciously and think like,
oh my god, I'll do anything, Yes, five thousand dollars,
tell me where to wire it. I'll do anything in
order to get this book published. What I would challenge
every single artist to do, and this is true whether
you're a writer or a musician or something else entirely,
whatever the art is that you're working on, I would
(21:01):
challenge you to fall so deeply in love with the
art that you don't care whether anyone else ever reads
it or listens to it, or thinks it's great or
loves it or hates it or whatever, easier said than done.
I am forty two years old, or about to be
forty two next month. I have not arrived there yet,
But this is the way that I approach my art
(21:22):
every single day. Is there a way where I can
do this even this podcast recording this episode? Is there
a way that I can do this where this is
for me? This is not about receiving external validation from
someone else. Oh my god, I love your podcast. It
changed my life. There's nothing wrong with that, and there
can be some good in that. But the way that
I approach this podcast and every other thing that I
(21:42):
do is how could I use this to get better
at what I'm doing, to learn to grow and to
fall deeper in love with the craft every single day?
How can I use this for me? And in using
it for me that sounds like it's a selfish motive,
but it actually ends up serving others, And that would
(22:04):
be how I want you to approach your writing and
approach whatever art you're doing. How can I do this
in a way where this is for me, like this
brings me such great joy. When and if you can
achieve that, you become absolutely impervious to scams, Because some
scammers going to email you and say we think you're great,
and you're going to be like, yeah, I know, and
they're going to be like, all you have to do
(22:25):
is wire is five thousand dollars and you've already got
your spidy senses up and your head tilted just a
little and you're like, wait what, And I do think that,
you know, Scamming is becoming even more sophisticated now with AI,
and scams are harder to detect. So I think we
have to really remove the stigma when we get hooked
or hoodwinked by a scam, because there have been a
(22:46):
few recently where I'm like, what's this, you know, and
I'll show my husband and he's like, I think that's
a scam, And I mean, scammers are getting more and
more sophisticated. There was one other day where I got
an email in my inbox about my bank account balance
being low, and I was like, what's going on. I'm
like checking my bank account balance, and sure enough, my
(23:06):
account balance is not low, and so I'm like, how
on earth did they replicate the logo of my bank
and send the email that looks so like authentic and
it says it's from the you know, the URL attached
to the email address says it's from the bank, but
it's not. So I'm calling the bank, I'm looking on
my account. So I think spammers are going to get
(23:28):
more and more sophisticated, and we also as consumers, have
to get more and more sophisticated. And one of the
ways that I'm suggesting that we do that as authors
and aspiring authors is to shore up our need for
external validation. Know that you need it, know that you
crave it, get it from people who are close to you,
and don't trust someone who says that I'll give you
(23:49):
this external validation if only you give me five thousand
dollars or whatever amount it is that they're asking for
from you. Okay, So all of this to say, now
that I've given you a little bit of history and
context about the publishing industry, the whole reason that I
(24:12):
brought this up is I got a message from my producer, Houston,
who is so incredible and who makes this podcast possible.
Thank you Houston. And Houston was saying that he had
heard about this publishing scam where basically a publisher emails
you and says, we love what you do, we love
your work. We would love to publish you. We're going
to get you on the New York Times List, We're
gonna get you this and that, but first you need
(24:33):
to wire us x amount of dollars. Now, at first, blush,
this sounds like a hybrid publisher. So I can see
how this scam would be highly sophisticated in this time
and could actually seem like this is real. It's like,
wire us this amount of money and will engage your services,
and some subsidiary of Penguin Random House is going to
help you get your book published. Now, the reason that
(24:55):
this would stick out to me is because Penguin Random
House is not a hybrid publisher, and as far as
I know, Penguin Random House doesn't have a hybrid publisher
attached to their name at all. And so because I
have a little bit of information and a little bit
of experience in the publishing industry, this would raise all
the red flags for me, and I'd be like no.
(25:17):
And yet the average consumer could quite easily fall prey
to this scam. And I think you know, especially because
we have that vulnerability as artists and as authors around
external validation, that when someone says to you, I think
you're amazing. What you're working on is so great. It's
almost like our thinking part of our brain turns off
at that point, and then we become much more apt
(25:40):
to follow the pathway and eventually fall for the scam.
So now that we're in this AI era, I think
as consumers in general, we just have to have our
spidy senses up. Scammers are becoming more sophisticated. It's becoming
easier for them to, you know, to hook us, and
so in every area of our life we have to
have our spidy senses up. But I would say to you,
(26:01):
particularly around hybrid publishing, if you are an aspiring author
or if you really want to write your story, I
would advise you to number one, bring into your conscious
awareness your need for external validation because we all have it.
So there's no like, you know, there's no advice I
could give you where it's like, don't have a need
for external validation. We all have this need for external validation.
(26:24):
It's very human. So just bring into conscious awareness your
need for external validation so that when the external validation
comes in, you can check yourself, hold on, this is
external validation? Am I truly paying attention to what's going
on here? Am I truly tapped in to the details
of the situation. Have I researched this hybrid publisher, this
(26:46):
publisher that they say that they are these people who
are attached to this email or to this message that
comes into my space? You know? Have I checked the
email address that it came from. I hate that we
have to be this aware as consumers now, but we
really do have to be this aware otherwise, you know,
any of us could fall victim to any one of
these scams. It's the scammers truly have just become more
(27:07):
and more sophisticated. So it's not just you know, my
grandma who's going to fall for the scam. It's easily
could be me. In fact, just the other day, I
was sitting at the table and got an email from
what looked like my bank saying my account balance was low.
And I it took me like ten or fifteen minutes
to figure this out. I finally showed my husband and
he was like, I think that's a scam, you know,
(27:28):
but I'm like, how did they get the email to
come from the bank address? And like, it's really truly
amazing what these scammers are able to do, and so
I think we just all need to be on high alert.
And I hope that understanding a little bit more about
how the publishing industry works and about, you know, what
a hybrid publisher actually is and what a hybrid publisher
(27:49):
actually does, because there are so many great self publishing
resources out there now and hybrid publishing resources that are
legit businesses, and you know, I can list a few
of them for you. Number one, book launchers dot com.
My friend Julie Broad started book Launchers, and book Launchers
is a platform that supports self published authors, so it's
not even a hybrid publisher. They do not consider themselves
(28:10):
a publisher, but they're a platform that supports self published authors,
and they charge a fee to help you do all
the things that we just talked about, get your ISPN number,
get your copyrights in order. They can book podcast episode
or you know, podcast interviews for you after the book
goes live. They can help you with editing, cover design,
all of the above, and they have a whole process
(28:31):
that they can walk you through. And several of my clients,
and you know, my coaching clients have worked with book
Launchers and have just sung the praises of Julie and
her team. They've done a really amazing thing at book launchers.
And then, of course I have published my most recent book,
Write Your Story, is published with a hybrid publisher. Technically,
the publisher is story Brand Books, which is a subsidiary
(28:53):
of Forefront Books. For Front Books is the hybrid publisher.
Story Brand Books is owned by Donald Miller, and my
book was the first book that was published on Storybrand
Books platform. So you know, there are hybrid publishers that
are great and that follow through and that deliver on
their promises. And not every hybrid publisher is a vanity publisher.
(29:14):
Not every vanity publisher is a scammer. But I think
the more aware you can be of your own need
for external validation, the more aware you can be of
how the industry works, what they're looking for, the better
off you'll be in the end. Above all, I'm hoping
that this episode can just help you avoid a scam,
avoid a situation where you pay a bunch of money
and don't get what you paid for. So questions to ask,
(29:37):
let's talk about this really quickly before we wrap up.
Questions to ask, who is this hybrid publisher or who
is this publisher in general, I would go to their website.
I would see who works for them, I would see
who else they've published. I would ask them what services
are they going to provide for the fee? So the
services should be things like typesetting, lay out editing, copy editing,
(30:02):
cover design, ISBN numbers, securing your copyright, booking podcast interviews
for you. If those things aren't on the list of services,
it should be things like that that are on the
list of services. So I would make sure that before
you engage a publisher like this, you're signing a services agreement.
You're not just wiring five thousand dollars, but you're asking
(30:23):
them what's your services agreement look like? And have you
signed it? And have they signed it? And are they
going to deliver on the services that are in that
services agreement. Once that services agreement is signed, you can
wire the money and then you have legal recourse should
the hybrid publisher choose to READNIG on their promise to
deliver those services. I hope that little bit of context helps.
(30:46):
I hope the history helps. I hope self reflecting on
your need for external validation helps, and ultimately I hope
that you can avoid the scam that this other person
fell for, not because they were stupid to fall for it,
but because it was a really great scam. So here's
to avoiding scams. Here's to writing our stories. Here's to
learning to lean on our own internal validation and keep
(31:09):
up the good work, Keep up the writing. I'll see
you next week on the Write Your Story podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life who put them
back together with the words you write, all the beauty
and piece and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cold. It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon. I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about a publishing scam that I heard about recently from
my producer. Actually, and when I heard about this scam,
it immediately stood out as a scam to me. There
were red flags all over it. But I also have
(00:46):
a ton of experience in the publishing world, so this
is not a scam that I would have fallen for.
But because the average consumer doesn't have a ton of
experience in publishing, it is a really brilliant scam that
many many people would fall for. So I thought if
I could give you a quick twenty minute rundown on
the publishing industry and how it works, it would save
you from ever falling for a scam like this and
(01:08):
hopefully save you from any kind of pain and suffering,
especially if you're someone who wants to write your story.
I think anybody who wants to write their story is
particularly vulnerable to this kind of scam, which, by the way,
is not new in publishing. I'll talk about a little
history of the publishing industry and how these scams slash.
I mean, there's a great area here. They're not always
(01:29):
scammers who are doing this, but scams slash vanity publishers
have been around for a really long time, and it's
just important that you read the fine print and know
what you're getting yourself into. Not every hybrid publisher is
a vanity publisher, and I'll talk about in a minute
what a hybrid publisher is. Not every hybrid publisher is
a vanity publisher, and not every vanity publisher is a scammer.
(01:50):
But what I want you to know is this, which
is that if you want to write your story, you
are particularly vulnerable to this type of scam. So tune
in for that episode, learn the little bit that I'm
going to teach you about the publishing industry. All you
need to know is the most basic information, and when
a scam like this comes across your path, it's going
to ring all the bells and you will not be vulnerable,
(02:12):
and I promise you will not fall prey to this scam.
The first thing that feels important to do is to
teach you about the two main publishing paths. There actually
are three main publishing paths now, but just to give
a little bit of historical context, I'm going to back up, like,
let's say twenty years so to the turn of the century.
Let's say the early two thousands. These are the two
publishing paths that were at play. I'll talk about those
(02:32):
two and how the third one has formed over the
course of the last twenty years, and how that third
lane has also evolved over the course of the last
twenty years. So the two main publishing paths are traditional
publishing and self publishing. Traditional publishing is the kind of
publishing you probably think of when you pick up a
(02:53):
book from the bookstore, or when you think about an
author getting a book published. There are five main publishing
houses there. Let's see Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, Simon, and Schuster.
I'm blinking on the last two, but five main publishing
houses that each have several subsidiary publishing houses. So when
(03:14):
you pick up a book. If you wanted to know
who published the book, you could open, you know, to
the first inside cover and you could read the publisher
right there, or you could flip over to the backside.
You could also look on the spine of the book
and you'd be able to see the book publisher there.
It's usually if you're buying the book from a major bookstore.
If you've walked into a Barnes and Noble or Books
a Million and you're buying a book there, usually you're
going to see either one of those big five names
(03:36):
on the spine of the book, or you're going to
see a subsidiary of one of those big five. Now
there's hundreds of subsidiaries for some of these, so there
may be a publishing house that you don't recognize. More
than likely, if you're reading that name inside of a
brick and mortar like you know, one of the bigger
brick and mortar stores, more than likely, and also like
(03:57):
independent bookstores are similar, more than like, the name that
you're reading is going to be a subsidiary of one
of those big five publishers. That's not always true, and
it's becoming less and less true over time, but it
is you know, eighty five percent of the time mostly
true when you're inside of a major brick and mortar
store picking up a book. Now, the flip side of
that traditional publishing coin is self publishing. So a similar
(04:21):
thing happened in books that happened in music, although in
books it happened a little bit behind the music industry.
So maybe like, let's say, a decade behind the music
industry where authors started to say, Okay, what am I doing.
I have this art that I want to make, I
want to put it out in the world. But I'm
sitting here with this beautiful thing that I've created, waiting
(04:43):
for some big publisher, some big label in the case
of music, to come and find me, to come and
tell me that I'm enough, to come and tell me
that my art is good, and to then you know,
take me on their roster, invest their money in me,
promote me to the world, and then they take ninety
percent of the royalties and I take ten percent of
the royalties. How is this good for me? One of
(05:04):
the reasons self publishing started to become so popular at
the turn of the century is because there were also
at that time so many people blogging, and I was
a part of this blogging revolution. Blogging has in many ways,
you know, fallen off. The curve has fallen off, but
now it's been replaced by substack or other ways, you know, newsletters,
other ways of communicating with your audience. But in the
(05:25):
early two thousands, or when I entered the scene in
two thousand and eight two thousand and nine, blogging was
like the it thing to be doing if you wanted
to become an author, and so many of us that
were blogging at the time we were really trying to,
you know, write something that would connect with our audience,
write something that would become popular enough that it could
catch the attention of not just people who are reading,
(05:46):
but also maybe an acquisitions editor at a publisher, or
just create some sort of proof in the marketplace that
what we were writing about mattered to people, and that
what we were writing about was important in the market
at the time, so that we could catch the attention
of a publisher and get a publishing deal. And also
many of us were talking about this at the time.
I was in a tight knit group of other bloggers
(06:08):
who were all saying, hey, wait a minute, I have
this thing that I'm doing. I know I'm a talented writer.
I have an audience that I could directly sell to.
So why would I sit around and wait for a
publisher to approve of me or a publisher to sign
me on when I could compile my work in whatever
way that I wanted to and I could publish it
on my own. The other thing that took place around
(06:31):
this time was that Amazon released their own self publishing
platform that was called create Space at the time. It's
something different now, but once create Space was released, it
was like, well, why would you wait for a traditional
publisher to notice you, to pick you out of a crowd,
to write you a contract that may or may not
(06:52):
be favorable to you when you could use create Space.
This made it much easier for authors to immediately publish
their work, to make it available on Amazon, and to
have much more creative control over their projects all at all.
A couple of things to note, there's still at this
time in the early two thousands, were a lot of
drawbacks to self publishing. There still are today a lot
(07:14):
of drawbacks to self publishing. One of the drawbacks is
that most new authors, who are the people in many
cases who are considering self publishing, most new authors don't
have the first clue where to start as it relates
to publishing a book. They've never done a cover layout before,
they've never done an interior layout before. They don't know
where they would find an editor to edit their work.
(07:36):
You know, they don't know how to get an ISBN number.
They aren't sure how to file for a copyright. They
wouldn't know when in the process to do any of
these things. You know, they've never been through the process
of writing and publishing a book before. And also, many
authors are in a position where they're like, I don't
even know if what I'm writing is interesting enough or
good enough, or if it would even be if a
(07:58):
reader would even find this interesting, were to self publish
it and put it on the internet, would anyone even
purchase it? And that's a big risk for an author
to take, especially when they're brand new. And so I
think one of the things that many of us were
weighing at the time, and that authors are still weighing,
is what are the benefits to having a traditional publisher
on your team. There is the more emotional benefit of
(08:20):
knowing like, Okay, well, if the publisher picked me, they
believe in me, they think that what I'm writing is
interesting and that it's going to be interesting to a reader.
And so it's easy as an author to be able
to kind of lean on that and rely on that.
And this is a big part of what I want
to talk about today, because this is where authors and
new authors become extremely vulnerable to scams, is we really
(08:43):
want someone to validate us in our work. We want
them to tell us like, I think what you are
doing is great and I want to publish you. And
the need that we have for someone to tell us
that makes us extremely vulnerable. The need is also incredibly human.
And for anybody who has did any amount of time
or energy in their art, you can understand this basic
(09:05):
human need. You just like want someone to tell you like,
that's great, You're doing a great job. You know. I
think about with my daughter who's four, sitting at the
table working on an art project, like she's like, Mom,
what do you think? What do you think? Do you like? This?
Is this pretty? You know? And I'll try to do
the thing that a lot of parenting coaches will say
to do now, which is instead of immediately saying it's beautiful,
(09:26):
you're incredible, which is true, I'll try to be like,
what do you think about it? Do you like the color?
And it doesn't matter how much I try to deflect
the question back to her, she still wants to know.
But what about you, mom? Do you like it? Do
you think this is pretty? She really does want that
external validation, and I think that's just a basic human
need that so many of us have. We can supplement
(09:49):
the need by learning to anchor inside of our own
selves and give it to ourselves the way I'm trying
to teach my daughter to do, to go, yeah, I
love the color. I picked this color. This is my
favorite color, or to say, I'm proud of this. I
put a lot of energy into this and a lot
of work into this, and I'm proud that it's mine.
But at the same time, we're human beings and we
do need and crave that external validation. And what I
(10:12):
want to linger on throughout this episode is that that
basic human need that you have makes you extremely vulnerable
to a publishing scam. So I want to just make
you aware of that if you're someone who wants to
write your story, who is working on a book, or
who would love to get published someday, I want to
just bring this into your conscious awareness so that you
(10:32):
don't fall prey to this publishing scam like this friend
of a friend of mine did. Okay, I got on
a small tangent there, But back to the story. In
the early two thousands, many of us were blogging, We're
all trying to catch the attention of a publisher. We're
(10:54):
all trying to decide should I self publish or should
I traditional publish? And we're all bumping up again, and
these pluses and minuses of both self publishing and traditional publishing.
If you self publish, you get total control, total creative
control over your project. You get to decide when it releases,
you get to pick the editor, you get to design
(11:15):
the cover yourself. You get to make it look and
feel however you want it to feel. And also that's
a lot of pressure. It's like, how am I supposed
to know how to do all these things or when
to do all of them, or what's going to work
and what's not going to work. It would really feel
nice to have the partnership of a publisher who has
done this before. So traditional publishing you have less control,
You keep less of the profits from your artwork once
(11:39):
it publishes. In most publishing contracts, the author keeps ten percent,
the publisher keeps ninety percent, and you keep ten percent
until you buy out your advance on royalties, which is
a whole other conversation, and then once you buy it
or sorry, the publisher keeps one hundred percent until you
buy out your advance on royalties. And then once you
buy out your advance on royalties, then you get to
retain your ten percent royalty. So there are benefits and
(12:01):
drawbacks to both ways of doing it, and many of
us were trying to decide, you know, which one should
we try. And I have had experience with both traditional
publishing and also some with self publishing, and so I
have firsthand experience of the benefits and drawbacks of both. Now.
Somewhere around this time, honestly, probably about the time that
I started blogging, I'm guessing it was like early, like
(12:24):
twenty eight nine, ten. Somewhere in there, someone really smart
looked at the current landscape that authors were having to
make a decision between self publishing and traditional publishing, and
that many of these authors you know, had their own platforms,
were building audiences on social media, that were building audiences
via a blog and they had this impossible choice to make.
Self publishing wasn't a great option because you know, you
(12:46):
basically have to administrate and project manage your entire book launch,
and traditional publishing wasn't a great option because you're giving
away the majority of your creative control, the majority of
your intellectual property, and the majority of your profits on
your project. And so someone goes, oh, let's come up
with a middle option. Let's come up with a hybrid
(13:08):
publishing option. And so you saw a lot of these
hybrid publishing options entering the picture. A hybrid publishing option
was an option where you could pay a publisher a
fee to help you publish your book. They would basically
help you project manage the whole thing. They would help
get your ISBN number, they would you walk you through
the process. They would get you an editor, they would
(13:30):
get you a cover designer. Every hybrid publisher was a
little bit different, but they would essentially hold your hand,
walk you through the publishing process. You paid them a
fee for that, and then they would help you to
self publish your book at the end of the process,
so your book would be published. It would be published
under this hybrid publisher's name, but you would get to
keep the majority of the royalties from your project. You
(13:51):
would maintain one hundred percent creative control, you would get
to keep in most cases your intellectual property, and this
hybrid publisher would simply just help you through the process
and you would pay them a fee for that. And
so hybrid publishing was this amazing third way that entered
into the picture in the early two thousands, somewhere where
authors didn't have to pick between just self publishing all
(14:13):
by themselves or waiting around for a traditional publisher to
pick them. They could engage the service of this hybrid
publisher and pay the fee, and they could get their
book published. A few problems entered into the scene along
with hybrid publishers. In fact, many times I would hear
these hybrid publishers called vanity publishers, and I think the
(14:37):
nickname or whatever you want to call it, is fair.
And let me talk about why. One of the reasons
that they were called vanity publishers is because these publishers
would often appeal to your vanity in order to get
you to pay their fee. Depending on the publisher, sometimes
their fee was as low as one dollar. Yeah, I know,
that's kind of a weird thing, but sometimes their fee
(14:57):
was as low as one dollar, and the entry, the
point to entry was more like, send us a copy
of your manuscript or send us a piece of sample writing.
We'll decide if we want to work with you or
not based on, you know, what we think about your
writing and what we think about your book idea. And
then you pay us the fee of a dollar and
will walk you through the process of getting your book published.
And then you keep fifty percent royalties and we keep
(15:18):
fifty percent. So that was one kind of way or
structure that a hybrid publisher could look like. And then
another structure that a hybrid publisher could have would be
more like something like this, where they would say, you
don't need to send us a sample of you're writing.
You're in send us a check for seven thousand dollars
or send us a check for ten thousand dollars or
(15:39):
twelve thousand dollars or something like that. That's your fee
that you pay us to get you published, and we're
going to walk you through the process. We're going to
stroke your ego, we're going to tell you you're amazing,
We're going to be like you are going to crush
it out there in the marketplace because we don't really
care because we have your money. And once we have
your money and your book is public, then you're kind
(16:01):
of on your own and you can figure it out.
The second model that I'm describing, where there's a high
fee paid up front and no screening process for bringing
in the manuscript, is not inherently bad or wrong, but
it did appeal to the vanity of the author, which
is why it's called a vanity publisher. And the other
(16:21):
thing to think about with this second model is that
the publisher doesn't require you to succeed in order for
them to get their money. So in a traditional publishing model,
the publisher requires the author to succeed in order to
get paid, so they need you to sell books in
order to get their paycheck, so they have a vested
(16:41):
interest in helping you to succeed. In that vanity publishing
model that I described to you, where you pay a
high fee upfront and then they help you get your book,
you know, on Amazon or in a bookstore or whatever,
and then they've been paid, so they don't need you
to succeed. They don't have as much of a vested
interest in your success because they've already been paid their fee.
(17:04):
And so what started to happen, and the reason that
these publishers, many of them, earned the nickname vanity publishers,
is because they would swoop in, they would do a
bunch of sales calls. They would appeal to your vanity.
They would tell you, we think you're amazing. We saw
your blog online. You know, we really believe in you.
We want to publish your book. And of course you're
(17:24):
just like, oh my gosh, someone wants to publish my book.
That's incredible. And then they would say, all you need
to do is send a check for X amount of
dollars to this address, or wire the money or whatever
you're however you're going to pay us, and then we
will help you get your book published. So you can
see how this made a group of authors who were
really hoping to get noticed by a publisher extremely vulnerable
(17:46):
to what I wouldn't necessarily consider a scam. They're trading
a service for a fee, which is not a scam
in my in my mind. And yet I also can
see where the term vanity publisher came from. And it's
a well earned nickname. And here's where things get tricky
because vanity publishers and the way that hybrid publishers operate
makes the average consumer extremely vulnerable to a publishing scan
(18:11):
Because imagine that you're a person who is working on
writing your story. You're extremely invested in getting this story
out into the world. You're wondering if you have what
it takes. You question yourself every day, you feel crazy.
You're working hard on your story. You're hoping that someone
is noticing. You're trying to post on social media. You
maybe have a substack or a blog or something where
(18:31):
you're putting your work and an email pops into your
inbox one day from Penguin Random House, or so it says,
and the email says, dear so and so, we believe
in you. We think you're amazing. We've been reading your
blog or a subscribe to your substack. What you're working
on matters. It's really important. The world needs it. We
(18:53):
want to help you publish it. We have this new
publishing division called X where we're going to publish your book,
and all you need to do as a wire as
five thousand dollars. Even though to me, with my experience
in the publishing industry, this looks like a scam. It
smells like a scam. It smacks like a scam. There's
no way that I would fall for this. But I'm
telling you two thousand and eight, Ali would have fallen
(19:15):
for this. I was in my twenties, I was newly
trying to, you know, get my writing business off the ground.
I was blogging every day, I was trying to write
a book. I was really wanting to be published. And
if this email had come into my inbox in two
thousand and eight, I guarantee you I would have fallen
for this scam. I may have shown it to my
parents first at that point in my life. I wouldn't
(19:36):
do that now, but at twenty something I might have
been like, Mom, Dad, look at what I got. And
I can see my dad being like, no, that's a scam.
But if I didn't show it to anyone, if I
just was like, you know, immediately responded and went to
go wire the money, I could see myself falling for
a scam like that. And so this is why I
think it's important to have just a little bit of
(19:56):
historical context to the publishing industry. If you're someone who
wants to write your story and also to have awn awareness,
a consciousness of your own hunger for external validation, because
having just the slightest awareness of that that there's nothing
wrong with wanting external validation. I'm a firm believer of that.
If you want a publisher to tell you you're amazing, you're
(20:17):
doing great. Everybody wants that from their spouse, from their parents. Still,
even though we're you know, we're grown, from your friends,
from a publisher or whatever it is, we all want
external validation. But having the consciousness that, oh, I'm aware
that I want that external validation from someone, so that
(20:38):
you don't receive the external validation unconsciously and think like,
oh my god, I'll do anything, Yes, five thousand dollars,
tell me where to wire it. I'll do anything in
order to get this book published. What I would challenge
every single artist to do, and this is true whether
you're a writer or a musician or something else entirely,
whatever the art is that you're working on, I would
(21:01):
challenge you to fall so deeply in love with the
art that you don't care whether anyone else ever reads
it or listens to it, or thinks it's great or
loves it or hates it or whatever, easier said than done.
I am forty two years old, or about to be
forty two next month. I have not arrived there yet,
But this is the way that I approach my art
(21:22):
every single day. Is there a way where I can
do this even this podcast recording this episode? Is there
a way that I can do this where this is
for me? This is not about receiving external validation from
someone else. Oh my god, I love your podcast. It
changed my life. There's nothing wrong with that, and there
can be some good in that. But the way that
I approach this podcast and every other thing that I
(21:42):
do is how could I use this to get better
at what I'm doing, to learn to grow and to
fall deeper in love with the craft every single day?
How can I use this for me? And in using
it for me that sounds like it's a selfish motive,
but it actually ends up serving others, And that would
(22:04):
be how I want you to approach your writing and
approach whatever art you're doing. How can I do this
in a way where this is for me, like this
brings me such great joy. When and if you can
achieve that, you become absolutely impervious to scams, Because some
scammers going to email you and say we think you're great,
and you're going to be like, yeah, I know, and
they're going to be like, all you have to do
(22:25):
is wire is five thousand dollars and you've already got
your spidy senses up and your head tilted just a
little and you're like, wait what, And I do think that,
you know, Scamming is becoming even more sophisticated now with AI,
and scams are harder to detect. So I think we
have to really remove the stigma when we get hooked
or hoodwinked by a scam, because there have been a
(22:46):
few recently where I'm like, what's this, you know, and
I'll show my husband and he's like, I think that's
a scam, And I mean, scammers are getting more and
more sophisticated. There was one other day where I got
an email in my inbox about my bank account balance
being low, and I was like, what's going on. I'm
like checking my bank account balance, and sure enough, my
(23:06):
account balance is not low, and so I'm like, how
on earth did they replicate the logo of my bank
and send the email that looks so like authentic and
it says it's from the you know, the URL attached
to the email address says it's from the bank, but
it's not. So I'm calling the bank, I'm looking on
my account. So I think spammers are going to get
(23:28):
more and more sophisticated, and we also as consumers, have
to get more and more sophisticated. And one of the
ways that I'm suggesting that we do that as authors
and aspiring authors is to shore up our need for
external validation. Know that you need it, know that you
crave it, get it from people who are close to you,
and don't trust someone who says that I'll give you
(23:49):
this external validation if only you give me five thousand
dollars or whatever amount it is that they're asking for
from you. Okay, So all of this to say, now
that I've given you a little bit of history and
context about the publishing industry, the whole reason that I
(24:12):
brought this up is I got a message from my producer, Houston,
who is so incredible and who makes this podcast possible.
Thank you Houston. And Houston was saying that he had
heard about this publishing scam where basically a publisher emails
you and says, we love what you do, we love
your work. We would love to publish you. We're going
to get you on the New York Times List, We're
gonna get you this and that, but first you need
(24:33):
to wire us x amount of dollars. Now, at first, blush,
this sounds like a hybrid publisher. So I can see
how this scam would be highly sophisticated in this time
and could actually seem like this is real. It's like,
wire us this amount of money and will engage your services,
and some subsidiary of Penguin Random House is going to
help you get your book published. Now, the reason that
(24:55):
this would stick out to me is because Penguin Random
House is not a hybrid publisher, and as far as
I know, Penguin Random House doesn't have a hybrid publisher
attached to their name at all. And so because I
have a little bit of information and a little bit
of experience in the publishing industry, this would raise all
the red flags for me, and I'd be like no.
(25:17):
And yet the average consumer could quite easily fall prey
to this scam. And I think you know, especially because
we have that vulnerability as artists and as authors around
external validation, that when someone says to you, I think
you're amazing. What you're working on is so great. It's
almost like our thinking part of our brain turns off
at that point, and then we become much more apt
(25:40):
to follow the pathway and eventually fall for the scam.
So now that we're in this AI era, I think
as consumers in general, we just have to have our
spidy senses up. Scammers are becoming more sophisticated. It's becoming
easier for them to, you know, to hook us, and
so in every area of our life we have to
have our spidy senses up. But I would say to you,
(26:01):
particularly around hybrid publishing, if you are an aspiring author
or if you really want to write your story, I
would advise you to number one, bring into your conscious
awareness your need for external validation because we all have it.
So there's no like, you know, there's no advice I
could give you where it's like, don't have a need
for external validation. We all have this need for external validation.
(26:24):
It's very human. So just bring into conscious awareness your
need for external validation so that when the external validation
comes in, you can check yourself, hold on, this is
external validation? Am I truly paying attention to what's going
on here? Am I truly tapped in to the details
of the situation. Have I researched this hybrid publisher, this
(26:46):
publisher that they say that they are these people who
are attached to this email or to this message that
comes into my space? You know? Have I checked the
email address that it came from. I hate that we
have to be this aware as consumers now, but we
really do have to be this aware otherwise, you know,
any of us could fall victim to any one of
these scams. It's the scammers truly have just become more
(27:07):
and more sophisticated. So it's not just you know, my
grandma who's going to fall for the scam. It's easily
could be me. In fact, just the other day, I
was sitting at the table and got an email from
what looked like my bank saying my account balance was low.
And I it took me like ten or fifteen minutes
to figure this out. I finally showed my husband and
he was like, I think that's a scam, you know,
(27:28):
but I'm like, how did they get the email to
come from the bank address? And like, it's really truly
amazing what these scammers are able to do, and so
I think we just all need to be on high alert.
And I hope that understanding a little bit more about
how the publishing industry works and about, you know, what
a hybrid publisher actually is and what a hybrid publisher
(27:49):
actually does, because there are so many great self publishing
resources out there now and hybrid publishing resources that are
legit businesses, and you know, I can list a few
of them for you. Number one, book launchers dot com.
My friend Julie Broad started book Launchers, and book Launchers
is a platform that supports self published authors, so it's
not even a hybrid publisher. They do not consider themselves
(28:10):
a publisher, but they're a platform that supports self published authors,
and they charge a fee to help you do all
the things that we just talked about, get your ISPN number,
get your copyrights in order. They can book podcast episode
or you know, podcast interviews for you after the book
goes live. They can help you with editing, cover design,
all of the above, and they have a whole process
(28:31):
that they can walk you through. And several of my clients,
and you know, my coaching clients have worked with book
Launchers and have just sung the praises of Julie and
her team. They've done a really amazing thing at book launchers.
And then, of course I have published my most recent book,
Write Your Story, is published with a hybrid publisher. Technically,
the publisher is story Brand Books, which is a subsidiary
(28:53):
of Forefront Books. For Front Books is the hybrid publisher.
Story Brand Books is owned by Donald Miller, and my
book was the first book that was published on Storybrand
Books platform. So you know, there are hybrid publishers that
are great and that follow through and that deliver on
their promises. And not every hybrid publisher is a vanity publisher.
(29:14):
Not every vanity publisher is a scammer. But I think
the more aware you can be of your own need
for external validation, the more aware you can be of
how the industry works, what they're looking for, the better
off you'll be in the end. Above all, I'm hoping
that this episode can just help you avoid a scam,
avoid a situation where you pay a bunch of money
and don't get what you paid for. So questions to ask,
(29:37):
let's talk about this really quickly before we wrap up.
Questions to ask, who is this hybrid publisher or who
is this publisher in general, I would go to their website.
I would see who works for them, I would see
who else they've published. I would ask them what services
are they going to provide for the fee? So the
services should be things like typesetting, lay out editing, copy editing,
(30:02):
cover design, ISBN numbers, securing your copyright, booking podcast interviews
for you. If those things aren't on the list of services,
it should be things like that that are on the
list of services. So I would make sure that before
you engage a publisher like this, you're signing a services agreement.
You're not just wiring five thousand dollars, but you're asking
(30:23):
them what's your services agreement look like? And have you
signed it? And have they signed it? And are they
going to deliver on the services that are in that
services agreement. Once that services agreement is signed, you can
wire the money and then you have legal recourse should
the hybrid publisher choose to READNIG on their promise to
deliver those services. I hope that little bit of context helps.
(30:46):
I hope the history helps. I hope self reflecting on
your need for external validation helps, and ultimately I hope
that you can avoid the scam that this other person
fell for, not because they were stupid to fall for it,
but because it was a really great scam. So here's
to avoiding scams. Here's to writing our stories. Here's to
learning to lean on our own internal validation and keep
(31:09):
up the good work, Keep up the writing. I'll see
you next week on the Write Your Story podcast.
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