Public Service Announcement

Why Simon & Schuster's Archway Publishing Is Bad for Authors

Public Service Announcement, Writing and Publishing 6 , ,

Simon & SchusterI had to comment on the deal that Simon & Schuster Archway Publishing is offering to authors. No matter how S&S tries its best to package it as "self-publishing" it is a vanity publishing venture, designed specifically to make profit by taking money from authors, not selling books to readers.

I've created a handy cheat sheet / chart below for you. You can see that S&S's Archway Publishing offers the worst of the both traditional publishing and self-publishing: You'll pay for everything; you'll have no control over anything; and you'll have to split your profit with the publisher.

Do not sign up for it. There's no reason to pay someone $2,000-$25,000 to format and upload your book on Kindle. (Since S&S plans to outsource everything for Archway Publishing, you won't get the kind of editing and cover art that S&S's traditional publishing program offers.)

Furthermore, you do not need to use service providers like S&S's Archway publishing to get noticed by a traditional publisher if that is one of your goals. They are already watching Amazon's Top 100 list. The self-published novelists who got snapped up by traditional publishers did not use vanity publishers.

Trad Pub Vanity Pub Self-Pub
Who pays for editing, cover, formatting, layout and all the other costs related to publication? Publisher You You
Who selects the team/people for editing, cover, formatting, layout and all the other activities related to publication? Publisher Publisher You
Who controls editing, cover, formatting, layout and all the other activities related to publication? Publisher Publisher You
Who controls your book's price? Publisher Publisher You
Who gets paid by the retailers? Publisher Publisher You
Is the money from retailers split between the publisher and author? Yes Yes No

PSA: What You Must Do When You Hire a Web Designer

Public Service Announcement, Resources 1 ,

You must must must must must get all html, css & graphic files, etc. from your designer even if s/he uploads them to a server for you. This is especially important if you haven't bought your own hosting service and therefore don't have ftp access information, etc.

If you don't do this AND your designer disappears on you and/or you don't want to use her to make every little change (or god forbid, your designer is an a-hole who's decided to hijack your site and hold it for ransom), you are totally screwed unless you're tech savvy. 99.9% of people are probably doomed to go through the horrible time-consuming exercise of getting all their files back by using the "view source code" command on their browser. And they better hope that their designer didn't code in PHP because PHP sourcecode is hidden if you access the file via a browser.

Remember: html, css, graphics files (jpg, gif, etc.) should be a part of the deliverables. You paid for them, so you're entitled to them. Specify this clearly when you hire someone.

BTW -- the list of designers I can now recommend has dwindled even more. In case you're wondering, I wholly recommend Frauke from CrocoDesigns and Tara O'Shea from Fringe Element. I've worked with them both, and they're excellent professionals. (Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with them in any way.)

Public Service Announcement -- How Not to Promote: Spam Disguised as "Newsletters"

Public Service Announcement, Resources 1 , ,

I think newsletters are fantastic. I've started one myself, and I'm still giving away A Happily Ever After of Her Own, a paranormal romance novella, to anyone who subscribes to it.

But I've been getting some that are more like spam than true newsletters. Here's how they manage to irritate me, and I don't suppose I'm alone in being annoyed:

  1. I've never given explicit permission to be added to the list. Getting my email address from somewhere is not permission for you to spam me. Yes. SPAM. The word may sound harsh, but if you send unsolicited promotional email, it's spam. (And no, somebody sending you a private email once or twice does not constitute permission.)
  2. I get a weekly email full of "buy this" or "buy that" that does not offer any value. Once a month is okay...maybe. Every week? No.
  3. I cannot unsubscribe. I know some who mass email using the BCC field -- even, God forbid, the CC field. Do not do this. Buy a newsletter service or install a script on your server that manages mass mailing lists. If I haven't given you explicit permission to add me to your list and if you send me email that I cannot unsubscribe from easily, I will report you to your ISP for abuse.

I know it's tempting to get your name out there, but really, a little common sense and courtesy will go a long way. You really don't want people associating your name with spam.

Public Service Announcement

Free Read, Public Service Announcement 0 ,

A couple of people asked me via Twitter, etc. how they can read the password-protected chapter. Here it is:

I sent out the third installment to A Happily Ever After of Her Own in its entirety, plus the password to access the web version to newsletter subscribers yesterday (Monday October 19) at 6:30 a.m. ET. So please check your inbox.

If you signed up but have not received an email from the list, please make sure that you've clicked on the confirmation link. The link is in the email you got when you first signed up. If you haven't received it, try signing up again with the same email address, so the system can send you another one.

If that doesn't apply to you, please check your spam folder to make sure your email server didn't mark it as spam.

If that's not the case either, contact me via webmail form, twitter or by leaving a comment at the end of this post.

Interested in reading A Happily Ever After of Her Own? Sign up for my newsletter. It's free. :)


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Once you've signed up, you'll get an email with a confirmation link. You must click on it or you will not be on the newsletter mailing list.

After the confirmation process is completed, you'll get an email with links and passwords to previous freebies you've missed.

Thanks and enjoy!

PSA: Watching Anime Does Not Equal Research!

Books, Japan, Public Service Announcement 9 ,

I'm not sure what's up with books set in Japan these days. Or maybe I've been extremely unlucky. It's painfully obvious that the authors have never been to Japan, do not understand the culture and/or done all their research by watching anime (or perhaps reading manga).

The most recent one I bought made me livid. Even before I finished the first chapter, I came up with seven things wrong with the characters and setup. If it hadn't been an ebook, I would've returned it and demanded a refund.

Living in Japan does not make your character Japanese. Sipping green tea while eating sashimi does not make your character Japanese. Wearing kimono does not make your character Japanese. And for pity's sake, speaking broken Japanese in romanji does not make your character Japanese.

Got it?

Seriously...I'm never wasting my money again on a book set in Japan written by anime fangirls/boys.

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