Indie Publishing Companies, the good, the bad, & the ugly!

xlibris is a vanity publisher, probably need a note there.

More vanity publishers:

www.dogearpublishing.net/

www.westbowpress.com

I will state my opinions of each thing and my opinion of the process of working with them.

I am wide by the way and I am direct with KDP, Google Play, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble.


KDP:

I have come to loathe Amazon as an author. They have sickened me so in the last few years with how they've treated authors, etc. The scammer thing is what really did it for me and how they didn't give a damn about how this hurt authors until the media got involved. Still, of course I have to sell there but if I had a choice I wouldn't sell on Amazon at all. Thank god I am wide. I couldn't handle being exclusive to Amazon with the crap they pull!

Process of Publishing on KDP:

Like second nature. The only thing is sometimes I have an issue with my file being mucked up in the preview and I might have to change it multiple times but other than that it's usually easy to put a book on Amazon.

Google Play:

Become one of my favorites! My income has gone up there the last three months. I believe it's the permafrees. Freebies really help you get things going on Google Play. The site needs a serious overhaul though. You can't search books like you do on other sites. You gotta put in the name of any book you want and they don't update the books they have listed on the genre pages. The site is very boring and they have no ranking system, nothing. So the only way you can tell how your book is doing is by looking at your sales figures.

Process of Google Play:

Many authors hate it but it doesn't bother me. Once you know your prices then it's easy. Sometimes I have a file that's rejected but the most I've had to upload something is twice. You are supposed upload PDFs to Google Play but many don't seem to know that. I do wish they had a way you could check sales without downloading. The easy way to see how you are doing is just check the amount of money you have in the Paid section so you don't have to download that excel sheet. Also, wish they had a place to put keywords. All you can do is place them at the bottom of your book description but I doubt keywords even work on GP.

Barnes and Noble:

When I first started wide I was making more here than any other retailer outside Amazon. I'm still doing okay but Google Play and Apple is surpassing my income at Barnes and Noble. Their site can use an overhaul as well. It's boring and they have NO series page which makes me wonder why they make you mention if your book is part of a series if there is no series page anyway??? You have to put keywords in your title field or else your book most likely won't be found by readers.

Process of Publishing on Barnes and Noble:

Meh. Guess it's easy enough but it takes them a while to convert your cover and interior files and they've changed how you pick categories and made it more complicated to me but it's okay.

Kobo:

The worst retailer for me. I barely move anything at Kobo and my only hope selling much there is Walmart. I am at the point where I am not sure I will continue to put books on this retailer.

Process of Publishing on Kobo:

Extremely easy. Probably the easiest out of all the retailers but be very careful with pre-orders. If you update a pre-order file make sure you remember to re-do the date or else your book will publish THAT day. That's one thing I don't like. Kobo should have the pre-order date set and it shouldn't change whether you redo your file or not.

Apple:

No Mac so I go through D2D. Apple is okay and my sales are doing better there as time goes on.

Process of Publishing on Apple:

D2D makes it easy enough but I wish I could do it direct. I don't like how D2D doesn't allow you to put hyphens in your name and claim it's Apple who doesn't allow it but I see authors who are direct with Apple with hyphens in their name so it's clearly not Apple. I wish there were better categories and keywords to choose from. I don't like how they don't really have a set category for one of the genres I write but from what I hear this is a D2D issue not Apple. Other than that, easy and straightforward to upload there.

Draft 2 Digital:

Best aggregator out there in my opinion. Hands down.

Smashwords:

Sucks on every level and the website still looks like something out of 1998. Mark needs to get rid of that Meatgrinder. No one likes it but him! It should not be that much of a hassle to upload books on a site. I have stopped putting books on there. Not worth the time.

Streetlib:

Emails you every darn day and I doubt I've sold anything. I only have a few books on there for global markets. I don't plan on putting more up there.

PublishDrive:

Guess it's okay. I only have a few books there and use them for Global markets.

You can publish on Drive Thru Fiction. They do print and ebooks, SF but check to see just what they do. I think they mostly started up to do gaming stuff. I uploaded one book there and then never did anything else, so I can't say whether they are good for sales personally.

I watching a Kristen Martin editing video and she mentioned that her books are available at Book Depository and Books-A-Million, so I looked them up. I didn't see an option for getting into Book Depository, but I did have better luck with BAM!So I added it to the print book options. Does anyone here sell their books at either bookstore?

Books-A-Million Retail Stores

Public Your Books with BAM! - www.booksamillion.com/publishers/index.html?id=7385062834643

How to Apply - www.booksamillion.com/publishers/books.html?id=7385062834643#submittitle

You have to apply to the distributor that makes all of the purchasing decisions for BAM, so you fill out a form and send them a free print copy, and then they decide if they want to carry it or not. If they decide not to buy it, they donate it to charity for soldiers.

I've heard good things about Drive Thru (I think Bards and Sages/Julie uses them effectively), I just haven't taken the time to really get set up there yet. I'm still slogging through the epic SF book that never ends, plus a couple of other things on my plate, but hope to get going on other sites soon.

Scammers is as scammers does.

You're arguing theory--the theory that some vanity publishers, somewhere, somehow, might not be scammers. I'll take the facts on the ground any day.

The vanity publishers listed above have long histories of scamming authors out of their money.

If they aren't listed, they might (caveat emptor) be worth doing business with. But if they are listed above, there is plenty of evidence they should be avoided.

It doesn't make sense to say we shouldn't identify THESE known problem entities, just because we can't identify ALL scammers.

1. I think the term vanity publisher is spot-on. The publisher tries to appeal to the writer's vanity, not their business sense, since anyone with business sense would not spend that much money for those services without a genuine track record of success.

2-5: all true, but what are you trying to say to us, IRT this thread? This thread is doing a service. What is your point?

The publishing path is dark and full of terrors for all newbie no-nothings, John Snow, which is why it's so important for communities to rise up to provide illumination and knowledge on which places are honest and safe and which ones will steal your money and smear your good name.

Real publishers don't charge upfront for their services. Vanities do. Real publishers actually want you to make money because they don't earn back their investment, if you don't. Vanities couldn't care less since they get everything upfront.

Cover designers and editors and promo companies aren't publishers, so it's fine for them to charge upfront. Service provider is a totally different business model from publisher. They may look similar since a vanity will provide all those services for you in-house, plus publish you. But so will or should a real publisher.

A non vanity one-house solution could be to have a sort of cooperative of independent cover artists and editors and publishers and social media experts/advertisers. The newbie author signs a contract with the publisher, with higher royalties than they'd get from a traditional publisher because the publisher is making you pay all your publishing expenses beforehand. But you get a good discount on all services because of the deal the service providers make with the publisher. You have total transparency, reasonable fees paid to the publisher who gets a small cut for giving the service providers the work, no outlandish promises, no actual fees to publish the book, so the publisher still has motivation to want the author to succeed.

You could call this a Cooperative Publisher, maybe. I think something like that could work and would still differentiate you from the vanities who are nothing but scammers. There are probably already publishers doing this. Perhaps this is what is meant by Hybrid? If so, then we already have a name and a good differentiation between good and bad.

I have added Austin Mcauley to the list. I hadn't heard of him before. Thanks dormouse!

I'd agree that it could work. But scammers would claim to be doing exactly that. And probably that is what most hybrid publishers are.

dormouse, You should always be able to criticize any product or service you pay for, and you should be able to get your money back if they didn't fulfill their end of the bargain. So our reputable cooperative would have a vibrant feedback system and would offer a money-back guarantee. The guarantee would come out of the publisher's pocket which would also serve as another motivator to make sure they only do business with honest and capable providers.

Yes, traditional publishing is definitely not perfect. It has a ton of drawbacks, especially now, which is why we're mostly indies here. And I'm sure lots of unethical shenanigans have gone on in the past and are probably still going on now. Whenever you go into business with another person there is always a risk of being scammed or swindled. One more reason for the community to keep speaking up when we hear about bad actors whether they be traditional publishers, hybrid/vanities, or indie service providers.

So, Izzard Ink?


But the writers can choose which of their services to buy, they say the price can be lower (presumably for lower quality or quantity) and they are rated Excellent - Partner on the ALLi list.

Reading Bookbub, I noticed a book there at a reduced price of $3.85. Unusual I thought.
Book seems quite extensively reviewed. Some reviews suggest that the editing could be better.
Cover's not awful, but not spectacularly good either (maybe he didn't go for the $2,000 cover option!).

I'll not argue with that - though I still hate the term.
I think that they probably do offer the services they claim.

But the structure of the site looks vanity, pulling in the ignorant.
They say they don't just accept anyone, but nothing to suggest that anyone is rejected either.
Prices are high. Not necessarily unjustifiable, but I couldn't see anything indicating real expertise.


Makes me question the ALLi ratings and the methodology behind them.

There has clearly been a bit of marketing (or something) behind this particular book. Sales rank not very high but they have chosen a higher price strategy for a book that (probably? possibly?) doesn't have mass market appeal. That's what I would have done myself. Looks as if there will be a ready market for any sequels.

Had a quick peep at the Look Inside: a bit over written and clunky. But not an easy thing for an editor to improve without rewriting completely. Might settle down as the book gets going. If I'd been the publisher, I would have suggested that the author go away, reread all of Chesterton's Father Brown books (I'm sure he must have read them at some point) and then rewrite his own; written over 100 years ago, not dissimilar in style in some ways, but much more elegance and movement.