Transcript
Paul Regnier: Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Paul Regner.
Lindsay Franklin: And I'm Lindsay Franklin.
Paul Regnier: And today we are talking about vanity press. Now I am an indie author. Lindsay is a traditional author. And then there's this little in-between land where the vanity press exists in the Bermuda Triangle of the publishing world.
Paul Regnier: Lindsay, what is this mystery? What is this whole vanity press thing we're talking about?
Lindsay Franklin: Ah, yes, the vanity press. So this is the Bermuda Triangle of publishing is the perfect way to describe this, I think. Except, except that it's not a mystery.
Lindsay Franklin: We do know what it is. So a vanity press is, so it's sometimes called a subsidy publisher. And this is a publishing model where the author pays up front for the production costs of the book.
Lindsay Franklin: So if you've been listening to us, yes, boo.
Paul Regnier: Boo.
Lindsay Franklin: If you have been listening to us for a while, you have heard us talk a lot about traditional publishing and independent publishing. So with traditional publishing,
Lindsay Franklin: you have a publisher who you submit to. They decide whether or not they want to publish your book. And if they want to publish it, they are going to offer you a contract. And so the terms of that contract usually involve you having a little bit less creative control than you would if you were publishing this yourself. And the publisher is going to pay you a certain percentage detailed in this contract. That's your royalty percentage. That's how much you're going to make on each sale of
Lindsay Franklin: this book um in each of its formats. So that's kind of the traditional model. And an author in that situation does not pay a single dollar up front for the production of their book. That is why we take that much smaller percentage because we don't have to pay for the editing. The publisher is paying for that. We don't pay for the cover design.
Lindsay Franklin: the publisher pays for that. All of the printing costs, everything associated with producing that book is the publisher's responsibility. And that is why the author is willing to take that much, much smaller cut of the pie is because we're not the ones investing the money up front to get that book to market.
Lindsay Franklin: Now, Paul's side of this, so as an indie, Paul, you are hiring your own freelancers, right? You're hiring people to do the cover for you. You're hiring editors and you're building your own team and investing for that upfront.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: And then you get a much happier percentage, a much nicer piece of the the royalty pie with each sale of your book. Is that fairly accurate description?
Paul Regnier: Yeah, that and that's the trade-off, right? You're getting a much bigger percentage for every sale, but you do have to pay those upfront costs. And the the basic ones is cover art, editor, and maybe typesetting. Although with the tools out there now, you can do that yourself through Vellum or through Atticus. I use Atticus for mine, but it doesn't matter. Either one of those software tools work great. But you can pay for typesetting if you don't want to do it yourself.
Paul Regnier: But again, typically those costs aren't prohibitive. like you can You can earn that back like you know as long as your book does like okay. you know It doesn't have to be a bestseller.
Paul Regnier: But there's so many resources online where you can find editors and find different cover art companies or or cover art you know individuals. um So yeah, I mean, that's part of the that's part of the trade-off, right? you You have to do those upfront costs, but you're reaping all these you know wonderful larger percentages.
Paul Regnier: And then we get to the vanity press and you sort of lose all the good things on both sides, right?
Lindsay Franklin: Yes.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: It is, I always tell people it is the worst of both worlds because because the hard thing about Indy is that you're having to, you know, have that capital up front to invest, right?
Paul Regnier: ah
Paul Regnier: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Franklin: There are going to be costs on the front end and you're, you know, hoping you know, you're going to recoup those costs with enough sales. We did in our our last episode, we talked about advertising, which is a great way to you know boost that indie book and and make sure that you're getting it under the under the noses of people who are interested in buying it. And that's something you can do to help you recoup some of those costs. And then on the traditional side, you don't have any of those costs up front, but you're are taking a much smaller um percentage of the royalties coming in. So it's going to take, it would take a lot more sales, more unit sales in order to make the same amount of money that you would make as an indie author, if that makes sense. But with a vanity press, you are paying up front.
Lindsay Franklin: Okay, so this is a a publisher publisher. Everybody on YouTube can see me making the air quotes with publisher.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: um And i'm I'm really not trying to be salty at all. It just, this is this is the truth, guys. and And I've seen so many authors, I think we have both seen so many authors over the years get taken advantage of.
Lindsay Franklin: And so maybe we do feel a little salty about about vanity presses because it's such a a bad model for almost everybody for almost every author it's like the worst choice that we can make when it comes to publishing because they're going to ask you for a lot of money up front and paul brought up a really interesting point about the team that that he's able to assemble as an indie author where he can kind of ah
Paul Regnier: yeah yep
Lindsay Franklin: pick like what tools he's going to use and what ah freelancers, what contractors he's going to work with.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: And you can kind of ah shape that to the budget that you have.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: And you might be able to even do like swap some work. I have had indie authors who are friends of mine where I've swapped work with them. They've maybe done some design work for me if that's a skill they also have.
Lindsay Franklin: And I will do editorial work for them on their books. So they're getting that pretty much for free. We're just trading services at that point with each other because we each have skill to offer the others.
Lindsay Franklin: So There are a lot of things that you can do to help your costs up front as an indie, whereas with Vanity Press, they are typically charging you an absolute premium for the services that you're getting.
Paul Regnier: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: So they'll say, okay, editing is going to cost this amount, and you could hire like three freelancers for that amount sometimes.
Paul Regnier: yep
Paul Regnier: yep
Lindsay Franklin: I've seen just these crazy high price tags. So you've got that. So that's like the hardest part about, you know, indie stuff is having to, it you know, invest that capital upfront. And then on the back end of it, you make a royalty percentage from this publisher that is on par with what a traditional contract looks like.
Lindsay Franklin: So you are getting that little royalty percentage as though they're the ones investing up front, but they're not. You did all of that investment.
Paul Regnier: Yes.
Lindsay Franklin: So essentially what you are paying for is for them to produce your book for you. And in the days before indie publishing, before the rise of the indie, this may have been a much more viable option.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: You can understand why people would go that route because they didn't have access to all of the cool tools that that are available to us as authors now. And in those days, if a traditional publisher wasn't picking up the book that you were submitting,
Lindsay Franklin: a vanity press or a subsidy publisher might have been your only option. That was the way to self-publish, but we're a good 25 years, maybe even more past that now.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: Indie publishing has been around a long time and it just keeps getting better and better and better of what we have access to as authors. So you can produce your own book. You can self-publish in a way that is so much better for you, more beneficial to you as the author, because you're going to get that much nicer royalty chunk with every single sale if you produce that book yourself.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing as you said that that these vanity press companies, probably their heyday was before this indie author revolution where all of a sudden there's all these resources out there that we can take a hold of. there There's multiple websites that do cover art as well as freelancers you can find on like...
Paul Regnier: Fiverr, I guess you can find them on Fiverr. Readsie was the one I was trying to think of.
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: You can find them on Readsie and places like that, um but and and editors on Readsie as well. But it's kind of like you can assemble your own team, a team that you can really work with well, and you get the final say as an indie author.
Paul Regnier: um But it's like, that's another thing you lose with these vanity presses because they're sort of making the final says and they're saying, here's the team we've already assembled and you are gonna be working with this team.
Paul Regnier: So that's that's hard, especially like for me to conceptualize because um when you find people that you work well with, it's it's a joy, right? Because you're kind of on the same wavelength, you've seen the stuff they've done in the past.
Paul Regnier: So then when they, you know, like, I'll give you an example. I really like working with Damonza, damonza.com for my cover art and their stuff is awesome.
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: And it always comes back whenever they bring it I get excited because I know I'm going to love what they come up with. And they usually give me a couple to choose from. But it's like each time I'm like, oh, my gosh, you guys did it again.
Paul Regnier: This is amazing. I love working with you. So when you have those kind of things, it's kind of exciting as opposed to maybe someone else making the decision. And then you're kind of like, oh, I kind of like it.
Paul Regnier: So, yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: Right, right. And on top of everything else, and this might, I don't want to make a massive blanket statement because maybe, maybe somewhere out there, there is a a vanity press where the covers are amazing and like the quality is super high, but most of what I've seen, it's not amazing.
Lindsay Franklin: It's not excellent.
Paul Regnier: No. Yes.
Lindsay Franklin: The quality is not that great. And I've seen that on the editorial side too, where I had in my freelance days, people would come to me and say, i was i was working with this you know publisher and you know i got the edit and you know they had issues with it.
Paul Regnier: yes
Lindsay Franklin: And I was trying to figure out what was going on here. what What are we talking about here? Okay, you had problems with your publisher. And then I see the name on it. It's like, oh, I know that publisher. And it's a vanity press.
Paul Regnier: ah
Lindsay Franklin: And I'm looking at the edit on, you know, this manuscript and it's not good. It was just not good. Not good. So again, that may not apply in every single situation, but it's it's once again the worst of all worlds where not only are you paying this super high premium for these services, they end up even not being amazing after you've paid, you know, thousands, because we are talking thousands of dollars.
Paul Regnier: oh yeah
Lindsay Franklin: When we talk about high price tag, we're not saying, oh, hundreds or no, thousands of dollars to produce these books. And then you're taking maybe a, you know, 15% royalty or something.
Lindsay Franklin: It just, it doesn't make sense. But
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: we see authors.
Paul Regnier: Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Lindsay Franklin: No, I'm so sorry. which just, yeah.
Paul Regnier: No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Finish your thought.
Lindsay Franklin: ah ah No.
Paul Regnier: I was going to jump in, but i i jumped I stepped over your words.
Lindsay Franklin: ah
Paul Regnier: I i apologize.
Lindsay Franklin: No, we just, the reason that we had jotted this down at some point is like, we should do an episode on that is because still to this day, we will see authors in author communities, author groups, you know, writers groups where they come in and say, you know, I'm, i'm publishing my book with this press, or I got this outreach from this press, and is this legit?
Lindsay Franklin: Is this a real thing? And no, it's not. Don't do it. Run away. Run fast.
Paul Regnier: Run away!
Lindsay Franklin: Run.
Paul Regnier: Run away!
Lindsay Franklin: Yes. So we thought, okay, we're going to do an episode on this. We're going to talk about it and put out yet another warning, because the more and more who that people who have experience in the industry talk about this, the more that the word will get out, and fewer authors will be taken advantage of by these predatory presses.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, no, I i was just gonna mention a specific example of my friend told me about his friend and he's ah like, oh, he's publishing a book and he was going through a vanity press. And so he was asking questions for his friend, um you know asking for a friend, but he actually was. um So, but he was saying like, oh yeah, here's, and he showed me, he's like, here's the book he produced.
Paul Regnier: and the cover was bad. It just was not good.
Lindsay Franklin: Oh, man.
Paul Regnier: I mean, there's all different levels of covers. And usually say like, oh, that's pretty good It just wasn't good at all. And I looked at inside, and even the editing was off. I found typos.
Paul Regnier: um The grammar was like all funky. and um And he said, oh, yeah. I'm like, oh, because it was already in book form. him I'm like, did they edit this? He's like, oh, yeah. They did several rounds of editing. and the cover and the typesetting was even off.
Paul Regnier: And I go, and I'm like, how much? i was afraid to ask, but I'm like, how much did he spend for this? $10,000 he spent this, 10,000. Now, when I indie publish a book,
Paul Regnier: I'm paying like almost a 10th of that to get something out there. So it was crazy to me that he spent 10,000 and he wasn't checking any of the boxes.
Paul Regnier: I couldn't even say, well, at least you got a good cover out of it. It's like, it was all bad and it was it all needed to be completely redone, but he had spent so much money because he's like, I want to publish my book.
Lindsay Franklin: Right. Oh.
Paul Regnier: And believe me, like as authors, we know that feeling, right? Especially with early books, we're like, i I want to publish my book so bad. Oh my gosh, I can't wait. like It just has to break through to the right publisher.
Paul Regnier: And oh, when when am I going to get my shot? So I can totally sympathize with that like yearning to want to make it happen. But this was not the right way to make it happen.
Lindsay Franklin: No.
Paul Regnier: And I felt so bad for this guy.
Lindsay Franklin: Yeah.
Paul Regnier: And I think that's why we want to talk about it, right? I don't want to see anyone else end up in the situation that this guy ended up
Lindsay Franklin: Right. And it's just heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking because with $10,000, he could have hired any editor, any editor that he wanted to.
Paul Regnier: Oh, the best.
Lindsay Franklin: He could have hired. He could have hired an amazing cover designer.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: I mean, he could have just gone all out with a budget like that.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Paul Regnier: Probably could have got an audio book done to boot.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes, yes, you could fully produce that. I mean, yes, he could have really, really gone all out. And instead, he's spent all of that money and then not even gotten a good product for it.
Lindsay Franklin: It just breaks my heart. I hate that so much.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: And Sometimes you'll see too that they'll offer these at add-on packages for marketing.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: And if you don't know the industry, then you don't know kind of the value to assign to some of these bullet points.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: And so I was looking over a marketing plan. for one of these publishers one time, and this was years ago, but not that many years ago, though. And it had as one of the big selling points of this marketing plan was, we will feature you on our website, you know the publisher's website.
Lindsay Franklin: And I'm going... Yay. Like what? Okay. Who is going to this website, this vanity presses website to purchase their books?
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: Probably nobody. I mean, or a very small handful of people, probably only the people who the authors themselves send there like, Hey, go purchase from my publisher.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: Other than that, this is not where people are buying their books. Like if they said, here's our big marketing plan for how we're going to advertise your book on Amazon. Okay. People are buying books on Amazon.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: Here's here's our marketing plan for how we're going to reach influencers in the social media space who talk about books like yours. Okay. That's, that's a legitimate plan for marketing, but we're going to, if the big selling point is we're going feature you on our website that nobody visits, that is not a good marketing plan.
Lindsay Franklin: Do not pay $2,000 for that marketing plan. just Yeah.
Paul Regnier: They were charging $2,000 for that?
Lindsay Franklin: I have seen anywhere from hundreds up to thousands for these marketing package add-ons.
Paul Regnier: Oh, man. Wow.
Lindsay Franklin: Yeah.
Paul Regnier: Think of the advertising campaigns you could run on Amazon for that much money.
Lindsay Franklin: It's,
Lindsay Franklin: Right. You could do my $100 per day, ah you know, like budget that I mentioned in the last one.
Paul Regnier: Yeah. ah Yeah, Lindsay wanted to spend $100 a day on Amazon.
Lindsay Franklin: I just pulled that one out of thin air.
Paul Regnier: She's just...
Lindsay Franklin: Like, because $100, nice round number. Sure, why not? Then I realized that's probably really, really high. just That's kind of a lot. But yeah, you could do that with this ah this kind of a budget if you've got that much to spend on ah a marketing package that is worth actually nothing.
Lindsay Franklin: Another thing that they sometimes do is they will make you, as part of the contract, they will make you buy a certain number of physical books.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Paul Regnier: That's old school.
Lindsay Franklin: Very old school, but I have still seen that within the last five to seven years. I have still seen that in some of these these publishing deals or packages or whatever that you you buy X number.
Lindsay Franklin: you know That's kind of part of it. That's part of what you're paying for is, and they'll frame it sometimes as you get this many. Oh, we're going to send you a thousand copies of your, okay, cool.
Paul Regnier: Oh.
Lindsay Franklin: Then you, 500 copies.
Paul Regnier: A thousand copies. oh my goodness.
Lindsay Franklin: five hundred copies Right?
Paul Regnier: Fill up your garage.
Lindsay Franklin: Your boxes and boxes.
Paul Regnier: Wow.
Lindsay Franklin: It's like the old days of self-publishing where you'd have boxes and boxes.
Paul Regnier: Right. Those are the old days.
Lindsay Franklin: Yep.
Paul Regnier: Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: Yep. And then you have to try to sell those or give them away or what have you.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: It's just, it's really, it's bad. It's a bad thing.
Paul Regnier: ah
Lindsay Franklin: And it makes me so sad to see in this day and age when we do have so many amazing things available for indie authors to see people still get taken advantage of.
Lindsay Franklin: And it's because, Authors are very, we're vulnerable. And, you know, when it comes to our work, we so badly want to see it out there.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: We have these dreams that mean so much to us. And so we are very open to being taken advantage of when we have this dream that we hold so close to our hearts.
Paul Regnier: yeah
Lindsay Franklin: And, you know, people who are not scrupulous will, they will sneak in, take advantage and take your money. And so...
Paul Regnier: And when you're at those beginning stages, when you're at the beginning stages of an author, i I totally get it because I was telling you even before we started recording this episode, like I remember when I was brand new, I didn't really know hardly anything, but I just like kind of written my first book, i saw these I remember seeing these flyers at a writer's convention and one of them was for a vanity press.
Paul Regnier: and you know They had all this great marketing copy. I'm like, hey, this sounds pretty good yeah because I didn't know.
Lindsay Franklin: Right?
Paul Regnier: i so I totally get it. I totally get why this sounds like, hey, we're going to make your book happen. Don't worry about it. We're professionals. And and you know we'll come alongside you and we'll we'll fulfill that dream of yours.
Paul Regnier: So it it can be really enticing at that stage until you learn a little bit more like, oh my gosh, wow, I'm not going to do that. I could do it for way cheaper and better.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes, exactly. So it probably would be helpful if we talked about some of the ways you will know if you are talking to a vanity press because there are some red flags.
Paul Regnier: that's good. Red flags.
Lindsay Franklin: Yeah, some red flags to look for. So a big one is if they are asking you to pay money upfront. Now, we do have to kind of have the caveat here that there are sometimes, we we have a number of different names for these and there are different models of these things, but sometimes you will see an author services house or there can be independent publishing co-ops or collectives or alliances of authors that have kind of banded together where they have almost like an umbrella publishing company or, you know, just a place where somebody has set up a business where they're helping independent authors find their freelance team, get their book out there.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: They understand all the stuff about acquiring ISBNs and getting the book on to KDP, all of those things. Those can very much be legit.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: Okay. So if you're hiring somebody to help you with publishing, that is not necessarily the same thing as a vanity press.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: So we're not saying, You should never pay for services. No, if you're hiring somebody to do something for you related to publishing, you should pay them.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: But A vanity press is going to be somebody who bills themselves as a publisher, okay?
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: Like, you know, submit to us and we're going to get your book out there. But that's another thing is when you submit to a vanity press, sometimes they try to make it sound like like there's a possibility you could be rejected.
Lindsay Franklin: I've seen that where it's like very tricky to even understand that nobody gets rejected from most of these, ah most of these, these vanity presses, but that's a big red flag.
Lindsay Franklin: If they haven't even looked at your book, if they haven't even seen it yet, and they're like, yes, we will publish you, that's going to be a vanity press because any traditional publisher, they want to see your proposal.
Lindsay Franklin: They want to see your full manuscript. They're going to very carefully review that to see if it's on brand for them, to see if there's place in their catalog. They're going to bring it to the sales team, pitch it over there.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: It's this very long process, right?
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: It's got a lot of different steps. So if somebody is promising you, yeah, we're going to publish that right off the bat without even seeing your book, major, major red flag. Same thing goes for cold outreaches via email.
Paul Regnier: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Franklin: If so if a publisher is is emailing you directly and you did not make contact with them first, that is a big red flag. You want to be really, really careful with something like that.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, no that's all that's all great. um and And usually kind of like those other ones you mentioned that that could be a legit like collective or or group of in indie authors or what have you, um typically if if they do have any fees associated, they're much more reasonable.
Lindsay Franklin: Exactly.
Paul Regnier: and lower and they kind of fit like where you'd find like if they're saying like hey we can connect you maybe you know we know some editors so if you're looking for that type of thing you know here's some names to try but then usually you could probably contact those people directly and then you're sort of doing the indie author route like of contacting the freelancer directly and saying hey what what what are you charging for your fees and and all those kind of things But yeah, those collectives, I'm familiar with those too.
Lindsay Franklin: exactly
Paul Regnier: Those can actually be good because then they can band together and maybe they go to like writers conferences and they can like have a couple copies of your book at their stand or whatever. So it's like, oh, great.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes.
Paul Regnier: Like I i couldn't make that conference. So how good that they're getting, helping to get my book out there. Yeah. So yeah, there's there's some cool options like that that you could do for you know these smaller things.
Paul Regnier: But they don't bill themselves as like you know a full service publisher either.
Lindsay Franklin: Right. and And the big difference there is that you might pay a fee to sort of be part of that collective or that community.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: you might there There are different ways that they that those businesses can be set up. So you might pay to join that or something of that nature, but they are typically not going to be withholding portions of the proceed proceeds from your sales, if that makes sense.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: So because that's kind of the, that's the setup with a traditional publisher is the publisher is the one getting paid by the platform where the book is sold.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: So if your book is sold on Amazon, Amazon is going to pay your publisher, right, for that sale. And then your publisher takes like withholds their portion and then pays you your royalty amount as the author.
Lindsay Franklin: So those author collectives are typically not doing that where they're withholding a portion of the proceeds, that you know, the majority of the proceeds as a traditional publisher would because the author is getting, you know, this like small royalty percentage.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: So um if you enter into any kind of alliance or agreement or collective like that. You want to very carefully review the terms and make sure that everything really makes sense for what you're doing.
Lindsay Franklin: That yes, this is like a group of indies banding together for indie publishing with support. That's kind of what that is.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: it's so that you're not going it completely alone, but you should be retaining all or most of the royalties there.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: If you're paying a flat fee, then you'd be retaining all the royalties or they might take a really little percentage of your royalties, however they have it set up.
Paul Regnier: Yes. Yep.
Lindsay Franklin: There are there are legit ways to do that, but they should not be withholding the lion's share of your royalties if you are still paying the production costs.
Lindsay Franklin: That's the big thing here.
Paul Regnier: yep
Lindsay Franklin: If you are being asked to pay money upfront for editing, cover design, printing, any of those kinds of costs, You are an indie author and you should be getting those big, you know, 70% royalty amounts, whatever those big, big chunks.
Lindsay Franklin: You shouldn't be looking at 10, 15, 20% royalties when you are the one footing the bill for editing, design, all of those things.
Paul Regnier: Yep.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, definitely. um Is that, so have we hit all the red flags? Have we had all the warning signals?
Lindsay Franklin: Let's see. I think so. So when you're being asked to pay front, the cold outreaches are a big one. And that really goes for a lot of predatory tactics that with the rise of generative AI, we see this more and more.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: i i see this in every writer community that I am part of over the last two years, ah really over the last year, a lot.
Paul Regnier: year especially yeah yeah it's not
Lindsay Franklin: oh my gosh, people come in almost daily where it's like, is this legit? I think this might be legit. Is it? It's never legit. It's never legit. And it's like these, it and the reason why I say AI, like with the rise of AI, why this has become such a thing, because people preying on vulnerable authors has been a thing for decades.
Lindsay Franklin: But AI has made it so much harder to discern between what is a scam and what is not.
Paul Regnier: yep
Lindsay Franklin: because they use AI to scrape the internet um for all the information that they can find about a particular book.
Lindsay Franklin: So if you don't know what to look for, you're reading these outreaches for, you know, be featured with our book club or, you know, come publish with us, come, you know, do the special printing with us or the special marketing plan or whatever.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Paul Regnier: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Franklin: There are all different kinds of scams out there. And and if you don't know what to look for, you read this and think, oh, my gosh, they they read my book and they loved it and they, you know, whatever. But they're they're pulling and they're so complimentary.
Lindsay Franklin: Oh, my gosh. If you want, like, the big ego stroke, oh, glowing reviews.
Paul Regnier: Oh, glowing. Yeah. ah
Lindsay Franklin: I had one where they they sent me something for the unraveling of Emlyn Dulane where it was like, oh, my gosh, it was – the, you know, you are reaching teenagers.
Lindsay Franklin: but I mean, it just every little piece of my heart that like has a heart for writing for the young adult audience, they were trying to exploit so hard where it was talking about, you know, the impact on this generation and this amazing blah, blah, blah, blah.
Paul Regnier: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Franklin: blah And this whole thing has just been spat out by a computer you know what I mean it's not it's not legit they're pulling some things from the book cover description they're pulling things from publicly available reviews so they're like scraping my goodreads reviews for some of the real specific things that and genuinely some readers are saying those things but it's like they've pulled every positive thing that has ever been said about a given book and they put it all into one email to tell you how amazing you are to try to get you to buy something from them or to pay them money for you know a book club feature in this book club may exist but usually this person has nothing to do with the actual book club it's it's hard to be able to discern all of this these days it's it's gotten so tricky and i'm seeing authors getting taken advantage of like on a daily basis with this it's so hard
Paul Regnier: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: who
Paul Regnier: Yeah, it's weird. The difference I've seen is like before I would get an email or sometimes I would even get these calls, these spam calls, and they would say like all they would know is like the title of the book.
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Paul Regnier: Hey, we came across this book and they'd say whatever book, you know, they pick a random pick of my books. Hey, we came across this book. We'd like to feature you We feature top New York Times bestselling authors, blah, blah, blah, blah. Talk, call us back. you know It's very reasonable fee and we'll help advertise. So that was really obvious. Like, okay, this is spam and I'm...
Paul Regnier: delete. you know But now with AI, the difference I've seen is like you said, it scrubs like you know your book description on Amazon and then maybe some reviews to get real specific with characters and what happens in it.
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: And then it sends you an email that almost sounds like someone who's read your book. oh, I really love you know how you do this fantasy and your magic system because this and this main character, and they'll they'll name the characters and they'll name part of the adventure. And you're like, whoa, this is someone that's read my book, right? But then like this must be my most biggest fan ever because they're just gushing constantly of how amazing this is. And then it usually ends up with...
Paul Regnier: Hey, you know call us, we'll put together this great marketing and promotion plan for you. We really want to be part of this team. Call us and we'll discuss you know how we can make your author life shine and you know all this all this stuff all these big promises.
Paul Regnier: right So yeah, I remember when those first came in, I'm like, what?
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: What is this? But I had been sort of working with AI a little bit, like AI prompts and scenes.
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: So I kind of got that, I'm like, oh, this is AI.
Lindsay Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Paul Regnier: I can kind of see there's certain tells, right?
Lindsay Franklin: hu
Paul Regnier: but um But yeah, i've like you, I've seen like on community boards and stuff like that, people will say like, hey, this publisher contacts me and they think my work is great. and They want to publish it or they want to turn my book into a movie or whatever it is.
Lindsay Franklin: Yep.
Paul Regnier: And and then, you know of course, you see everyone saying, sorry, it's AI.
Lindsay Franklin: Yeah.
Paul Regnier: Don't respond or whatever. Because there's tells, right?
Lindsay Franklin: yeah
Paul Regnier: There's little tells.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes. And I've noticed another layer to it as we sort of, you know, cottoned on to what's happening here and people have become aware. They now have introduced another layer where sometimes the first outreach will not mention a service specifically. It'll just be like this glowing, you know, whatever. And so they're not asking for money right away.
Lindsay Franklin: And so that is like the next step where authors who may immediately realize like something is wrong because they are asking me for money, like this is probably just a sales pitch or whatever.
Paul Regnier: Oh, tricky.
Lindsay Franklin: Well, now sometimes the first outreach does not mention exactly what they're selling. And it's like, we just love this book so much, blah, blah, blah. And so they are even pulling names of you know people who work at real publishers or work at you know real marketing agencies or you know people who run a public, a large book club or something where their name is out there publicly, they are pulling these real names, but the email addresses will not
Paul Regnier: Hmm.
Lindsay Franklin: quite match that where, you know, or it might be that person's real name, but at gmail.com or at AOL.com rather than, you know, the actual publisher's name.
Paul Regnier: Oh, interesting.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, interesting.
Lindsay Franklin: So there are those kinds of things, but you have to like be savvy to be able to identify those things. And especially when they're not asking for money right away.
Lindsay Franklin: so If somebody responds to that, if an author responds and says, oh, thank you so much for all of your beautiful words. And I'm so glad that you want to, you know, promote my book or publish it or do whatever.
Lindsay Franklin: And then it's usually going to be like the follow up email or another couple emails later, then they're going to hit you with the just send us money for blah, blah, blah.
Paul Regnier: where Right.
Lindsay Franklin: And man, it just it's it's gotten so complicated and elaborate that you just think if they put half as much energy into like getting a real job, man, you could just, and it feels like that would be so much more consistent as you know income, but I digress, whatever.
Paul Regnier: ah
Paul Regnier: You know, one of the things I was thinking too, and ah so I don't have an agent. I know you do. um i would think that would be a good extra layer of protection, especially if you weren't maybe aware of some of these things where if some offer or something came in, you could always sort of defer to your agent and say like,
Paul Regnier: Like, hey, this is what I got. i don't know. It seems scammy to me. Is this legit? Like, I don't know. You have an agent. How does how does it typically work when you get some sort of offer or something like that? do you always just immediately say, hey, you're going to have to talk to my agent?
Lindsay Franklin: Honestly, i delete all of these without responding because I'm pretty good at sussing it out, you know, and I'm like, I'm also not, not really interested in most of what, I mean, most of what anybody who's doing that kind of cold outreach to me, what they have to offer, I'm not going to be interested in it.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, that's true.
Lindsay Franklin: Like I've, If i want to hire a marketing firm, like I'm going to them. You know what I mean? If I want to hire a book promotion person, I'm going to them.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: If I want some special edition, cool sprayed edges thing, I'm going to go seek out that, you know, service provider and find them.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: So I personally delete all of these and don't even bother. But I will say that when I have gotten outreaches, I have had a legitimate thing where somebody from a movie studio was interested in talking about one of my books.
Lindsay Franklin: um I've had that happen a couple of times.
Paul Regnier: Ooh, fancy.
Lindsay Franklin: So that kind of stuff, fancy. So yes, that that kind of stuff does go to my agent. So if there's anything like that,
Paul Regnier: Lindsay's going Hollywood on us.
Lindsay Franklin: Oh my goodness.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: Well, you'll see there is a no movie. So it obviously didn't go anywhere, but which is like how, how those things work a lot.
Paul Regnier: ah
Lindsay Franklin: Stuff gets optioned, optioned which is really cool, but you know, may or may not ever get made. But yeah. So, you know, that kind of stuff is going to go to my agent.
Lindsay Franklin: Anything where I'm not sure is going to go to her. And I would not say, to the person reaching out to me, here's my agent's information.
Lindsay Franklin: You should contact her. I will reach out to my agent first and talk to her.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: And you know we would discuss it. And then um i would probably leave the communication to her at that point or take her advice you know on how to respond and that sort of thing.
Paul Regnier: To her. Yeah, yeah.
Paul Regnier: Makes sense.
Lindsay Franklin: So yes, that can be a really good thing when you have an agent as part of your team, um you can do that. We sometimes get outreaches from our authors who don't have agents at Enclave.
Lindsay Franklin: If they receive something like this and they're not sure, they will reach out to us and ask us. And I'm generally like, No, delete it. Set it on fire. right away. It's not real.
Lindsay Franklin: ah But yeah, so it's, you can also always ask for help from writers groups. If you're connected to writers groups, your fellow authors, you know, can be there and have your back and and help you discern some of those things. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say 99.9% anything that is cold outreach. My favorite, oh my gosh, have you gotten this one where i get emails that say, i couldn't, I didn't know how to leave a review for your book.
Lindsay Franklin: Can you help me? Have you ever gotten these?
Paul Regnier: Oh, no, I haven't got that one.
Lindsay Franklin: ah I get these.
Paul Regnier: What's that one about?
Lindsay Franklin: i I don't know what they're after exactly. I think it's going to be where they're acting like this very hapless reader and eventually it's going to be some kind of scammy thing. But it's like, can you direct me toward where I can find your books? Can you show me how to leave a review for your book? I really wanted to leave a review. And it's like...
Paul Regnier: Have you ever used Amazon?
Lindsay Franklin: What? Right? Amazon, Goodreads, like any retail site. If you just Google my books, like or anybody's books, the first thing that pops up is all these like shopping results, right? So it's just, I don't know what the end game is there. But again, they're looking for authors who are credulous and don't you know aren't savvy about the way scammers are going about things you know these days, because it's another thing that just changes constantly.
Paul Regnier: Hmm.
Lindsay Franklin: They change the MO and they you know do different things. So another one, i think this has fallen out of favor recently, but probably a year and a year and half ago, it was scammers posing as super famous authors, where it would be like, ah you know, John Grisham or you know Stephen King is emailing you like, hey, I really wanted to connect about your your book.
Lindsay Franklin: I noticed your book on Amazon or your book came across my desk or something. And it's like this email is supposedly from this super famous, you know, New York Times bestseller household name type of author.
Lindsay Franklin: And this one.
Paul Regnier: Wait a second. Wait a second. Hold on. Are you telling me that I'm not best friends with Michael Crichton?
Lindsay Franklin: Thank you.
Paul Regnier: We've been riding back and forth for a while now.
Lindsay Franklin: No, that's definitely him. That is for sure him. No, you're right.
Paul Regnier: Okay, good.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes.
Paul Regnier: You made me nervous. Okay.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes. And he's just like, you're Venmoing him weekly, right, Paul?
Paul Regnier: hoof
Lindsay Franklin: Don't don't fall off on the weekly Venmo transfers.
Paul Regnier: Of course.
Paul Regnier: I mean, I want to keep him happy.
Lindsay Franklin: Oh, man.
Paul Regnier: and mean It's Michael Crichton.
Lindsay Franklin: Right, right.
Paul Regnier: but
Lindsay Franklin: ah man. Oh, brutal. Oh, yeah. So that one I saw in like a writer's group that I'm part of that is like very professional author. So people who've been in the game for a really long time. So it would be semi-reasonable for a lot of those authors to think, wait, is this really that famous person?
Paul Regnier: Mm.
Lindsay Franklin: You know what i mean? Because they're very accomplished in their genre.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: So they're looking like, wait a minute, is this legit? And no, it's not.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: These are these are scammers. And it's it's gotten really scary out there. I know it's a bit tangential to vanity press, but it's kind of under the same umbrella because this is authors being taken advantage of.
Paul Regnier: Right.
Lindsay Franklin: And we hate to see that.
Paul Regnier: Yeah. This is all author beware stuff.
Lindsay Franklin: Yes. Author beware.
Paul Regnier: so So is there any instance you can think of where maybe a vanity press might be an option? Like, is it pretty much no-no every time? Or or is there any version of it that you that you see as like, okay, I can see how in that instance, like that might be an okay path to take?
Lindsay Franklin: This is such a good question and very funny that we've just spent, you know, like 40 minutes talking about how horrible this is. and then I'm going to say, yes, there is one instance where where I might recommend that somebody do this.
Paul Regnier: ah All right.
Lindsay Franklin: But it's a very, very small percentage of of cases where I might say, okay, a vanity press might be the right choice for you.
Lindsay Franklin: And that is if a writer, or I will say if a person has written a book or they have a book in them and it's like their one-off project that they just, before they die on the bucket list, they want to have this one book produced.
Lindsay Franklin: They are not interested in being an author. They are not interested in having an author career. it is just one thing that they want to produce one time. i can see how somebody might not want to learn all of the things that you need to know in order to be an indie author.
Lindsay Franklin: Because there's there's a lot, as you very well know, there's lot of things that you have to know how to do and different ins and outs that you have to become familiar with, especially if you want a print book, which most people who have that kind of one book in them, they're going to want a physical book.
Paul Regnier: Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: it' It's a little bit easier maybe to kind of do the the you know, just one-off thing quickly if you're just going to do one ebook on Amazon or something. But most of the people I've encountered where they say, I want to write my life story, or I had this incredible thing that happened to me and I want to write a book about it, or somebody who's a speaker who speaks on like one topic and just, you know, wants to have that one book for the back of table, of you know, back table sales when they're doing speaking engagements.
Lindsay Franklin: That can make sense to hire a vanity press to get that produced for you. If you are not aware of of more author services place or, you know, something like that, then maybe. I feel like there are better options out there. Yeah.
Lindsay Franklin: If you are in that situation, there are companies out there that specialize in helping get your speaking stuff or your life story or whatever out into that format. But it's probably going to be very pricey like vanity publishing is. And if that's all you ever want to do is that one book, okay, I could see not wanting to learn a whole new career, not wanting to learn all these different platforms or find out where to assemble your awesome superhero team of freelancers. Like I can understand not wanting to go through all of that for just this one-off thing that you just want to do um because it's part of your bucket list, then maybe. But still make sure that you're getting product. product if you're going to do that. Make sure that the editing is good and the covers look nice and all of that. And if you are in that situation,
Lindsay Franklin: Find an author community and ask for help because fellow authors, fellow indie authors might be able to direct you toward some of these more legit, you know, alliances or collectives or companies that are going to help you get that book produced and not prey on you in the way that vanity presses tend to.
Lindsay Franklin: So that is my one very small caveat. So it's like a little asterisk, it's like a super tiny asterisk most of the time.
Paul Regnier: Yeah, I was going to say, you've got $10,000 to burn just contact me i'll i'll i'll make it happen.
Lindsay Franklin: right.
Paul Regnier: ah
Lindsay Franklin: Email Paul. DM him on Instagram and he will he will help you find all your freelancers for a small fee.
Paul Regnier: ah
Lindsay Franklin: He's going to hook you up with his team.
Paul Regnier: I'll get you great cover art. I'll connect you with editors. I'll make it happen ah for a small fee, of course.
Lindsay Franklin: For a small, small fee. so.
Paul Regnier: Well, very good. I think we've pretty much covered Have we covered all angles?
Lindsay Franklin: I think so. i think so
Paul Regnier: All right. Excellent. Well, I hope this is helpful. I hope we have warned everyone out there. Just be cautious because this is a great... this is a great Publishing books is is is an awesome opportunity.
Paul Regnier: But yeah, obviously there's going to be pitfalls and scams and and and ways to spend money where you don't need to. And we're just we're here to help, right, Lindsay?
Lindsay Franklin: That's right.
Paul Regnier: We're here to offer what we've known and the mistakes we've made to help you avoid making the same.
Lindsay Franklin: That's right.
Paul Regnier: Okay, thank you again for listening, everyone, and we will see you next time.
Lindsay Franklin: Bye.
