Scams, Schemes, And Shams: Who Can An Author Belief?
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- March 13th, 2009 |
- Comments
Authors in their quest to get published can fall dupe to scams. Here’s a few tips to help you avoid the traps.
Online Matching Services and Email Blast Programs
These services, for a fee, put your query letter, abstract and first chapter online. Acquisition editors and literary agents so have the opportunity to peruse the offerings. You have to ask yourself if you truly believe that the average literary agent, who receives 1100 uninvited queries a year, has the time to look at these websites.
The reverse, or maybe it’s the inverse, are services that have databases of agents and publishers. You choose the genre of your book and up pops agents/publishers who have said they are interested in your genre. Sometimes the agents/publishers have provided their acquisition eyeglasses and sometimes the owner of the database has just input the information from other sources.
Finally thither are services who will email blast your query letter to agents/publishers. If the participants have agreed to receive the query letters thither is a higher probability you will be booming. But, again you have to admiration, with all the unpublished manuscripts out thither looking for a publishing home, why would an agent/publisher feel it necessary to contract for these types of services.
Book Doctors…but are they quacks?
The beginning author wonders: 1) Do I really have endowment? 2) Is my book ready to be marketed, or does it need additional activity?
One option is to hire an editing service, sometimes called a book doctor. This is not simply a copy editor who checks for grammar, syntax, and spelling. A book doctor looks at the plot, characters, dialogue, continuity and flow.
It almost seems like more people making a living selling editing services&ndashbook doctors, book doctors&ndashthan writers earning a living. In screenwriting, it has become an epidemic. Producers who run out of money have even haunted the book doctoring profession to pay the rent piece they are “between films.”
Asking another person to re-write your activity is problematic. Who knows your account better than you do? It is extremely difficult to evaluate how precocious these editors are, to determine if they are really going to improve your activity.
Fees for these services can range from various hundred dollars to five or ten 1000 dollars.
Remember that all manuscripts need editing. And that one of the publisher’s jobs is to activity with the writer on getting the manuscript ready to publish.
Another option is a critique service; this is unremarkably less expensive. They provide a report of their analyze of what is good and bad about the activity, and perhaps its market potential. They are, at best, just one person’s opinion. If the critique service isn’t a publisher, how do they know what will sell and what won’t.
Marketing Services
Thither are many companies who provide legitimate services to authors in marketing and promoting their titles. Just because a company requires a fee doesn’t mean it’s a swindle.
Having said that, if your book is not offered with industry acceptable damage, bookstores are highly farfetched to stock it, no matter what the marketing efforts are. Your book must be returnable to the publisher finished the major wholesalers. It must be offered with 90 days for payment. It must be offered with at least a 40% discount from the retail price. These damage must be offered from the publisher not the author &ndash unless of course the author is the publisher. Keep in mind that the author must own the ISBN, International Acceptable Book Number to be considered the publisher.
When a marketing company is blase that the damage are not industry acceptable you should be concerned.