Guest Post: One Author's First Month in KDP Select

Last December, I blogged about Amazon's KDP Select program, which allows KDP authors to participate in Amazon's Kindle Owners' Lending Library and be paid per borrow from a fund established by Amazon.

Two weeks ago, Amazon issued a press release charting KDP Select's performance during its first month. KDP Select books were borrowed 295,000 times in December, with authors earning $1.70 per borrow. Total earnings for the top ten authors exceeded $70,000. The press release features four authors who each earned four figures.

These are amazing numbers. But as Laura Hazard Owen of PaidContent notes, questions about KDP Select remain--such as, how much money did the average participating author make? Today's guest blog post from author Heather Wardell provides some insight into that question.

-------------------------------------

by Heather Wardell

Thanks to Victoria for allowing me to let you know how my first month in the KDP Select program turned out. I don't usually broadcast my sales numbers, since I try hard to focus more on the books than the bucks, but I think it's important to give my fellow authors the benefit of my experience.

But first, a brief summary of my career so far, so you can see where you are in relation to me.

My first book, Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo, went up as a free download in December 2008 everywhere but Amazon (because I couldn't figure out how to make it free there) and has been free ever since. I listed my second book at Amazon for 99 cents in May 2010 and sold a grand total of 3 books that month. I continued on anyhow, releasing two more 99-cent books in 2010 and two more in early 2011. My sales were better than three a month, but not by much!

In June of 2011 Polar Bear finally went free on Amazon. It shot straight to the top and dragged my other books along with it, including the two books I released after it in 2011. I prefer not to give all my sales results but I will share the details of my KDP Select book and a comparative novel in this post.

When Amazon called to offer me access to the KDP Select program, I was interested, but the exclusivity clause (a KDP Select book must be available only on Amazon) gave me pause. While I sell easily ten times as many books on Amazon as I do at all other retailers combined, my Facebook fan page is almost evenly split between Kindle and Nook users. The idea of taking my books away from those people, many of whom have been loyal readers since the beginning, did not appeal.

But neither did missing out on KDP Select entirely, so I decided to enroll Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many (hereafter called Seven) in the program because it's my only pure stand-alone book. All the others are set in Toronto and feature returning places and people, so removing one of those from the other retailers didn't make sense to me. I felt this would be my best way of testing the program without unduly inconveniencing my readers.

I won't spell out the details of the KDP Select program since I know they've been well-covered elsewhere (such as right here at Writer Beware). Essentially, I would earn a share of the $500,000 pool for each borrow of Seven. I was hoping for additional exposure and possibly a huge payout from the program. Let's see how it turned out.

Seven's raw sales numbers don't tell much of a story, really, since any number of things could affect sales of a given book. Therefore, I'm going to compare its sales to those of my book Stir Until Thoroughly Confused (Stir for short). Both of these books have been out for a while (since June 2010 for Seven and January 2011 for Stir) and their sales are relatively close.

I usually only check my sales numbers once a month (which lets me see what's going on but also prevents me from obsessing over the numbers) but I took a snapshot each morning from December 8th to 31st. I won't bore you with all the numbers (although a graph below shows them if you're interested), but I will share three key dates with you and then tell you what I think those numbers say.

On December 8th, right after KDP Select was announced, Seven had sold 138 books in December (and already had 2 borrows) and Stir had sold 140. At this point, both books were 99 cents. I know all the arguments for raising prices for full novels, but I also know how many emails I get thanking me for keeping the price low because it makes it easier to buy all my books, so I hadn't planned to charge more.

Over the next week or so, borrows trickled in, a few a day, and by December 19th Seven had been borrowed a grand total of 14 times. While I didn't know how many borrows other people's books were receiving (one of the real oddities of the KDP Select program is the whole "I make less if others move more books" thing) I suspected it was more than 14.

I also suspected I knew the cause. Why would anyone borrow a 99 cent book when they could borrow a $9.99 one instead? Frankly, having 14 borrows surprised me. So I decided to try raising Seven's price to $2.99, both to see how it affected borrows and what it did to sales themselves.

Between December 8th and the 21st when the price increase kicked in, Seven had sold 255 books, with 14 borrows on top of that, and Stir had sold 222. Reasonably neck-and-neck.

Between December 21st and 31st, the race changed. Seven at $2.99 sold 154 copies during that time, and had an additional 21 borrows for a total of 547 sales and 35 borrows during December. Stir sold 310 copies in that time for a total of 693 in December. The graph below shows that Seven was hit hard by its price increase. While Stir had a nice post-Christmas peak, and my other books showed a similar pattern, Seven didn't even reach its early December levels during that time.

Raising Seven's price certainly reduced the number of sales in the last ten days of December. However, earnings during that same time period are a different story. I earned about $2 on each copy of Seven at $2.99, so around $308, and only 35 cents on each Stir, for a total of $109. I think it's important for authors to decide whether they want to maximize copies sold or income; it seems to me that you can't go after both goals at once.

(For the record, I haven't yet decided whether to leave Seven at $2.99. I am firmly on the "as many readers as possible" side of the question and the lower sales for Seven don't sit well with me. However, I did put out a collection of four of my books for $2.99. I actually earn more from one sale of the collection than from selling each of the books individually, and the reader pays less. Win-win!)

Back to KDP Select. Raising the price to $2.99 did increase the borrowing as I'd expected, since Seven had 14 borrows from December 8-21 and 21 in the shorter time from December 21-31. Still, the total was only 35. On its own, though, the number meant nothing. Whether it was good, bad, or indifferent depended on how the other KDP authors had done.

If you've read the Amazon press release you know how the other authors did. If not, here's the scoop: there were 295,000 borrows in December, and each borrow therefore earned $1.70 of the $500,000 pool. I received 0.0119% of the borrows, and my 'huge payout' was $59.42.

In that same press release, Amazon stated that the average payout was 26% of what that particular book earned. Seven earned $549.60 on sales in December, so its payout was almost exactly 10%. This, of course, doesn't mean that the average isn't 26%, but it certainly wasn't in my case.

So, was I smart to sign up for KDP Select? I can give that a qualified maybe. The pool for January has been raised to $700,000, and as of January 24th Seven (still priced at $2.99) has already been borrowed 40 times. Financially, I'm not sure being in the program is doing me a huge amount of good but I also don't think it's damaging me too badly.

At this point I see the biggest benefit of the program, ironically, as the option to earn no money at all. A book in the program can be made available for free for up to five days every 90 days. I'm doing a blog tour January 23-27 and so made Seven free for the same time period. It's now been free for about 1.5 days, and it's currently ranked #6 on the free books list and has had over 25,000 downloads. Granted, I make no money from those downloads, but I'm certain I've reached new readers and some of those readers will buy my other books.

Do I regret joining KDP Select? Definitely not. I wanted to know what would happen and I suspect I have reached a few people who wouldn't otherwise have heard of me. Will I register all of my books? Also definitely not. I don't like the exclusivity clause; even though financially I wouldn't be that affected I hate the idea of cutting out potential readers who chose not to buy a Kindle, and I'm also not a fan of putting all my electronic eggs in Amazon's basket. While I do get most of my sales there, I am reluctant to cut off the other avenues. It's obviously good for Amazon to have exclusivity, but I'm not sure it's good for anyone else.

I hope this has been informative for my fellow authors. Please feel welcome to pick up my always-free Life, Love, and a Polar Tattoo for any ebook format, and Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many is free on Kindle until January 27th.

Heather Wardell writes women's fiction with depth, humor, and heart. Visit her at www.HeatherWardell.com.

Delmont-Ross Writing Contest: The Saga of a Fake Literary Competition

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

A little while back, I stumbled on a news story about Mitchell Gross, a Georgia man who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly luring a woman into investing millions of dollars in a phony company.

Authorities said Gross began a romantic relationship with a woman identified in court documents as "R.J." They met on a site around June 2006 and [he] told her he made a lot of money by investing with a broker named "Michael Johnson" who was employed by "The Merrill Company," the records show.

"R.J." called the broker to talk over the investments, but it was actually Gross speaking in a disguised voice on the other line, prosecutors said. "R.J." wired close to $3 million to an account she believed belong[ed] to the company but actually did not exist, prosecutors said. Gross concealed the scheme by sending her phony tax forms and account statements, they added.

Then investigators said they discovered he was using the woman's funds to repay an ex-girlfriend, identified as "J.S." She was duped into investing $1.4 million with the phony firm, prosecutors said.

The US Attorney's Office's press release is here.

What interested me about this incident: Mitchell Gross is an author. Under the name Mitchell Graham, he published a fantasy trilogy with HarperCollins, as well as mystery novels with Tor and Forge. What interested me even more: Writer Beware has a file on him.

In November 2001, I received an email from Gross, who said he was afraid he'd been rooked by one of the scam literary agents featured in the Case Studies section of the Writer Beware website. The agent, he claimed, had taken money from him to enter his fantasy manuscript in a literary contest; he'd later been told he'd won the contest plus a substantial cash prize, but had never received a check. He was especially worried because he'd gotten nice blurbs from several well-known authors as part of the contest, and had used those blurbs in submitting his manuscript to major publishers. He now feared the blurbs, along with the contest, weren't legit.

I responded, giving Gross a capsule version of the large amount of data we'd gathered on the scammer, and asking for documentation to add to my files. But Gross, who had initially been very friendly and forthright, suddenly turned cagy, telling me he wanted to consult with his attorney before providing any material or any more specifics.

OK, I thought. Scam victims don't always want to share everything at the outset; hopefully Gross would change his mind. We emailed back and forth a few more times--and then, all at once, good news: Gross and his attorney had confirmed with one of the sponsors, "the trustees from Merrill Lynch," that the contest was real and he had really won it! Yippee! Oh, and by the way, would I please share Tad Williams' email address (I'd interviewed Williams a few months earlier) so he could confirm directly that Williams had really been a contest judge, and that the blurb he'd gotten from Williams was genuine?

At this point, my scamdar started pinging. Merrill Lynch? Not exactly known for running literary contests. And why, after all the emails Gross and I had exchanged, did I still have so little concrete information? Gross hadn't even told me the name of the contest. Had the whole thing been an elaborate windup to get access to Tad Williams?

I wrote back, referring Gross to Mr. Williams' website, and asking again for the name of the contest, the names of the other judges, and documentation of his experience. I wasn't entirely surprised when I didn't hear back. In fact, I never heard from Gross again.

I did hear of him, though. In March 2002, I spied an announcement in Locus magazine, which covers the world of speculative fiction (the announcement doesn't survive online, but it's memorialized in Locus's March 2002 Table of Contents). The grand prize in the prestigious third annual Delmont-Ross Writing Contest, sponsored by the Delmont-Ross Foundation, Merrill Lynch Trustees, and Borders Books, had been awarded to Mitchell Gross, writing as Mitchell Graham, for his fantasy novel The Fifth Ring, which had subsequently been picked up by major SF/fantasy publisher Eos in a three-book deal. Gross, described as "a practicing trial lawyer and neuropsychologist, a former member of the men's US Olympic Fencing Team," reportedly received "the highest scores in the contest's history" from a ten-member jury panel headed by renowned SF writer Ben Bova.

Hmmm, I thought. Really? I knew the book deal was real--it had been announced in December--but given my previous contacts with Gross, the rest sounded kind of fishy, especially when a websearch on the Delmont-Ross Writing Contest turned up nothing but the announcement mentioning Gross. For a contest in its third year, especially a "prestigious" one, you'd think there'd be rather more Web presence. Nevertheless, various press releases confirmed the award (here's an example, which survives only as HTML, but if you scroll down you can see the text), so I didn't follow up.

A few months later, Writer Beware got a flurry of of questions about Delmont-Ross from writers who'd seen publicity materials for Gross's book, or had read some of the interviews he was doing to promote himself (in which, by the way, he provided conflicting details about the contest). This time, Ann and I decided to investigate.

We snail mailed requests for information to Delmont-Ross (with SASEs), using the street address in the Locus announcement. Both came back marked as undeliverable. We then got in touch with Delmont-Ross's purported sponsors, Borders and Merrill Lynch, where our contacts could find no record of any corporate relationship with or sponsorship of the contest. We even wrote to the US Fencing Association, which sent us the names of the members of the Men's US Olympic Fencing Teams for 1984 and 1988, the years Gross claimed to have participated. By now, you probably won't be surprised to learn that Gross's name wasn't on either roster. (Gross is an accomplished competitive fencer, though. That much is true.)

The final nail in Delmont-Ross's coffin came from Ben Bova himself. Mr. Bova told us that he had indeed been hired as a contest judge--the only one, so far as he was aware. He was a bit surprised to discover that there was also only one finalist, but went ahead and did as he was asked--to read the manuscript and judge if it was fit to win. He said yes, and--hey presto--The Fifth Ring got the prize.

So there was never any such thing as the Delmont-Ross Writing Contest. Gross made the whole thing up in order to promote his debut novel. (We have a hunch that his later, similarly detailed claim of a film deal with Stephen Spielberg was an equally fictitious effort to promote his subsequent books.)

I think he probably made up the story about his encounter with the scammer, too; he wanted to con me in some way, or maybe just pick my brain (he asked me a lot of questions about publishing) and knew he could get to me by pretending to have been scammed. Bad move. Gross went to extraordinary lengths to give his fake contest a gloss of authenticity, and it probably would have held up to casual scrutiny--but it couldn't withstand close investigation, which it might not have received if Gross hadn't written to me. As a result, an Alert about Delmont-Ross was posted on the Writer Beware website in late 2003 (the Alert was removed several years ago, after Gross stopped mentioning the contest in his publicity materials, but you can still see it here).

Interestingly enough, "The Merrill Company" (the phony company Gross is accused of using to steal money) existed well before 2006, when Gross allegedly met the victim he is accused of defrauding. The 2002 press release about Delmont-Ross linked in above provided an address and phone number for "Merrill Lynch Trust Department," one of the contest's supposed sponsors--but when I called the number as part of Ann's and my investigation, the woman who answered told me that I'd reached "The Merrill Company," not Merrill Lynch, and hung up on me when I tried to find out more. Checking business records, I was entirely unsurprised to discover that The Merrill Company was a business registered in January 2002 by Mitchell Gross in Cobb County, Georgia.

A tangled web indeed.

According to the US Attorney's Office's press release, Gross has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud and seven counts of money laundering, each of which carries a maximum possible sentences of 10-20 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

The Fine Print of iBooks Author

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Yesterday, with great fanfare, Apple rolled out two new applications:  iBooks 2, with new features aimed at students; and iBooks Author, which allows individuals to create iPad-optimized ebooks. Both applications are targeted to the textbook market, and Apple is billing iBooks Author as a textbook-creation utility--but essentially it's a free self-publishing platform that can be used by anyone (as long as they have a Mac).

With one-click and drag and drop utility, accessibility features that let you accomodate people with disabilities, and the ability to include photo galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, iBooks Author looks like a pretty cool app. But the devil is in the details--in this case, the End User License Agreement that users of the app agree to when they download the software.

Because I'm not a Mac user, I have to depend on other people's analysis--such as this, from Mac developer Dan Wineman. According to Wineman, the EULA requires content creators who decide to sell the books they create with iBooks Author (as opposed to offering them for free, which imposes no restrictions) to give Apple a cut of the proceeds, and to sell exclusively via the iPad. As long as you're OK with exclusivity (and a proprietary format that enforces it), that doesn't sound bad, right?

Here's the problem, though: because this requirement appears in the EULA, rather than as a separate agreement you can consider post-download, you are binding yourself to Apple's terms simply by downloading the software, even though you may not have known the terms were there before you clicked the download button. Wineman says,

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented.

Apple also doesn't guarantee to accept the books created with iBooks Author--which, as ZDNet's Ed Bott points out, creates another issue:

The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it.

Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.

To be clear, Apple is not claiming rights to your content--only to the product you create by using its software. You don't lose your copyrights when you use iBooks Author; your text, and any other content you yourself create, remains yours, and you can use it however you wish--including selling it on another self-publishing platform (as long as all Apple formatting is stripped out).  Some commenters seem to feel that's not so bad. As Frederic Lardinois of SiliconFilter writes:

Apple clearly defines 'work' as "any book or other work you generate using this software." It's the book Apple cares about – the final product the program generates, not the content you put into it.

iBooks Author is, in the end, just a tool for laying out your content so it looks nice on the iPad. Nobody is stopping any author or publisher from using another tool to sell the same content on another platform.

This seems at least somewhat analogous to regular publishing, where the publisher owns the rights to the book's design and typesetting, and authors can't re-use them--or the cover art--if they revert rights and publish elsewhere. On the other hand, publishers don't claim rights to the editing that helped get the book ready for publication (unless you signed with a lousy publisher).

I usually conclude posts like this by saying something like "As always, the important thing is to read and understand the fine print." That's the case here too--the difference being that you can't view the fine print of iBooks Author until after you've committed to the software. Even if you're OK with that, authors need to carefully consider the ramifications of creating a work in a proprietary format that, if offered for sale, is limited to a single platform that currently lags far behind Amazon and Barnes & Noble in ebook market share.

Digital Rights Showdown: HarperCollins v. Open Road

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

One of the effects of the phenomenal growth of ebooks over the past few years has been to bring new value to the backlist--both for publishers who hold the contracts for backlist books, and authors who want the freedom to exploit a new range of rights. Since many of the most valuable backlist books were published long before ebooks existed, the issue of who controls electronic rights is a pressing one, for authors and publishers alike. Is it the authors, who granted only print rights at a time when print rights were all there were? Or is it the publishers, which bought the exclusive right to publish a book, regardless of the form in which that book appears?

This question may soon be tested in court. Just before Christmas, HarperCollins filed suit against Open Road Integrated Media over Open Road's 2011 publication, in ebook form, of Jean Craighead George's Newbery Award-winning children’s book Julie of the Wolves. (The complaint can be found here.)

The claim: copyright infringement. According to Harper, its circa-1970 contract with Ms. George, which gives it the exclusive right to publish "in book form" as well as the right to exploit future technologies "now known or hereafter invented," implicitly includes a grant of electronic rights--even though those rights did not exist when the contract was signed. Ms. George, therefore, did not have the right to enter into an ebook agreement with Open Road.

This isn't the first time that disputes over digital rights have arisen from pre-digital contracts. In 2001, a number of Random House authors signed ebook contracts with epublishing startup Rosetta Books, reasoning that, since their contracts pre-dated the existence of ebooks, they could dispose of e-rights as they chose. Random House filed suit, with a claim similar to the one Harper is making now: that the right to publish "in book form" includes not just print, but digital, and Rosetta was therefore committing copyright infringement.

Random's request for a preliminary injunction was denied by a federal judge, who ruled, on the basis of Random's own contract language, that "the right 'to print, publish, and sell the work[s] in book form'...does not include the right to publish in the format that has come to be known as the 'ebook.'" (An analysis of that decision can be found here.) An appellate court, to which the decision was appealed, agreed. The parties eventually settled, with Rosetta agreeing to pay licensing fees to Random.

Then in 2009, Random decided to try again. It sent a letter to dozens of literary agents, warning them that the company’s older contracts gave it the exclusive right to publish in ebook form, even where the contracts pre-dated the existence of digital formats.

The letter was likely triggered by the ramping up of Random's efforts to digitize its backlist, but possibly also by the fact that Open Road--which was then, like Rosetta Books before it, a startup--had signed agreements with the estate of Random author William Styron to issue e-versions of some of his print books. As in the Rosetta case, Open Road and Random eventually reached an agreement, with Random dropping its opposition to Open Road's publication of the Styron works.

There's no way to know whether the current suit by Harper will go all the way through the courts. Open Road has hired legal representation, and indicated that it intends to fight Harper's claim. But if the parties don't wind up settling, the outcome--whichever way it goes--will be a game-changer. As IP attorney Lloyd Jassin puts it,

Depending upon how the case brought by HarperCollins is decided, or resolved, the big six multinational, New York-based, publishers (and their cousin to the north, Harlequin) could either score a copyright and unfair competition protection windfall, or meet their digital Waterloo. Only time will tell.

For analysis of the case, see Jassin's post--especially interesting because it places Harper's suit in the context of the entertainment industry's ongoing effort to argue that old contracts cover new uses--as well as this post from Passive Voice, which examines Harper's complaint in detail.

BookStoreMarketing.net: Beware Spam PR Services

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Recently I've gotten a number of questions about BookStoreMarketing.net, a service that promises to promote authors' books to bookstores via a printed catalog, a promotional email, or both. Alternatively, you can buy a bookstore mailing list, and spam--er, contact stores yourself. Costs run from $99 to $350, depending on which option you choose.

Writers: such services are not a good use of your money. Bookstores (or libraries, or newspapers, or book reviewers, or whatever demographic the service claims to access for you) do not pay attention to spam solicitations. The catalog (assuming it's actually mailed) or email (assuming it gets past the recipient's spam filter) will probably be trashed. At most it may be glanced at. The odds of anyone paying any attention to your book as a result of mass-mail-style promotions are vanishingly small.

Unfortunately, the past decade's explosion of self-publishing and small press publishing options has created a similar explosion of opportunistic enterprises designed to exploit  writers' struggle for discoverability in an increasingly crowded and chaotic market. One of the challenges of vetting PR services these days is figuring out whether they are real services, or just cynical attempts to cash in on a trend.

Take BookStoreMarketing.net, for example. Its URL is registered to a company called CK Marketing, located in Rome, Georgia. CK Marketing (which has no website of its own) runs a slew of similar "services:" GetBookReviews.com, which sells book reviews for $150; SpeakerMarketingKit.net, which sells media contacts for $150;  BookBuzz.net, which offers book promotion services for $99 to $299, depending on how much spam you want them to pump out for you; AuthorMarketingKit.com, which sells a "media database" for $99; and AuthorReviews.net, which sells book reviews for as much as $500.

These live websites are only part of the story. Like spammers who switch servers to avoid detection, CK periodically changes names and URLs. Its past ventures include BookAnnouncements.com, BookStorePromotion.com, Book-blitz.net, LibraryPromotion.com, OnlineBookTours.net, and SellMoreBooks.net (though the sites are dead, discussion of them survives, here and here).

Bottom line: unlike real PR companies, BookStoreMarketing.net and its brothers and sisters exist not to make money by providing useful services, but to grab a quick buck by selling cheap crap to exposure-starved authors. Many writers are attracted to such services because they seem inexpensive (at least, compared to more reputable PR options), and promise a wide reach. But cheaper isn't always better--in PR, you get what you pay for, and cut rate services are no bargain. Also, effective PR needs to be targeted and personalized, not tossed at the wall, spam-style, in hopes it sticks. "One size fits all" is a size that fits no one.

How to vet a PR service you find online?

- Do a websearch. If you find discussion from authors who report being solicited by the service out of the blue (or if you yourself have been solicited out of the blue), it's probably a spam service.

- Look for specific information on staff, so you can check bona fides (and skill--a good PR service should be staffed by experienced people). If you can't find this information on the service's website, move on.

- If the service identifies a parent company, research it. You may discover that it runs a bunch of similar services under different names, a la CK Marketing. A genuine PR service has no need to disguise itself in this way.

- Is the service largely or entirely focused on press release dissemination, mass mailed or emailed catalogs or newsletters, or email blasts? Think twice before buying. These are among the least effective of all book promotion strategies.

- If it sounds too good, or too cheap, to be true--it probably is.

2011: A Writer Beware Retrospective

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

As we begin the new year (Writer Beware's fourteenth!), here's a look back at some of Writer Beware's most notable posts and warnings from 2011. 

JANUARY

First One Publishing's Writing Contest: This contest was intended to promote a brand-new publishing venture, and it accomplished its goal--in the wrong way--by requiring entrants to surrender all rights to their material.

MARCH

Karma's a Bitch (For Scammers): Two notable scammers--Robin Price, whose Media Arts International conned aspiring book and screenplay authors out of hundreds of thousands of pounds, and David William Caswell, whose New Century Publishing took thousands of dollars from writers but never published their books--got their comeuppance.

Why Your Self-Publishing Service Probably Didn't Cheat You: Writer Beware often hears from self-publishers who are convinced they're being scammed by their self-publishing services--but it's more likely that their expectations were unrealistic.

APRIL

The Interminable Agency Clause: This clause in an author-agency agreement gives the agency the right to represent a sold property not just for the duration of any publishing contracts, but for the life of copyright. Writers' organizations warn against such clauses--for good reason.

Book Fair Bewares: There are many reasons for writers to attend book fairs. Unfortunately, there are just as many ways for unscrupulous people to take advantage of that.

MAY

Net Profit Royalty Clauses: Net profit royalty clauses--which calculate royalties not on the list price of your book, or on the publisher's net income, but on net income less a menu of additional expenses--can reduce your royalties to a pittance.

JUNE

Literary Agencies as Publishers: a Trend and a Problem: In 2011, partly as a result of the growing popularity of ebooks, literary agencies began transitioning into publishing. These initiatives pose a raft of conflicts of interest, as well as some serious potential pitfalls for writers.

Getting Out of Your Book Contract--Maybe: Some practical suggestions for (maybe) escaping a bad book contract.

Clark, Mendelson and Scott: New Name for a Fee-Charging Agency: A fee-charging agency by another name smells just as nasty.

JULY

The Cruelest Hoax: An aspiring writer punk'd by a jerk posing as a reputable agent: the true story of one of the meanest tricks I've ever encountered.

Farrah Gray Publishing: This tale of a publisher that tried to force a pair of authors to pay more than $100,000 in marketing fees after the contract was signed illustrates a hard truth of publishing: even with every possible precaution, what looks like a duck will sometimes turn out to be a turkey.

AUGUST

Taking Famous Names in Vain: In which PublishAmerica tries to extract money from its authors by pretending to have connections with J.K. Rowling, and gets a spanking.

OCTOBER

The Agenda of The Write Agenda: In which Writer Beware exposes the smear campaign being waged against anti-scam activists by an anonymous group calling itself "The Write Agenda," and considers whether some familiar faces may actually be behind it.

A Small Press Implodes: The Inside Story of Aspen Mountain Press: The ugly demise of a once-promising small publisher has some lessons to teach about the precariousness of the small press world.

NOVEMBER

The Brit Writers Awards: Questions and Threats: The questions surrounding this new awards program, and the dubious methods it has used to cope with criticism.

Introducing Writer Beware's Small Presses Page: A new section of the Writer Beware website that provides an overview of issues to consider when submitting to small presses, as well as tips to evaluate publishers and warnings about unsavory practices.

DECEMBER

The Fine Print of Amazon's New KDP Select Program: Amazon has opened its Kindle Lending Library to self-published authors--but some troubling language lurks in the Terms and Conditions.

Publisher Alert: Arvo Basim Yayin: This Turkish publisher, which has been actively soliciting writers on the Internet, has breached contracts by missing publication dates and not paying monies due.

Happy Holidays From Writer Beware

Because even watchdogs have to rest sometimes, the Writer Beware blog will be taking a break over the holiday season. Unless there's a really juicy publishing story, we'll be on hiatus until the new year. (We'll still be answering email, so if you want to reach us, drop us a line at beware [at] sfwa.org).

Wishing all our wonderful readers and subscribers a happy, healthy, and peaceful holiday season--whatever kind of holidays you celebrate. See you in 2012!

- A. C. Crispin
- Victoria Strauss
- Richard White

Publisher Alert: Arvo Basim Yayin of Turkey

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

A couple of weeks ago, I began hearing from self-published and small press authors who'd been approached over the summer by a Turkish publisher called Arvo Basim Yayin. All reported having been contacted out of the blue by an editor named Hulya Dayan, inquiring about buying Turkish language rights to their books (some examples of Ms. Dayan's emails have been posted on the Kindle boards).

Arvo signed up at least ten writers as a result of these approaches, some with multiple books (those are only the writers whose names I know; according to my sources, there are probably many more). Both royalty-only and licensing-fee-plus-royalties contracts were offered; the licensing fees ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the number of books involved. Publication was supposed to begin in September.

Some of the books have indeed been published. But others have missed multiple publication dates--and it appears that no one, including the authors whose books were published, has been paid.

Authors who've attempted to contact Ms. Dayan about the problems say they've gotten a raft of excuses--financial difficulties, personal and family ill health, religious holidays, trips out of town--along with repeated promises that schedules would be straightened out and monies owed would be forthcoming. As of this writing, none of those promises have been fulfilled. Authors tell me that Ms. Dayan has largely stopped responding to questions and concerns; some haven't heard from her since October.

I emailed Ms Dayan myself two weeks ago to ask for comment. Somewhat to my surprise, I received a quick reply alleging unspecified financial trouble and assuring me that Arvo would soon be paying everyone. When I wrote back to ask for a payment timeline, Ms. Dayan responded again that payments would be made (though again, she didn't say exactly when), and offered yet another excuse for their lateness: Arvo's printing machines had broken down and all the company's resources were going toward repaying a loan for the purchase of new machines.

Missed publication dates, missed payment schedules, books published that have not been paid for, dropped communication, bogus-sounding excuses--what's going on here? Let's take a closer look at Arvo.

Arvo's website lists only six books, but it actually appears to have published sixteen to twenty-three, depending on which online catalog you look at. The majority of these titles--by such authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, and Jacqueline Susann--are from well-known authors of the past, and most--though not all--are in the public domain (I emailed the agent who reps Jacqueline Susann's estate to ask if rights had indeed been sold to Arvo, but to date I've received no response). The seven remaining titles were all acquired as a result of Ms. Dayan's approaches over the summer. All publication dates are in 2011, which makes Arvo a new publisher--always a red flag, since there's a really high attrition rate among new small presses, especially where they're under-capitalized or run by inexperienced people. The situation with Arvo is a good demonstration of why it's wise not to approach a new publisher until it has been issuing books for at least a year.

Arvo's website lists several staff names and email addresses, and the URL is registered to Arvo General Coordinator Volkan Dogan, who also signed the contract I saw. But Hulya Dayan, who gives her title as "Acquiring Editor," is the only Arvo staff member that anyone has reported dealing with. She's also listed as the translator of many of Arvo's books, despite the shaky command of English exhibited in her emails (several Arvo authors have told me that their translators were hired by the company as independent contractors). So Arvo's staff may be quite a bit smaller than its website encourages viewers to assume.

Arvo offers two kinds of contracts: a royalties-only contract, and a contract offering a licensing fee for the first 1,000 copies plus 8% royalties for additional printings. I've seen licensing fee contract, which is very short--just three wide-spaced pages--and it's an obviously unprofessional document. Among other things, it has been written by someone with a less-than-perfect command of English, which may account for some very confusing and ambiguous language--such as the clause covering the term of the contract, which could be interpreted to mean either that Arvo has the right to produce and sell the book for five years, or that it has five years to bring the book to market. In addition, there are no provisions for rights reversion, no indication as to whether the rights grant is exclusive or non-exclusive, nothing to address copyright, no translation warranty, and although a publication month is established, there is no mention of a publication year. 

(Authors: this is why you may not want to act as your own literary agent. Just because a contract is short and seems simple doesn't mean it's author-friendly. Unless you're very familiar with publishing contract terminology, it's difficult to recognize nonstandard clauses--and even more difficult to recognize what clauses may be missing. To her credit, Ms. Dayan appears to have been open to negotiation, and some of the authors I spoke with were able to alter the contract to make it more standard. But others signed the contracts pretty much as they were written.)

So is Arvo a scam that targeted writers with promises of money it never intended to pay? Is it a well-intentioned, if not very professional, small press that has fallen on hard times? Or is it an under-capitalized, poorly-planned, under-staffed amateur endeavor that was doomed from the start? There's no way to know for sure. But since Arvo has been so active in recruiting via the Internet, authors need to be aware that this is a publisher that appears to have serious difficulty fulfilling its contractual promises.

Beware of foreign publishers bearing gifts.

(For more information on the complicated world of foreign rights, see this interesting article, which covers the issues involved in selling rights overseas and offers a good overview of the value a literary agency can bring to such transactions.)

D Publishing: Dymocks' New Self-Pub Service

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Last week, Dymocks, an Australian bookselling chain, announced the launch of D Publishing, a electronic and POD self-publishing service.

Like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, Dymocks is a major book vendor. Unlike Amazon and Barnes and Noble, it doesn't have its own ereading device--so D Publishing does not resemble the free, direct-to-device self-pub services offered by Amazon and B&N. Instead, it's more like the middleman self-pub services provided by AuthorHouse and its ilk. For a fee of $499 to $699, you can publish a print book, an ebook, or both (all prices are in Australian dollars). Additional charges for cover creation and setup bring the price as high as $997.

The pricing isn't horrible, by middleman self-pub standards (you can pay much more for a basic package from some services). But there are certainly better deals out there--especially since the only distribution you get is through Dymocks' catalog, Dymocks online, and Google eBooks. Even AuthorHouse et al. do better than that.

But the real problem with D Publishing is its contract, which authors must sign if they want access to an ISBN and what limited distribution Dymocks offers (you can also use D Publishing as a formatter or a printer, in which case the contract isn't required).

With very rare exceptions, self-publishing services' author contracts are nonexclusive, terminable at will, encumber only primary publishing rights, and make no claim on subsidiary rights.

Dymocks' contract, by contrast, is exclusive (all the bolding below is mine):

The scope of the Licence granted to D Publishing is as follows:

(1) sole and exclusive licence to distribution of the Work through the Core Distribution Channels identified from time to time on the Rate Card and Nominated Secondary Distribution Channels;

You cannot terminate the contract unless there is a breach, or unless Dymocks fails to publish:

Either party may by one month’s notice in writing to the other party terminate this Agreement without prejudice to any claims outstanding or any sub-licences properly granted in the event of a breach by the other party of a material term of this Agreement that has not been remedied within 28 days of receiving notice of the breach...

The Author may terminate this Agreement if D Publishing has not published the Work within 28 days of being requested to do so by notice in writing from the Author.

Dymocks, by contrast, can terminate at any time:

D Publishing may, at its discretion and at any time, terminate this Agreement for convenience on giving 30 days’ notice in writing to the Author.

In effect, this is a life-of-copyright contract--for a self-publishing service. And, not content with exclusively locking up your primary publishing rights for an inordinately long period of time, the contract makes a sweeping claim on subsidiary rights as well:

The Author grants to D Publishing a licence...to exercise, including by way of sub-licence, all rights in the Work other than its first volume and electronic publication rights (Subsidiary Rights). Without limiting the preceding, Subsidiary Rights include:

(a) anthology and quotation rights
(b) condensation e.g. magazines, newspapers and ezines
(c) radio and TV straight reading
(d) sound recording
(e) reprint under sub licence
(f) adaptation in other media, including but not limited to internet, apps or other software, collectively, ‘Licence’.

These terms would be a problem if you encountered them in the contract of any small publisher. From a self-publishing service, they are truly awful. And they're just the start. Dymocks can also change the terms of the contract at will. It reserves the right to publish tie-in editions, if a film or other media adaptation is made. The royalty structure is confusing (and, from the looks of it, actual royalties will be low). The payment terms for subsidiary rights sales aren't adequately defined. Royalties are paid and accounted only twice a year. And there's a confidentiality clause that could preclude authors from sharing sales information.

Believe it or not, this is an amended contract. D Publishing withdrew its original contract in response to criticism from the Australian literary community--such as this, from Steve Rossiter of the Australian Literature Review, and this, from contracts expert Alex Adsett. However, according to Rossiter,

The substantive change to the agreement is negligible. The major change has been to bury key details in less direct language and disperse that key information piecemeal across more clauses. This may make key details less obvious to inexperienced authors until they have accepted the agreement but doesn't address the problems.

Will Dymocks heed the continuing criticism and make real changes? Steve Rossiter reports that Michael Allara of D Publishing has promised to release another amended contract in the coming days. Until then, I think that authors would be wise to avoid D Publishing.

EDITED 12/21/11 TO ADD: The D Publishing contract has been taken down (hopefully in preparation for a new and better one), but a PDF of the version I was commenting on above is available here. 

Pearson Education Extends Scope of Permissions Licenses

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Writer Beware has learned that Pearson Education, a major education services company (and the parent company of trade publisher Penguin), is currently requesting vastly extended licenses for copyrighted text and images that it has received permission from rightsholders to include in its print textbooks and other publications.

The original licenses were limited by language, territory, and/or format. Here's an actual example: North American English rights only, for a first printing of 5,000 copies.

Pearson's extension request expands that limited scope to include pretty much everything, everywhere. Here's the exact language:

We are now requesting Extended rights for your selection(s) to include the following: All Languages, World Rights, Print Versions and Non-Print Media, Subsequent Editions, Derivative Versions, Disability Accessible Version and Promotional Use.

There's no doubt that this expanded language reflects the growing importance of digital publishing, with its proliferation of non-print formats and erosion of traditional territorial rights. But it's also alarmingly vague, and enormously expands not just the scope, but potentially the duration of the permission license.

My source for this information, an agent at a well-known agency, told me that when she contacted the third-party service that is handling the extension requests, she was told that she wasn't the first agent to call with concerns about the expanded language. She and the author have decided to deny the extension.

"My concern," she says, "is for authors without representation--that they would just sign [the extension] and not truly understand the repercussions."

The Fine Print of Amazon's New KDP Select Program

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Almost since Amazon's controversial Kindle Owners' Lending Library--which allows Amazon Prime members to borrow selected ebooks for free--debuted, there have been rumors that Amazon was inviting KDP self-publishers to participate.

Amazon has just unveiled KDP Select, which allows self-publishers to "Distribute books through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and reach the growing number of US Amazon Prime members." Authors will receive not just exposure, but payment, through a special fund established by Amazon. $500,000 is available in December, and "at least" $6 million in 2012. (See Amazon's detailed FAQ.)

The enrollment term for KDP Select is just 90 days, but enrollment renews automatically unless you opt out (and you can opt out at any time). During each 90-day term, you can promote your book to Amazon customers as free for up to 5 days; during those free days, however, your book won't be available in the Lending Library.

Payment is calculated according to a complicated formula:

Your share will be calculated as the number of times that the Digital Book has been borrowed during the month as a percentage of the number of times all KDP Digital Books have been borrowed, multiplied by the fund amount we establish for that month...For example, if the fund for a particular month is $500,000, your Digital Book is borrowed 1,500 times, and all participating Digital Books are cumulatively borrowed 100,000 times, your Digital Book will earn $7,500 ($500,000 x 1,500/100,000 = $7,500).

It sounds lucrative, but it should be remembered that this is only an example; KDP Select is too new for anyone to predict what the actual borrowing rates will be (according to Publishers Lunch, 129 titles are currently enrolled, from top KDP authors). Also, Amazon appears to have complete discretion in establishing the amount of the monthly fund, and in deciding on "the criteria for determining which borrowing events qualify for this calculation."

Also important to consider, if you're thinking of participating: you must be willing to distribute your work exclusively on the Kindle. Here is the relevant language:

1 Exclusivity. When you include a Digital Book in KDP Select, you give us the exclusive right to sell and distribute your Digital Book in digital format while your book is in KDP Select. During this period of exclusivity, you cannot sell or distribute, or give anyone else the right to sell or distribute, your Digital Book (or content that is reasonably likely to compete commercially with your Digital Book, diminish its value, or be confused with it), in digital format in any territory where you have rights.

This is a grant of rights and a non-competition clause all in one, and authors need to think carefully before agreeing to it. Contrary to what many authors seem to believe, the regular KDP program does encumber rights, and gives Amazon considerable control over intellectual property (see this comment from me on an earlier blog post for an analysis)--but it does so non-exclusively and imposes no burden on other works. KDP Select goes much farther: it makes Amazon, in effect, your publisher while your book is included in the program, and potentially has an impact on other work you are or are planning to publish. (See this post from Passive Voice for a detailed analysis of the dangers of non-competition clauses.)

Other things to note: if you opt out of KDP Select, your book remains subject to the Terms and Conditions until your current 90-day term expires. And if you violate the Terms and Conditions, there are consequences:

we will not owe you Royalties for that Digital Book earned through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program, and we may offset any of those Royalties that were previously paid against future Royalties, or require you to remit them to us. We may also withhold your Royalty payments on all your Digital Books for a period of up to 90 days while we investigate. This doesn’t limit other remedies we have, such as prohibiting your future participation in KDP Select or KDP generally.

As always, read and be sure you understand the fine print.

Guest Blog Post: A Blast From the Past--Thieving "Literary Agent" Uwe Luserke Re-Surfaces

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Every time I look at Writer Beware's bulging file drawers, and wonder whether I should get rid of files for agents and publishers that have gone silent (or at least consign them to the basement), I'm reminded of why it's important to keep old information handy. The bad guys may disappear--but, as this week's guest blog post by former SFWA President Michael Capobianco demonstrates, you never know when they're going to pop up again.

------------------------------

by Michael Capobianco

Even before the creation of Writer Beware, Ann Crispin was on the watch for literary malefactors.

Back in 1997, when I was serving my first term as SFWA President, SF writer Dave Smeds filed a complaint with SFWA's Grievance Committee (GriefCom for short), reporting that he'd found one of his short stories published in German, but hadn't received any payment or even been notified of the sale by his German literary agent, Uwe Luserke.

Consulting with GriefCom's Foreign Rights Chair Charles Sheffield, it soon became clear that Dave's complaint was the tip of the iceberg. There was an enormous problem with rights sales to German and other European publishers, affecting many SFWA members, including Andre Norton, Robert Jordan, and Terry Pratchett. Short stories and novels were being sold to European publishers, but authors weren’t receiving royalties; in many cases, writers weren't even aware that the sales had been made. (Here's a typical complaint.)

The common link in all these missing payments and stealth sales: Uwe Luserke. Many of the affected authors were represented by Luserke--but many others had never heard of him.

How could such a thing happen? It’s probably difficult today to understand how remote Europe seemed in those days of the early Internet. In addition to the language barrier, communication took place primarily via paper mail. Phone calls were prohibitively expensive, so there was simply not that much contact between the average American author and foreign publishers. Add to that authors’ general inhibition about contacting publishers directly, and you had a situation that was ripe for exploitation.

SFWA began working to connect the dots. In response to a call for information in the SFWA Forum, more and more SFWA members began to come forward with complaints. Dave Smeds, who had taken over as Chair of the Foreign Reprints Committee, did admirable work in collecting and disseminating information. Ann, who at the time was serving as SFWA's Eastern Regional Director--and who was herself affected by the scandal, through her collaborations with Andre Norton--met with representatives of Amber, the Polish publisher that had brought out Polish editions of Norton's Witch World books. Amber showed Ann documents proving that they had paid Luserke--payments that were never passed on to Norton.

SFWA also contacted the major German publisher of science fiction, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, and began action against Luserke in the German courts. Ultimately, Wolfgang Jeschke of Heyne provided SFWA with a list of more than 100 stories that Heyne had purchased from Luserke. Robert Jordan supplemented this with a list of novels sold by Luserke to Heyne, including one by SFWA founder Damon Knight.

In some cases, especially early in his career, Luserke had been making appropriate payments to authors, but it appeared that he had mostly stopped after about 1990. While the problems with Heyne and Amber were fully corroborated, Luserke was also doing business in then-Czechoslovakia, Romania, and other European countries, and the extent of his thefts was never fully discovered. SFWA’s efforts to bring him to justice in Germany were impeded by the distances involved, and the case was dropped after my term as President was over.

Why go into all this now? Over the last few years a shadow has been growing in the East. We’ve heard various reports that Luserke is again asking writers and artists if they need representation. (Here's one recent example. Here's another.) Writer Beware has received a handful of questions about Luserke from writers who've been approached by him. And it was just discovered, as part of SFWA’s Estates Project, that Luserke is listed as the agent of the estate of one well-regarded author.

Luserke has an active Facebook page.

It seems clear that Luserke is active again--even if only sporadically. Given how few reminders of his perfidy survive on the Internet, I and Writer Beware feel it's important for writers and artist to be aware of his history of financial and intellectual property theft. Anyone who is currently doing business with Uwe Luserke, or considering making him their agent, should most certainly beware.

Michael Capobianco is the author of one solo science fiction novel, Burster (Bantam 1990), and co-author, with William Barton, of the controversial hardcore SF book Iris (Doubleday 1990, Bantam paperback 1991, Avon Eos 1999), Alpha Centauri (Avon, 1997), and the critically acclaimed near-future novel Fellow Traveler (Bantam, 1991). Capobianco served as President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1996-1998 and 2007-2008. He received the Service to SFWA Award in 2004 and is currently on SFWA's Board of Advisors.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: How Relying on Numbers Can Get You Into Trouble

 Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Today I saw the following statement used as justification for choosing a fee-based publisher that charges its authors nearly $4,000, and actively presents itself as a real publisher, rather than a vanity publisher or a (very costly) self-publishing service:

A couple ratios I read a while back convinced me I did the right thing by publishing through [pay-to-play publisher's name redacted]. One ratio involved an author finding an agent - 1-in-5000 - and the other involved an agent finding a publisher - 1-in-100.

I've seen these sorts of statistics (most of which appear to be plucked from thin air, and few of which are ever linked to actual sources of information) used again and again to justify bad decisions--from settling for fee-charging agents, to paying huge amounts of money to deceptive "publishers," to defaulting directly to self-publishing (there are good reasons to self-publish, but believing that it's impossible for a new writer to find an agent or a commercial publishing deal isn't one of them). It's unfortunately very easy for writers to buy into these faux numbers--whether out of fear, or inexperience, or simply because they vindicate writers' own frustration with rejection. But if you look at the numbers closely, they don't hold up.

The problem with the first statistic is that it assumes that all authors and all manuscripts are equal, and thus equally in competition with one another. But manuscripts fall into markets and genres, and the competition within each market or genre is different. Beyond that, the hard truth is that most of the manuscripts that are circulating at any given time are not commercially publishable (anyone who has ever looked at an agent's or publisher's slush pile will confirm this). Perhaps 10% even approach publishability; a much smaller percentage is actually marketable. If your manuscript is marketable--which really is the biggest "if" for writers whose goal is traditional publication--you aren't competing with every writer out there, just with the very small number whose work is also marketable. Your odds, in other words, are better than you think.

The problem with the second statistic is that it is very clearly illogical. Agents earn their income from commissions on sales--i.e., they get paid only if they sell something. If agents sold only 1 in every 100 manuscripts they represented, they couldn't make enough money to keep their doors open--except maybe the disreputable ones who charge fees. (Nor, with so few sales, is it likely that trade publishers would be able to churn out over 300,000 new titles a year in the USA alone.) And imagine the work load, if for every success you also had to market 99 duds! No agent will manage to sell every single manuscript--but no agent could possibly remain in business with such a high failure rate.

The fact that not every manuscript will sell punctures another common myth: that it's harder to find an agent than it is to get a publishing deal. Publishers have a one-to-one relationship with the manuscripts they acquire: every single manuscript they take on gets published. Agents know that not every manuscript they represent will find a home--but they need enough sales to keep their businesses going. In other words, they need spares. So while a publisher will only take on manuscripts it will publish, an agent will take on any manuscript he or she thinks may sell--within the limits of his or her workload, of course.

It is certainly tough to find a reputable agent. But it is very far from impossible. And even if your agent search does strike out, there is a huge alternative market in the large number of small presses that don't charge their authors a penny. Unless you want to self-publish (in which case you don't have to shell out anything close to $4,000), there's no reason ever to pay for publication.

MLM for Writers: The Best Authors Lounge

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Writers: Forget about that boring day job. Forget about tedious book promotion. Heck, forget about writing books! There's another way to make money--and it was created with authors in mind.

I received a spam a couple of weeks ago from an outfit called The Best Authors Lounge for a query letter webinar. Intrigued by the sizeable signup fee ($74.99, rising to $99.99 after November 15), as well as the presenter's apparent lack of any professional experience that would qualify her to teach query letter-writing, I decided to investigate further.

From The Best Authors Lounge's opening page:

In order to be “the best author” you can be, join TBA Lounge, an interactive social network that puts the writer, freelance journalist, the author, the songwriter, the poet, and the speaker in a positive atmosphere in which you can be supported and therefore become more successful doing what you love to do, creating a world out of words.

So far, so groovy. There's a catch, though: to join this social network, you have to pay--and it isn't cheap. Fees range from $100 to $200 per month, depending on the level of networking you desire. There are also courses you can take (for more fees, natch) from something called TBA University. You can even self-publish your book, via a variety of packages ranging from $698 to over $1,200.

If you think this all sounds really cool (if so, I'm guessing that you've been living under a rock for a number of years and aren't aware that most social networking is free), but feel you're too cash-strapped to afford it--don't fret. The helpful folks at TBA Lounge have made it possible for you to recoup your investment and then some--by luring other authors to TBA Lounge, and pocketing 50% of their signup fee. (In fact, you can't sign up for TBA Lounge at all unless you have a referral.)

Oh, the money you'll make!

Assume that you refer 20 people to TBA who come in at the Gold Level. You have just created an extra $2,000/mo which is $120,000 per year.

Assume that you refer 10 people at the Bronze Level, 10 people at the Silver Level and 10 people at the Gold Level. You are now earning an extra $2250/mo.

And that's not all! You can earn not just on your referrals, but on your referrals' referrals!

Assume that you referred 5 people to TBA Lounge and those 5 people did the exact same thing down to 5 Generations.

Referral Level 1: 5
Referral Level 2: 25
Referral Level 3: 125
Referral Level 4: 625
Referral Level 5: 3125
-----------------------------
Total Referrals: 390

Also assume that the people above purchased a bronze package. Of course, you will earn $50/mo from each of the 5 people that you referred, which is Referral Level 1.

You will then earn $12.5/mo for each person that those people refer down to your 5th Referral Level. If you do the multiplication, you will see that you’re now earning an extra $49,000/mo.

TBA Lounge, in other words, is a multi-level marketing scheme.

Actually, it's just one part of an MLM scheme--its parent is Team FAM, an MLM organization that claims to "combine THREE of the World's Largest Industries into ONE: Real Estate, Personal Development, and Network Marketing!", but whose real business is selling would-be entrepreneurs a system for establishing an income-producing referral network.

This is the second MLM scheme I've encountered that involves books--the now-defunct BookWise program was the other--but it is the first that specifically targets writers. Bottom line: despite the literary trimmings, TBA Lounge is far less about authors and writing, than it is about the recruitment of participants to sell the service to others.

For much more information on MLM schemes, and their misleading promises of easy money, see MLM Watch and The Truth About MLM.

Book Country And Self-Publishing: Why the Hate?

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Last week, Penguin subsidiary Book Country--a digital slush pile/peer critique community with a focus on genre fiction--announced that it was adding self-publishing services.

This prompted an explosion of negative commentary, including criticism from self-published authors. But I've been following the Book Country story for some time--Book Country staff have been active in reaching out to the writing/blogging community--and a good deal of the commentary I've seen is either inaccurate, or ignores the forest for the trees.

It's a scam!

A fair number of people have been claiming that Book Country's self-publishing service is a scam or a con. How, exactly? You may not think the service is a good idea; you may not like its terms. That doesn't make it a scam. A scam is an enterprise deliberately set up to deceive, cheat, and defraud victims. Using the word so loosely and inaccurately cheapens it, and makes it less meaningful when it's used to describe a real fraud.

Book Country is targeting vulnerable writers with deceptive hype!

I wonder if some of the people who are saying this have actually looked at the self-publishing pages on Book Country's website. There's actually very little hype, and none of the implied false promises of success that you find with so many other self-publishing services.

Book Country is gouging authors by keeping 30% of their income!

The problem here is that many people are comparing apples to oranges, contrasting Book Country, which acts as a middleman, with Amazon's KDP program or Barnes and Noble's PubIt, where there is no middleman.

All middleman self-publishing services keep a percentage of authors' income. Book Country keeps more than some, and less than others. For instance, Lulu keeps 20%. CreateSpace keeps 20-60%, depending on what distribution options you pick. Author Solutions companies (iUniverse, Xlibris, etc.) keep a whopping 80%.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. I'm just saying that Book Country isn't unique.

Book Country is overpriced!

Packages from self-publishing services run the price gamut. You can pay anything from $99 to over $10,000. Book Country's packages, which range from $99 to around $600, are at the lower end of this spectrum.

I'd also point out that, unlike other self-publishing endeavors associated with major publishers, Book Country hasn't contracted its program out to Author Solutions, but is doing the work in-house.

The fees don't even include editing or marketing!

Seriously? That's a criticism? The editing and marketing services sold by self-publishing companies--whether a la carte, or included in publishing packages as a way of bumping up the price--are like liquor in restaurants: a major profit center, because they can be bought cheap and sold high. Like cocktails, they are frequently overpriced, undersized, and cause for serious buyer's remorse once consumed. I frankly think that one of Book Country's strengths is that it doesn't lard its packages with this crap, or nickel-and-dime authors by shilling it separately.

It's not self-publishing, it's vanity publishing!

This is absolutely correct. So what? Publishing through Lulu, CreateSpace, or any other middleman service that charges a fee is also vanity publishing--yet authors who use these services routinely identify themselves as self-published or (shudder) "indie," and no one challenges them. Besides, the lines between self-publishing and vanity publishing have become so blurred over the past decade or so that I'm not sure this is a meaningful distinction any longer.

Am I endorsing Book Country's self-publishing program? No. Am I suggesting that anyone run out and use it? Certainly not. And I remain concerned by the potential conflicts of interest that arise when trade publishers expand into self-publishing.

But given the realities of Book Country's program--especially compared with other trade publishers' self-pub divisions, all of which are much more directly connected to their parent companies--it seems to me that the hating is out of proportion (and I do wish that some of the commentary were more accurate). Sure, Book Country's packages look costly when you contrast them with self-publishing on the Kindle or the Nook; sure, there's no need to use a middleman service when you can DIY for free. But the truth is that not everyone wants to DIY--and there's absolutely no shame in that, as long as you do your research and choose your middleman wisely. If you want a middleman, you can do a lot worse than Book Country.

All of which, of course, is entirely separate from the question of whether or not it's a good idea for you to self-publish to begin with. 

It's interesting how human nature seems to drive us toward caste and class systems. One of the things that has really jumped out at me in the response to Book Country is how the self-publishing community seems to be organizing itself into hierarchies, drawing a line between digital self-publishers and those who use middleman services. The implication is that only the former are truly self-published, are truly entrepreneurs. Could we be moving toward a point where the stigma that has traditionally attached to vanity publishing will arise from within the self-pub community, rather than from outside?