Publishing houses do have a lot of problems but they often are willing to pay the bill to hire editors and designers who are very good at their job and pay them accordingly.  An individual author often lacks the money to do that on their own and their work suffers because of it.

I commented about this on Facebook the night of Dec 8. D Publishing withdrew their Publishing Agreement agreement and replaced it with a reworded version on Dec 9. The problems remain, but disguised by less direct language, which is even more concerning when it comes to authors not experienced in the business side of publishing and with contracts.

The following article outlines a series of major problems with their Publishing Agreement
http://auslit.net/2011/12/09/d-publishing-by-dymocks-books-authors-bewar/

I don’t see why an author would shell out $549 for someone else to format their manuscript and upload it, when those are one-time things, and a third-party independent contractor can do that for a fraction of the cost. E-formatting is not rocket science. You can hire someone to do it for you, or play with the preview option until it’s to your liking. While I understand that some self-pubs aren’t DIY, there’s cheaper alternatives. What, exactly, about the $549 package is worth the money?

I’m a freelance graphic designer. For a book-formatting package, I wouldn’t charge anywhere near this amount. And for that amount, I’d design a cover, draft a press release, and spend some time with the author developing a social media strategy to boot. 

Also, for print publication, CreateSpace is, quite technically, free. You can pay for the proof, or publish without. Nothing that Book Country is quoting is optional. You’re charged a fee for up-front usage. This is a vanity press, not a self-pub. World of difference there. 

Yes, Book Country is acknowledging self-publishing as viable, and yet it’s counting on a self-publishing author to not research their options and hand over money for something that they may not have to pay for with someone else. It’s not illegal, but it’s definitely not good, and they make out like bandits on that, at the author’s expense. One step forward, two steps back. 

And last time I checked, no one had revoked the rule of thumb of the writing world that the money flows to the author, not the other way around. 

I’d also be more willing to believe in good faith if it weren’t obvious that the upload process is a single, discrete event–it’s a mouse-click. It happens once. And it’s more than likely going to be performed by an underpaid or non-paid intern. And for that, they want 30% of every single copy sold, either demonstrating that they want to be repaid over and over for an action they did once, or demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of how electrons move–they do not have to perform that upload mouse-click every time a buyer purchases a book.

I’d also be more willing to believe in good faith if it weren’t also obvious that Penguin still seems to insist on catering to their legacy accounting systems that simply can’t handle the real-time tools the major distributors have available.

If this is not a thinly-veiled attempt at a money-grab, flavored with scorn for the content producers, it is at best a rigid attempt to force self-publishing into a model that subjects itself to the very inflexibility of traditional publishing that the self-pub broke out of. It’s fitting a square peg into a round hole.

I am more than willing to share my mad hole-avoiding walking skills, and even if that guy behind me does not want to learn to walk around holes, I can tell you and him that falling into a hole is no way to make up for not knowing how to walk around one.

Traditional publishers offer a wide range of services not always recognized or appreciated by authors.  For authors who choose to self-publish, they soon realize the amount of work necessary to professionally publish.  The great thing about this new world is that authors have the power to make their own decisions.  They can do everything themselves, do some of it themselves, or outsource some or all of the required publishing responsibilities to one of the many providers who now fill the services spectrum.

Kudos to Book Country for recognizing self publishing as a viable option for professional authors.

Look, I’m in publishing and even I can see that it’s just not cricket. It’s one thing if they charge for formatting, but then to take 30% is robbery. Small publishers will do all the work – and I mean ALL the work, and only take 50%.

It’s just a show of complete contempt for authors by the Big 6 – YET AGAIN.

This is simply a bad deal, hence, the negativity arises from warnings, e.g., if I see gas at $8.00/gal but find it down the street at $3.00/gal, I am not “threatened” by the higher price, but my negativity of said price may bleed into warnings for others to avoid the 8.00/gal seller.