Small, Independent and Vanity Publishers
In the journey to publishing, alongside the option of acquiring a literary agent (which is a necessity when it comes to more than 85% of the legitimate publishing field, given that the vast majority of publishers don't accept unrepresented manuscripts), there is also the option of going with smaller, sometimes called boutique publishers or independent publishers. You may notice that I didn't mention vanity publishers there, but there's a reason for that, which will soon be revealed.
If you do decide to submit to an independent or boutique publisher, the first thing that you need to do is do an extensive amount of research. Look at the authors that the publisher has published. Look at the reviews of the books. Look for ratings. The reason for this is that some (keyword being "some") of these small publishers are less than reputable or not quite what they make themselves out to be. Some boutique publishers are little more than an individual or a small group who simply take the submissions they receive from authors and go through the self-publishing process on sites like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service. They're essentially doing exactly what the author could have done, but instead of the author taking the total amount of the royalties, the author only get a partial cut and the "publisher" takes the rest, and even if the author figures that out, there's very little they can do once they've signed a contract. Some of the red flags to look out for are things like publishers whose primary clients also happen to be the employees of the company. That tends to suggest that they only created their "company" so they could have the appearance of an independent publisher choosing to publish their own works, adding the appearance of more legitimacy (went through a review process, got selected, critiqued, edited, etc.), while, in reality, they are just going through the self-publishing process, just with a fancier paintjob. They may ask for submissions, but only as an attempt to look legitimate. They will more than likely reject any submissions that aren't from their established friend group. One way you can tell is to look at some of the reviews of the books that they publish. If the reviews are all filled with criticisms about poor quality writing or writing that looks like it was AI-generated, it's a good sign that they are not a reputable publishing company.
Another indicator, though not always the case, is the communication method. If their official contact email is through one of the main free email service providers (Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, etc.), it tends to imply that they're not even willing to pay the relatively low fee to establish an email server for their website's domain. (Example - submissions or publisher name@so-and-soPublishing.com, as opposed to "PublishingCompanyName@gmail/yahoo/outlook.com) Such personalized email domain hosting services cost as little as $1 a month, so they're not exactly a costly business expense for a reputable company. If they can't afford to pay for their own email server, there's a good chance that they're not going to have much to pay you, either.
That's not to say that there aren't a lot of fully reputable boutique publishers out there, because there most definitely are. Due to their smaller size and limited employee numbers, many of them are limited in what they publish. Some have wordcount limits, others are only limited to a very specific set of genres. And others only publish a few books a year. So doing your research can save you a lot of headaches and frustration.
That brings me to vanity publishers. Vanity publishers are essentially a scam service. These are the so-called "publishers" that will nickel and dime aspiring authors, charging them for "review fees", "editing fees" "print fees", mandatory "workshops", "advertising fees", "cover design fees" and so on. If a publisher is charging you anything to publish your book, don't just walk away, run away, and run fast. They're just out to see how much money they can get out of you for a book that they likely won't sell, anyway. Avoid them like the plague. You're much better off self-publishing than going with a vanity publisher.
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