If it seems too good to be true...

[stargatedragon]

... you know the rest.

Seems that there's a "publisher" in the UK that's racing towards becoming known as the Next Great Publishing Scam. YouWriteOn, a writing website, has decided to lunge forth with the offer to publish the first 5,000 manuscripts sent in to them. Wait, you say - what's the scam there? Why wouldn't any decent author rush to get a

Comments

YWO is not for me!

[anonymous]

Thanks for linking to my blog! I blog at How Publishing Really Works, and I'm referred to above as Old Hack, my Absolute Write user name.

I really don't like this latest "publishing" offer from YWO, and I don't think I'm alone.

If anyone would like to use my blog post about it on their blog you're welcome to: just so long as you acknowledge that it's mine, and link back to my blog.

Re: YWO is not for me!

[stargatedragon]

hey, thanks for visiting!

you say it a lot better than I ever could - I'd stay far, far away from this "offer", as you said.

:)

[dqg_neal]

Well actually it isn't the POD technology that is screwed up... it is people wanting to act like publishers that can't be bothered to keep an inventory of at least 100 copies, so you can handle larger orders.

[stargatedragon]

true - that's what screws a lot of authors when their "publisher" claims that they're better off using POD intead of running an actual print order. The publisher doesn't take any risk because if they don't print the book until it's ordered it's usually already paid for.

and, as I've found out through personal experience, some bookstores won't even touch POD books - even if they're "returnable".

:P

[dqg_neal]

The bookstore doesn't want returnable.. they want pulpable. Which is returnable in their mind, but not what many publishers that just use POD activate on their accounts. (Of course sometimes it is the bookstore's database that isn't recording it the way the publishers want. Bookstores do silly things, like not allowing the store to reorder books as some authors recently found. A handful of author blogs posted things like that last month.... these from major publishers.)

[dqg_neal]

I wonder how many people that finish NaNoWriMo will be sending in their books to that site.

[stargatedragon]

if you're in the UK... probably a lot.

PublishAmerica is the usual scam of choice for NaNoWriMo in the US, sorry to say - they misrepresent themselves and grab authors out of the gate.

gotta be so careful out there...

:(