Vanity Companies
The TRAP for Beginners
**Disclaimer: this blog is not about trashing Vanity Companies. It’s about sharing awareness of the dangers of getting taken advantage of when you don’t know anything about Vanity Companies. This is based on my personal experience with a Vanity Company. Just as with everything in this world, some are good and some are bad. Do your research and know what you want before buying anything. The company I went with did help me finish my book but there were many roadblocks and problems along the way.**
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT buy into one of these companies until you have read this entire blog!
The best way to avoid wasting money and time, as a new author, is to avoid these Vanity Companies at all cost, until you learn all you can about the pros and cons that can make or break it for some authors.
First off let’s review what the purpose of Vanity companies are.
Vanity companies are companies that are supposed to help authors create their books by offering services according to the type of staff they have.
For example some vanity companies offer: illustrators, marketing and formatting as their big offer to authors. While others might offer only formatting and marketing.
If you look at your situation and decide that a Vanity company is a good option for you here are some questions to research and ask:
- Check the company’s reviews on BBB(Better Business Bureau).
- Always ask the company questions. Talk about things before signing anything.
List of questions to ask Vanity companies for buying:
- How long has this company been around for?
- What authors have been published through this company? Ask for names and book titles. Research these to make sure they exist.
- What are the company’s packages and prices?
- Do I, as the author, keep my rights to my books? Or does the company get them?
- What type of printing company do you use? What type of price range is normal for your books? (if you know your book genre name that)
- Is marketing in the basic package? If so, how much marketing is involved?
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. Be as specific as possible. Remember some of these companies want to trick you into wasting money on practically worthless ‘deals’. And other companies are the real deal but the more you know the better.
The tricky thing is that there are tons of fake, scamming vanity companies out there waiting for an author to fall for their so-called bargains.
They have deals that sound too good to be true and as a new author looking for any help at this point, the companies target you. Kinda scary huh. But don’t worry. Even if you got scammed you can learn from that bad experience and create another book as a self-published or traditionally published author.
Are all Vanity Companies scams?
Absolutely not!
The thing is, there are some amazing vanity companies out there ready to help you with your book. However unless you really understand the company’s purpose and what you want for your book you might end up in a big trap by one of those scamming companies. Remember they target you on purpose.
My big first Mistake as a new author
My personal experience with Xlibris™
Back in 2019, I decided to write and publish a children’s book. Being bright eyed and eager to make it big as an author, I jumped into it. Gentle reminder Authors, creating success as an author takes time and experience. Don’t panic if your first book or 3 don’t make it big.
The biggest obstacle I was constantly running into was, where on earth do I start. Writing your story, sure but what then? At that time my heart was set on the traditional publishing route. I wanted to query agents, hook an amazing one and be published just like Julia Childs, from the movie, Julie and Julia. Which is about the journey of Julia Childs as she falls in love with cooking, writes her cookbook as a hobby and gets published.
Hollywood did a great job with the end of the movie, Julia holding her first finished cookbook in her hands, crying with joy as her husband in the background joins her in the triumph of the moment. That last scene is exactly what I wanted! To hold up my book, completely finish the book and feel that overwhelming joy that makes you want to cry. How was I going to make that happen? That was my big block.
The research went on as I journeyed on to create my book. That’s when I found Vanity companies for the first time. From what the reviews showed it was a 50/50 chance of success if you buy services from one of these companies. And a 50/50 chance you might get scammed. I decided to give myself a budget and take the risks.
Before I bought anything from the company I started an email conversation with one of their agents. Making it very clear that I was interested but wanted to get some information first. This email was about a two week conversation before I decided to buy anything.
Since this was my first time contacting any type of agent period I tried being professional and straightforward. I asked questions about that company, what they offer, who they have worked with and so on. Trying my best to keep alert for any red flags.
At the end of my 2 weeks emailing back and forth I felt like this was good enough and took the final plunge. I bought their basic package.
The company I went with is called: Xlibris™, yes they do still exist and I can happily say is not a scamming company from my personal experience. However there were plenty of problems that I will be discussing in the rest of this blog. So, stay tuned.
I bought their basic package. From then on, we worked together for about 6 months.
My goals for this time were:
Finish the illustrations
Get my book edited
Get it formatted for the age group
Marketing and publishing.
The company Xlibris™ helped me with:
Formatting the book, some small marketing direction and publishing.
It is very important for you, dear reader, to know that I did not finish my book marketing or publishing with this company.
Here’s that part of the story.
After we got the book formatted, me and the company agent, I was assigned at the beginning, discussed book pricing for the first time. I wanted my book to be under 15 dollars so more people could afford it. Also, my book was not long as they were geared towards toddlers and young children. The book prices needed to be lower, in my opinion, for the simple reason that the book was not large or long. However, when I brought my price ideas to the agent, they informed me that the price of my books would not be my choice but be based on how expensive it was for the company to print each book. And the company used a print on demand book printer which is more expensive in the long run.
So in the end I pulled my book from the company before publishing it. Mainly because I didn’t want to publish with the high prices they wanted for my books. I pulled my book out and decided to go self-published. I will say it is interesting, even though I kept the rights to my book and did not publish through them, the company did go ahead and publish my book under my name on their website(last I saw), anyways. I get a % of royalties from any of the purchases. Which by the way have been zero. Possibly because it is overpriced but also because I did not buy marketing for it.
Things I didn’t know about book printing
There are 2 main printing option:
1. Print-on-demand
2. Offset printing
Print-on-demand printers literally only print a book when it has been purchased. The price usually does not change no matter how many books are printed.
Offset printing, prints books in large quantities. The author oversees the storage of the books. Book prices can change depending on how many books are bought. The more you buy the bigger discount you can get.
Plus that’s not even talking about the benefits or cons of each. So here’s a handy link to Tucker Max’s Scribe media post, about the two printing options and more details on both. I found his post simple and straightforward to understand.
https://scribemedia.com/best-book-printing-services/
What exactly were the cons of trying to publish with this company?
- Pestering me with a million phone calls and emails.
Literally, the day I signed with them, the phone calls and emails flooded my life. At first, I thought it was important so I tried answering them all every single day. But ended up getting frustrated and overwhelmed. They ignored me, when I asked them not to call or email while I was busy at work. I emailed them asking them to take me off their call lists which took a few emails for them to finally take care of.
- Being shady with pricing and marketing.
Basically, when I signed up for their basic package, I specifically asked if marketing was included and they said yes. Toward the end, I got a few marketing package emails that the company wanted me to buy. Which were from 500 to 5 plus thousand dollars. When I asked how much my already purchased plan covered, for marketing, I found out that it basically covered nothing. In order to get marketing for my book moving forward I would either have to do it all myself or spend another $1000 plus dollars for just the marketing. Again, maybe all of that info was in the small print that I tried reading at the beginning of the journey. Which in that case is my fault for not seeing it. However, the email questions I sent the company should have clarified that it was not covered and they didn’t.
- They were not clear and upfront about the expensive book printing cost.
Again, this is a split fault. I didn’t know any better and should have asked about book printing costs before buying their products. However the company should be upfront about printing costs being expensive. Their reasons for choosing print-on-demand made sense, but as a new author, just starting out, it would have been very helpful to know about that extra cost in the beginning.
- I got tossed around a few times with a few different representatives. This one really annoyed me at times. Stuff happens and sometimes the person you were working with leaves or has to take a break. Which means you get tossed to another person for your book. The problem with that was everytime I got a new person to deal with, they knew literally nothing about my book and where it was at in the formattting process. Which mean’t I had to constantly re-explain everything to them. The new person would call me, email me and ask the same questions over and over again. Thus, creating a very frustrating situation for me.
My review of this company
Out of 5 stars I would give them a 2.5 star review
Their customer service was good at first but became extremely pushy.
They did help me get my book formatted and ready to publish faster then if I had tried doing it all by myself.
I did leave the company with a formatted book and more knowledge than I expected from the experience.
What can authors take away from this:
Do your research before buying anything
Ask informed questions
Have a budget
Be willing to learn from mistakes
What can Vanity companies learn from this:
Be honest and upfront with all pricing-from books to marketing
When a new client joins, ask for good times to email and/or call. Don’t do both everyday. Ask if the client wants both and how often.
Keep one representative per client, as much as possible. If you must switch the client to another person, please make sure that person is up to date on the current book process and what needs to be done next.
If you read this far let me take a moment to say Congrats you made it to the end!
Thank-you for reading my blog. I hope you found it insightful and hopefully a good read.
My current bloggy plan is too release two blogs per month.
Topics I will be covering in the future will be: book stuff, publishing info and my book journey, specifically covering my newest book project: Lily’s Guide to Releasing Antique Spirits. So, until next month! Read ya later.
Don’t forget to connect with me on social media and drop any topics ideas you want covered in my posts on Instagram™.
