Over the years I have been promoting poetry competitions and advertising literary magazines from external websites that are free for writers to submit their work to. If you have been following my blog posts on these topics, you will know that I disagree with any literary platform that charges authors upfront payments to publish their work, whether that be in the form of ‘submission fees’, ‘reading fees’ or any other contribution towards production costs.
If a publisher charges fees to an author to submit their work, I would be inclined to call this business a vanity press, not a publisher. If they are charging the writer, say, a £20 submission fee to even have their work considered for publication, I’d bet my boots they have an almost 100% acceptance rate of submissions. The publisher may state on their website that there is no guarantee of publication, but if they are making money from the author, not book sales, then why would they worry about the quality of the writing? Publishing a new or little-known author is a risky business: sales may or may not do well. But if a ‘publisher’ eliminates the risk of losses by charging an author upfront fees, then why worry about sales? If an author will pay £20 upfront, then they will surely pay more once they have signed a contract. Why not charge them to buy 50 copies of their book, as a contractual condition? Why not make them commit a couple of hundred, or even several thousand pounds towards production costs, so that they can “have control over design of the finished product”?
Yes, publishers need money to survive and make more books. They may need start-up funds to get their business going in the first place. Nevertheless, a reputable publisher should make money from sales, or subscriptions, not authors. I have absolutely no problem with a publisher asking a would-be author to buy a book from their bookstore to support the publisher and to see if their writing fits with the catalogue. But asking a writer to fork out a tonne of money as a condition of being published in the first place is wrong. With all this in mind, let’s end with my checklist of publishing red-flags:
