I Just Met A Man Who Got Scammed Out Of $100,000 Trying To Publish A Book
Vanity publishers? More like vulture publishers!
There are certain things that almost every author wants to see at least once in their lives. For many of us, the biggest thing is getting a book published and watching it become a smash hit. My question is, how far would most of us go for that?
Like many writers, I know how hard it can be to get a book published and actually have it do something. I wrote one and made about the amount of a pizza. It’s going to take a lot to convince me to get back on the horse.
For the longest time, I always felt very bitter about what happened with my book. I felt unsupported by people who claimed they’d have my back. And yet, what I don’t realize is that I actually dodged a bullet—primarily by being perennially broke!
Recently, I met someone who went through true hell with his book.
I really, truly felt bad for this guy and others like him. Like many new authors, he published a book through a vanity press. Unlike many of them, he ended up shelling out over $100,000 trying to get it to store shelves.
According to him, he ended up getting charged:
Over $50,000 to edit a 200-page book
Over $10,000 for social media marketing
Another $30,000 to promote the book (unknown how)
And $10,000 to print 2,000 copies and store them in a warehouse
Oh, and he pays hundreds of dollars per month to store the books, some of which are not even printed
He has yet to see a dime back from his book. All his sales money has been “automatically rerouted” to pay for “storage fees” for those books that got printed ahead of time.
As it turns out, he’s not alone. A firm by the name of Milli Brown Books ended up charging several people over $75,000 to get a book to market…often with mixed-to-poor results.