K.R. Fraser's Blog
December 13, 2020
What Every Author Needs To Know
Greetings to all authors and readers.
Today, I want to address something that I have repeatedly seen among the authors here that both worries and concerns me.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is K.R. Fraser, and I am an author. I am also the owner and CEO of Dragonrock Press. We are a small, independent publishing company, and we only represent a small number of clients at any given time. Now, that being said, this is my concern:
I have seen many authors here talk about how they paid a publishing company to publish their work. STOP DOING THIS! No legitimate publishing company charges the author to publish them. A legitimate publishing company pays for all the fees of publishing up front, pays the author an advance, and signs a contract that includes what royalties the author makes off their published work. The way a publishing company is paid back for this is through the sales of that work.
Let's say your advance is $5000. You would not see another penny after that until your book sold that amount worth and the company got back their money. Then you begin receiving royalties off every book sold after that.
The people who are paying a so-called Publishing company to have their books published are getting ripped off. These types of Presses are called Vanity Presses, and they are often not even legitimate Presses. Some take all the rights to your work so you can never get it published anywhere else, and you never see a penny from them in royalties. Others don't register your work in copyright. Still others claim the credit for your work. If you are lucky enough to get one that does not do any of the above, and actually publishes your work for you, they are still charging you far more than it costs to actually publish a written work.
And before you ask... yes, traditional publishing companies do get a certain amount over and above the money they forwarded you when they publish you, but not in the amounts you are seeing by Vanity Presses. They also do not rip off people the way these Vanity Presses do. In other words, you get more BANG for your buck! They do more for you, represent you and help you protect your work, and they help with some of the advertising because you are their investment and they want you to succeed. Vanity Presses do none of this.
If you are a new author looking to publish your work, there are several things you need to do to protect yourself and your work:
1) ALWAYS do your research!
2) Copyright with the US Copyright office as a US citizen, or if overseas, follow the practices your country has for copyright protection. This ensures that no one can steal your work.
3) Ask questions - as many as you can think of!
4) If you get rejection letters - frame them! Most companies do not bother to send them because of the immense numbers of submissions they receive every day. If you actually received a rejection letter back, it means they can see worth in your writing, but you may not be ready yet, or not the right fit. Remember, Stephen King received 72 rejections before his first work was published.
5) If you decide to self-publish, then just do it! Don't look for other people to do all the steps for you. That is the cesspool where you will find all the scam-artists. Instead, ask other authors who are already established as self-published for legitimate references to the real people in the industry.
There are cover artists, editors (multiple different kinds of editors. We'll cover that later), agents, and even small Presses like ours that are legitimate and know how to do their jobs. These are the people you want to work with, and they know their way around the industry. Many of us will also gladly answer any questions you have concerning the Industry.
We are all tired of seeing people who worked so hard to get that first book done ending up in some kind of either a legal battle to try to recover their work, giving up because they lost so much money, or not gaining the kind of success they hoped for because of something like this. The way some of these scam artists get you is they pose as a legitimate Press and let you submit your work to them, and then rake you over the coals. The only way this stops is if we as a community work together to share the knowledge every incoming author needs to protect themselves from this kind of fraud.
I'd much rather hear success stories on here than one more that ended in losses. Good luck to you.
Today, I want to address something that I have repeatedly seen among the authors here that both worries and concerns me.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is K.R. Fraser, and I am an author. I am also the owner and CEO of Dragonrock Press. We are a small, independent publishing company, and we only represent a small number of clients at any given time. Now, that being said, this is my concern:
I have seen many authors here talk about how they paid a publishing company to publish their work. STOP DOING THIS! No legitimate publishing company charges the author to publish them. A legitimate publishing company pays for all the fees of publishing up front, pays the author an advance, and signs a contract that includes what royalties the author makes off their published work. The way a publishing company is paid back for this is through the sales of that work.
Let's say your advance is $5000. You would not see another penny after that until your book sold that amount worth and the company got back their money. Then you begin receiving royalties off every book sold after that.
The people who are paying a so-called Publishing company to have their books published are getting ripped off. These types of Presses are called Vanity Presses, and they are often not even legitimate Presses. Some take all the rights to your work so you can never get it published anywhere else, and you never see a penny from them in royalties. Others don't register your work in copyright. Still others claim the credit for your work. If you are lucky enough to get one that does not do any of the above, and actually publishes your work for you, they are still charging you far more than it costs to actually publish a written work.
And before you ask... yes, traditional publishing companies do get a certain amount over and above the money they forwarded you when they publish you, but not in the amounts you are seeing by Vanity Presses. They also do not rip off people the way these Vanity Presses do. In other words, you get more BANG for your buck! They do more for you, represent you and help you protect your work, and they help with some of the advertising because you are their investment and they want you to succeed. Vanity Presses do none of this.
If you are a new author looking to publish your work, there are several things you need to do to protect yourself and your work:
1) ALWAYS do your research!
2) Copyright with the US Copyright office as a US citizen, or if overseas, follow the practices your country has for copyright protection. This ensures that no one can steal your work.
3) Ask questions - as many as you can think of!
4) If you get rejection letters - frame them! Most companies do not bother to send them because of the immense numbers of submissions they receive every day. If you actually received a rejection letter back, it means they can see worth in your writing, but you may not be ready yet, or not the right fit. Remember, Stephen King received 72 rejections before his first work was published.
5) If you decide to self-publish, then just do it! Don't look for other people to do all the steps for you. That is the cesspool where you will find all the scam-artists. Instead, ask other authors who are already established as self-published for legitimate references to the real people in the industry.
There are cover artists, editors (multiple different kinds of editors. We'll cover that later), agents, and even small Presses like ours that are legitimate and know how to do their jobs. These are the people you want to work with, and they know their way around the industry. Many of us will also gladly answer any questions you have concerning the Industry.
We are all tired of seeing people who worked so hard to get that first book done ending up in some kind of either a legal battle to try to recover their work, giving up because they lost so much money, or not gaining the kind of success they hoped for because of something like this. The way some of these scam artists get you is they pose as a legitimate Press and let you submit your work to them, and then rake you over the coals. The only way this stops is if we as a community work together to share the knowledge every incoming author needs to protect themselves from this kind of fraud.
I'd much rather hear success stories on here than one more that ended in losses. Good luck to you.
December 9, 2020
Tools of the Trade
Hello everyone! K.R. here, and today we're going to talk about an author's tools. I know, the first answer everyone gives is: "It's just a pen and paper, or today a computer, right?"
Wrong. An author's tools include much more than just what he or she types or writes with. Tools of the trade begin with a wide variety of skills that develop as you learn to write, edit and write some more. They then further expand to include the side of the industry most new authors do not think about until they are already swimming in confusion at all the knowledge floating around.
On the writing end, the crucial skills and knowledge concerning the industry that you need include things like grammar, syntax, punctuation, vocabulary, interior formatting and layout, and editing.
But when you get to publishing, there is a whole new set of skills and knowledge you need to know - What are bleed lines, formats (both digital and print), cover design, styling and texts, fonts and color usage, genre identification, sub-genre identification, identifiers (ISBN's) and barcodes, copyrights, distribution, advertising and marketing, and finally reviews?
The skills are honed over time. But the knowledge? Where does it comes from? The answer is your peers, websites, classes and books that specialize in teaching how to do all that is listed above. Now, as recently as twenty years ago, that was not as easy a door to open, because the Internet did not possess as much free knowledge as it does today.
But the Internet is forever growing and changing, and knowledge in this and every other subject imaginable are at your fingertips with a click. Learning is not much harder than putting in the time to search and research a subject matter, then cross-reference it with other, similar subjects to see which works best for you.
Companies have sprouted all over the Internet that specialize in helping new authors to achieve their goals, and schools have created online classrooms devoted to entire educations through virtual teaching. How does this effect you?
It means your job as an author has gotten both easier and more difficult at the same time. It is easier because information flow is faster and more accurate than it's ever been. But at the same time, it has grown more difficult because fans and readers everywhere are also aware of this new access to that information, and they will hold you to higher standards than they did in the past.
Independent authors are growing in numbers. But to stand out in the crowd, you have to be that exception - the one who puts in the extra work to achieve that polished final creation that everyone loves: the book.
~ K.R. Fraser ~
Wrong. An author's tools include much more than just what he or she types or writes with. Tools of the trade begin with a wide variety of skills that develop as you learn to write, edit and write some more. They then further expand to include the side of the industry most new authors do not think about until they are already swimming in confusion at all the knowledge floating around.
On the writing end, the crucial skills and knowledge concerning the industry that you need include things like grammar, syntax, punctuation, vocabulary, interior formatting and layout, and editing.
But when you get to publishing, there is a whole new set of skills and knowledge you need to know - What are bleed lines, formats (both digital and print), cover design, styling and texts, fonts and color usage, genre identification, sub-genre identification, identifiers (ISBN's) and barcodes, copyrights, distribution, advertising and marketing, and finally reviews?
The skills are honed over time. But the knowledge? Where does it comes from? The answer is your peers, websites, classes and books that specialize in teaching how to do all that is listed above. Now, as recently as twenty years ago, that was not as easy a door to open, because the Internet did not possess as much free knowledge as it does today.
But the Internet is forever growing and changing, and knowledge in this and every other subject imaginable are at your fingertips with a click. Learning is not much harder than putting in the time to search and research a subject matter, then cross-reference it with other, similar subjects to see which works best for you.
Companies have sprouted all over the Internet that specialize in helping new authors to achieve their goals, and schools have created online classrooms devoted to entire educations through virtual teaching. How does this effect you?
It means your job as an author has gotten both easier and more difficult at the same time. It is easier because information flow is faster and more accurate than it's ever been. But at the same time, it has grown more difficult because fans and readers everywhere are also aware of this new access to that information, and they will hold you to higher standards than they did in the past.
Independent authors are growing in numbers. But to stand out in the crowd, you have to be that exception - the one who puts in the extra work to achieve that polished final creation that everyone loves: the book.
~ K.R. Fraser ~
