Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
I really don't like the "pay to play" mindset of most publishing services and wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. I want my books released by a company that's looking for money from someone other than me.
For all that people rag on commercial publishers, they are light years beyond most pay to publish services. Those are the companies charging authors an arm and a leg to destroy their hopes and dreams.
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To some degree, your statement about PTP and POD houses is correct. However, I state *to some degree*. If you're talking Xibris, or Author House, then you're 100% right. They're in it to rob you blind, take your money, and leave you high and dry. Same goes for POD publishers.
However, there are a handful of PTP publishing houses that are on the same level as the big traditional publishing houses like Baen, Simon & Schuster, and Random House.
The only difference between the traditional houses and the good PTP houses in this case was that you had to pay the initial publishing cost up front. After that the company itself handled everything else for you. A good guide to determining who's legit, and who's just after your money is to see how much they charge you for stuff, what they charge you for, and how they market your book.
If they won't market it, save for you paying them crazy amounts of money to do it, then avoid them like the plague. Same goes if they make you pay for ever jot and tittle. But if they only make you cover the startup costs and then handle everything else for you from there, then you're golden. I myself found several PTP houses like that before settling on my current publisher, and he's been utterly awesome in more ways than I can even begin to list. Working with him has been like being treated as royalty vs what I got from some other PTP publishing houses like Amazon who have the "cattle" mentality about their authors.
So saying that all PTP publishing houses are