How to Tell if You're Getting Scammed by a Vanity Publisher

HelloOoOo everybody!

Not all publishing contracts are created equal. And if you're a writer who knows absolutely nothing about publishing, read this post very carefully. Repeatedly. Twenty times! It'll be good for you and good for the algorithm.

Writers today have more publishing options than ever before. You can choose to self-publish, which means you publish your book yourself—obviously. You can go the traditional publishing route, which means a publishing house publishes your book for you. Or you can be a hybrid author, like myself. That means some of your books are self-published, and some are traditionally published.

But a lot of writers don't know that there is a fourth option out there–one that has the potential to ruin your career and your finances–and that's called vanity presses. A vanity press, or a vanity publisher, is a publishing house where the author pays to have their book published through said publisher. Typically, the author will pay thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to have their book published. The vanity press will make grand promises. Like, you're gonna be on the New York Times bestseller list, or you're going to get a movie deal. But these promises never come to fruition. All the vanity press does is collect your money, slap your book online, and call it a day. Congratulations, you got suckered!

And there are so many vanity presses out there! Like, countless. Why? ’Cause they're making a killing off of writers who don't know what they're doing. If you're looking to go the traditional route and you're not sure if the publishing house you're talking to is a vanity press, these are the five signs that you gotta run for the hills before they take all your money.

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Number 1: The Most Obvious Sign

You have to pay to publish through them.

Let me make this abundantly clear, no reputable publishing house will ever ask you to pay money for them to publish your book. In fact, that completely negates the entire purpose of publishing traditionally. Publishers are supposed to pay you for your book, not the other way around. They give you a paycheck, and in turn, they collect a large portion of your royalties.

I'm in the process of publishing traditionally. My publishing house gave me money. You wanna know how much money I've given to them? Zero dollars! Because that's not how the industry works. If a publishing house asks you to pay them money, leave them on read, abort mission, block, and delete. Even if you think to yourself, “Well, it's only a couple thousand dollars.” Guess what? They're gonna add more packages and fees on top of that, and pretty soon you're gonna be ten grand in debt.

“But Jennaaa! They believe in me! They think I'm a star!”

They think you're a sucker, you big bag of beans. If they want your money it's a scam. Get out of there.

Number 2: The Publishing House Came to You

Did a publishing house send you a physical letter, send you an email, or wind up in your DMs without you ever having contacted them? If so there's a 99% probability that you're about to get swindled. The traditional industry works as follows:

Aspiring authors contact potential agents through a process known as querying. They try to convince an agent to represent them and help them launch their work. Once they land representation, that agent will pitch their novel to editors from different publishing houses. If an editor shows interest in a book, they will bring it to the publishing house's attention. In other words, through a chain of events and middlemen, writers pitch to publishing houses.

A publishing house will very rarely pitch to a writer, especially if they've never read their work. Publishing houses receive literally hundreds of manuscripts a day, they're spoiled for choice, so they have little incentive to reach out to unknown writers. If you're an unknown writer and you get a random DM from a publishing house, it's probably a vanity press. They know you're new, they're assuming you're uneducated, and they're hoping they can milk your wallet.

Now there is one exception to this rule. A reliable publishing house may very well contact a writer directly, if that writer is already popular, well-established, or has a large audience. This is something that happens to podcasters, actors, YouTubers, and even reality TV folks. That basically means, unless you have a huge, booming audience, if a publishing house ends up in your DMs, it's probably a vanity press.

Number 3: They Make a Lot of Grand Promises

Is this publishing house promising that your book will be a bestseller? Are they promising to feature you in Oprah's Book Club? Are they promising you a movie deal? If your answer is yes and you're not Stephen King, they're fucking liars. A reputable publishing house is not going to make promises they can't commit to. Unless you're already a known name, there's no way they can guarantee you fame and success.

This is a tactic reserved for vanity presses, and they use this approach for an obvious reason. Writers wanna be successful. We want to be bestsellers. And they're hoping you're too dumb to know that this isn't something they can guarantee. A reputable publishing house is also going to expect the writer to do a fair bit of marketing themselves, so if this publishing house is telling you to sit back and watch the money roll in, they're lying.

Number 4: Check Out the Books They’ve Published

And you'll notice one thing that they all have in common: they're shitty.

I've known a number of authors who were swindled by vanity presses, and when I read through their books, it became glaringly clear that no effort was put into the publishing process. The work is amateur. It's unedited. It's clear it went from draft straight to formatting, binding, and printing. I would hope these authors realized they were missing very important editing steps along the way, but they didn't realize they didn't have to pay to publish, so here we are.

To be clear, I'm not saying that if a vanity press contacts you, your work sucks. I'm saying that a vanity press will contact everyone and anyone, who writes literally anything. And they're not going to put in the effort to make your novel a quality product. A publishing house is supposed to enlist several rounds of editors and proofreaders. Vanity presses usually don't waste their time with this, because they already got your money. So if you're not sure if the press contacting you is legit, you've done all the other steps on this list and you're still not convinced, read a few of the books they've published. If they smell like hot garbage, you've got your answer.

Number 5: Google Them

This is the one that really makes me question the viability of the human race. A shit ton of writers have contacted me and said, “Hey I got a message from publishing house XYZ. You think they're any good?” I immediately Google said publishing house, and wouldn't you know it, a bunch of pages pop up all about how they're a scam.

Writers, I am begging you, if you're in contact with a publishing house at the very least do a teeny-tiny bit of research. You can take an extra step and Google the publishing house's name, plus the phrase “vanity press.” Nine times out of ten, the top result will be a confirmation of whether or not they're a vanity press. Just like that, you saved yourself a ton of time and thousands of dollars. If you skip this step, I'm at a loss, honestly.