Ask Sally #16 - Paying others to publish your work

I've had two questions on a similar theme; paying to enter competitions and vanity publishers. I thought I'd deal with them together.

If a short story competition asks for £5 to enter does that mean it's a scam?

Not necessarily. A lot depends on what the competition is, who's running it and whether the entry fee is commensurate with the prize.

So, to start with: Who is running it? Are they an organisation that has been going for some time? If not, do they seem respectable? I personally tend to avoid competitions that are run from peoples' blogs, or from a freespace website, unless I've heard of them before.

Is the competition merely an excuse to fill an anthology which you are expected to buy and encourage all your family to buy? (and this could be true even if there's no entry fee). For example, £5 is a fair entry fee to pay for prizes that start at around £100 for the first prize. It's not a fair fee to pay if the prize is only £10-£20. So look at the entry fee in relation to the prizes on offer.

Having said that, I paid £5 to enter the British Fantasy Society Short Story comp where the top prize was £50 and second prize £25 (plus publication for both prizes), but I figured that the name behind that competition - The British Fantasy Society - was worth the entry fee.

So it really is a case of checking into each competition and the people running it. And that goes even if it's a free to enter competition, because as I've already stated, some of those are just an excuse to fill an expensive anthology that they want you to buy. If that anthology is created by Random House or any of the other big publishing companies, then go for it. If it's by someone who's publishing the anthology via Lulu, it's wise to be careful. Not that there's anything wrong with publishing via Lulu, which I'll come to later, but if it's just to line the pockets of the person running the comp, then it isn't worth your while entering.

Also beware organisers who run competitions charging entry fees, then give all their friends and writing group pals the top places. Chances are your entry fee was just intended to up the prize money.

What is vanity publishing?

There is a rule called Yog's Law that states (I'm paraphrasing here) money should always flow towards the author, not away from them.

Vanity publishing is when a writer has to pay for their own publishing, usually at highly inflated prices. Particular 'villains' in this are Publish America, Forward Press (not to be confused with the Forward Poetry Prize) and various other anthologisers. What they do is accept anything you offer them, then charge you through the nose for a copy (or several thousand copies) of the book your work appears in. Some writers have been taken for thousands of pounds for vanity press. Some argue that as long as their work is in print, they don't care. Well they should care. Whileever there are people out there gullible enough to pay these inflated prices for books with no production values and absolutely no chance of selling in the real world, the longer the vanity press will prey on the naive writer.

Years ago I wrote an article about Vanity Publishing, which you can read here. This was written as a result of my own brush with the vanity press. Luckily I had less money than sense, so didn't get taken in too much.

The absolute expert on vanity publishing is Johnathon Clifford who has run a very long campaign against the vanity press, particularly the poetry anthologisers. His site is full of useful information about the vanity press and what to look out for.

However, Vanity Publishing and POD (Publish on Demand) should not be confused with the other POD (Print On Demand) publishing, as offered by http://www.lulu.com/ who run a highly ethical shop that allows writers to create their own books, offering cheap marketing packages that include an ISBN number (even this is optional), but ensuring that the writer never has to buy more than one book (at cost price). Books are published one at a time as your readers buy them. I self-published via Lulu last year, with my collection, Eves of Destruction and I was delighted with the process and the finished product. It's also ideal for smaller projects. For example, I've just created a large print book of some of my short stories for my partially sighted dad's 70th birthday and it cost me under £20 including P&P. I'm under no obligation to buy anything other than this one copy.

I hope that has helped a bit, but there are more links below which, as well as going more into the subject, give a list of those to avoid.

More Links

Johnathon Clifford

Writer Beware

Preditors and Editors

What Price Vanity? By Sally Quilford

Wikipedia Article on Vanity Press

Wikipedia Print On Demand

Wikipedia Publish On Demand