Publishing is an unregulated industry, thus rife with bad actors and scams. Authors who don’t exert the effort to educate themselves fall prey to predatory practices and find themselves out of a lot of money.
Follow the money
The first rule of publishing is to understand the differences between traditional publishers, hybrid publishers, and self-publishing. Who pays whom is the key differentiator.
Traditional publishing: The publisher pays the author. Full stop. The publisher either subcontracts work or employs professional editors, graphic artists, and designers. Because the publisher pays wages, it means the author receives a small share of profits on books sold. Traditional publishers also provide some marketing assistance, although authors are expected to shoulder the burden of that effort. Publishers put their big marketing bucks behind those authors they know will generate profits.
Hybrid publishing: The author pays the publisher. Don’t be me wrong: some hybrid publishers deliver good value and service for the money. However, most are predatory vanity presses that prey on ambitious, naive authors who fail to do their research. (I was once one of those authors and know whereof I speak.) A vanity press doesn’t care about the quality of the produce (your book). A vanity press puts no effort into marketing your book because they’ve already got their money—the money the author paid for them to publish the book. Most authors receive advice to avoid this publishing model because the likelihood of being taken advantage of is so high.
Self-publishing: The authors pays for professional services but is his or her own publisher. This is where a lot of inexperienced authors also stumble. They hire a hybrid publisher calling itself a “self-publishing company.” There is no such thing. Self-publishing means YOU, the author, are the publisher. As such you accept the responsibilities undertaken by a traditional publisher, but on your own behalf. Those responsibilities include hiring professionals such as editors, graphic artists, and book designers to produce a quality product (the book).
Literary Agency Representation
Many publishers, particularly the Big 5, require agency representation of authors. That means they do not accept unsolicitied submissions. Effective literary agencies have contacts within publishing companies and understand what acquisition editors are looking for. Genuine literary agencies operate on commission; they do not charge authors fees for representation.
If the author has professional representation from a literary agency, then the publisher pays the literary agency, and the literary agency then takes their cut before disbursing the balance to the author. However, in no part of this arrangement does the author pay the agency (or the publisher).
In the past, many so-called literary agencies preyed on authors by offering representation only if the author used their services to have their manuscripts edited. Authors who fell for this scheme paid for the editing service and never received representation because the agency got their money from those fees.
There’s a new twist on agency representation scams. Writer Beware has an aritle on this topic: https://writerbeware.blog/2025/03/28/a-new-scam-to-watch-for-pre-paid-agent-commissions/.
The thing is, what vanity presses do and what fake literary agencies do is not necessarily illegal. Immoral, yes. The veterans of predatory business know this and have contracts to lock authors into unfavorable terms that greatly benefit the companies at the expense of the very authors they purport to serve.
It pays to be informed and to use critical thinking skills in this business. Don’t let eagerness, ambition, and ignorance leave you with empty pockets.