"Book Designer"
"Book Promoter"
"Niche Publisher"
"Book Printer(!)"
Basically, it's a dozen or so ways to get money from writers who want their work published and consumed, but who haven't been able (or haven't tried, or have given up...) to work through the conventional agent/publisher system.
A few, a VERY few out of the total zoo, are honest providers of a specific service such as publication prep: You send them a manuscript in any form of text file, and they will do the necessary work to format it for publication according to whatever publication standard you specify. This can be a lot of work and is often worth paying someone else for. Or promotion, once your book is in print - an honest promoter will work with you to reach your audience, by creating marketing materials and supplying them to likely outlets, getting radio or podcast interviews lined up, etc. Again, this can be exhausting and mind-numbing tasks for a writer, and with publishers' promotion budgets hovering around $0 for anything but popular/known quantity writers, it may be a worthwhile investment.
But many if not most of these pond scum have an array of online tools that basically cookie-cut a few things, for which they charge you a vast sum, without any accountability in terms of actual outcomes. ("We sent your blurb and materials to over 5,000 bookstores!" Well, yeah, as a spam email, which the bookstores very properly ignored.)
In the old days, if you wrote a book, you bought (or went to the library and photocopied the relevant pages from) "Publisher's Marketplace (YEAR)" and started sending agents and/or publishers their stated requirements (chapter outline, summary, etc.). And kept files of all your rejection letters until you got lucky. Or maybe you never got lucky, and that manuscript was found in a bottom drawer years later.
And that was pretty much it. Your investment in getting yourself published might amount to a few hundred bucks in photocopying, mailing, etc. And you either struck it lucky, or not. Either way, you knew what you were getting into, and it rarely amounted to more than you could afford.
(And yes, there were some 'vanity publishers' around back then but they rarely worked with aspiring fiction writers, and aspiring fiction writers rarely had the vanity publisher route on their radar.)
Then came modern publishing tools and the Internet and suddenly everyone was an author and everyone was a publisher and all of a sudden there were enough hopeful aspiring writers who could be cheaply and easily marketed to, to make them a genuine target, and... we're off!
If you can afford to be a self-published, self-promoting writer, and it's your idea of a good time, enjoy! That is now easier and (comparatively) less expensive than ever, if you go about it intelligently.
I have a friend who has self-published over a dozen works of fiction in their retirement, and promotes them every summer in one of those super-campers with a trailer attached for the boxes of books. They are aimed at a very specific niche that can be marketed to by going to niche-focused festivals and gatherings, and my friends (writer and spouse) spent several of their early retirement years firing up the camper in late April/early May and making the rounds of these festivals and gatherings all over America throughout the summer, winding down in October. Then home to write more books over the winter.
Of course, that couple both retired on very good pensions and had also saved for their retirement, owned their home, etc. They were in a position to pursue this expensive hobby. The book sales basically supported the travel costs and gave them various tax write-offs but they never even broke even on the printing and bindery costs.
And, they had thoroughly researched what services were worth paying for and what they could do better themselves, and as retirees, they had the time and energy to do all those things.
But soon the energy faded, their health deteriorated as it does when you get old, and they couldn't all that traveling and festival/event attending.
My friend still writes. And shares .pdf files with friends. But no longer pays for jacket design, printing, etc., and when consulted about self-publishing by other aspiring writers (some of the early books have actually sold in the hundreds of copies on Amazon.com, which makes it an exceptionally successful self-publishing adventure), shares the sage advice "Do it if you love doing it and can afford it, BECAUSE you love doing it. Don't expect anyone but friends and family to read it, and regard it as a nice surprise if anyone else ever does."
Another friend was less fortunate. Absolutely certain that the book they had been writing and holding in their heart for many years would succeed if they could only get it into print (and this was a good, well-written novel - not of a type/genre that I like but literate, well-plotted, with good character development and an interesting theme) ended up spending nearly $20,000 that they COULD NOT AFFORD for the experience. They still have boxes of the book stacked at the back of the garage, but since they're having to sell the house, they'll need to find something to do with them.
So I am not surprised, qwlauren, that you have met up with one of the nastier remoras of the writer exploitation industry. You were clearly too savvy, too well-organized and precise in what you were looking for and were willing to pay for. They saw you coming. They knew they couldn't jack you for anything worth their precious time.
Now let them go, and good luck with your book! It's incredibly impressive that you have actually written an actual book, do you know that? Do you know how many people noodle for years writing stuff and dreaming and believing they COULD write a book and they never actually do it?
And you did it! So take that triumph with you and know that Ms Nasty-email will never in her entire miserable life accomplish anything like that.
admiringly,
Bright
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