Why, hello! Welcome back.
It’s been a few weeks since I posted, and that’s because I’ve been spending every. working. minute. of my free time penning my first manuscript!
I’m a 22-year-old woman who’s only been out of college for a couple of years, so I know I’m very young to be starting on my journey to pursue my lifelong dream of being a fiction writer, but the excitement in me is overflowing! As I write this, I’m nearly done with the first draft, and I can’t wait to share it with the world. Stay tuned for more info about my professional debut, I’ll be posting an excerpt soon!
In the meantime, today, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about some things I’ve learned as a fledgling writer working on her debut manuscript. I think there’s a lot of wrong turns a debut novelist can take, and I’m basically doing this on my own. Hopefully, that won’t be the case for long, but I’ve got to look out for myself before anyone else can. There’s one main thing I want to touch on, and I hope it serves as a tale of caution to any of you who may be in a similar boat to me.
Any creative can relate to the euphoric feeling you get at seeing your work come together. If you’re like me, and you thrive off feedback and constructive criticism, you love seeing people engage with your work. You love seeing people really enjoy it, and even if they have suggestions for things you can change, that thrills you! You always want your work to be the best it can be. I’ve been lucky enough to have a great group of BETA READERS for my manuscript who have been with me every step of the way, and it’s only served to make my story better.
Now obviously, I’m not exactly famous. I’ve got a relatively small circle on social media, and I’m no TikTok star. Now, I do have a degree in communications (shoutout to Towson), so I know more about marketing than the average person. That’ll obviously benefit me when the time comes to start getting word out there about my novel. However, when you’re green, and people can tell you’re green, that’s when you start attracting the people who really do not want to help you – they want to rip you off to make money.
I was able to sus this out for myself, but I’m sure plenty of people have fallen down the rabbit hole, and if I can be of any help, then it’ll have all been worth it. I’m referring to Vanity Publishers. Reedsy has a great write-up on vanity publishers and what makes them so dangerous, but I’ll sum it up for you right here.
Vanity publishers, or vanity press, are publishing houses that get their profits from asking for payment from authors upfront. The profits do not primarily come from them selling your book.
Does that sound like a scam? Good, because it is.
Vanity press publishers that fall under this umbrella will usually tell you that they are there to help you self-publish your work. Self-publishing is a highly legitimate, effective way of publishing your story without the help of an agent or a traditional publisher, and I do not discourage self-publishing whatsoever. But, it’s important to be able to tell when a self-publishing aid company is legitimate or if it’s a vanity press scam.
When publishing in a traditional style, there will never come a time when you are expected to pay the publisher. Vanity publishers will often cut corners and outsource work from cheap hires with little to no experience, and your work will suffer as a result.
The problem is that some of these vanity publishing companies are actually owned by traditional publishing houses. For example, let me tell you about Archway Publishing, the vanity press company that inspired this post. Archway Publishing is run under Author Solutions, which is 100% a vanity publishing house, despite the fact that Simon & Schuster, a reputable traditional publishing house, has a hand in its existence.
Before I had even started writing my manuscript, I was doing intense research on publishing efforts. As I leaned heavily into the self-publishing route, Archway Publishing fell into my lap. Archway’s self-publishing packages range from $1,999 to $16,999, which is egregious for self-publishing. Self-publishing can be done for free on Amazon with Kindle Direct! You don’t need to shell out a chunk of your life savings to accomplish your publishing dreams, should you choose to go the self-publishing route. Of course, if you want your book to look pretty, you should absolutely pay a professional graphic designer, but you will still get much more high-quality results than you would by entrusting your novel to a vanity press like Author Solutions.
Traditional, self-published, or whatever you decide to do with your novel, take your time with it. Don’t fall for the spell that these vanity publishers try to lure you in with – they just want your money, and they won’t give your story the worth it deserves.
Do your research, maintain focus, and don’t put your story out there before it’s ready. Maintain control of your own destiny!
readreaming 