Pre-Ramble

Writing a book is hard. Being able to string a coherent story together start to finish is a massive achievement in itself. Whomever can do that I commend you. You at the very least deserve appreciation for your momentous achievement. I am genuinely not being sarcastic with that, writing is really, really hard. It takes precious time and effort on your behalf and when you finally take the plunge and start sending your book out to publishers and agents to have your efforts thrown back in your face is one of the most diminishing things you will ever experience. Your efforts do have value, that is the first thing I want to say. Not getting your book published is not a reflection of your writing ability. More than anything else it’s a game of numbers and luck. As of writing this I am not a published author. I believe there is value to my work but every time I get a rejection from a publishing house or agent, I will admit that my already numerous wounds covering my self-confidence get a little deeper. Yet, I still must objectively reflect. Both editors and agents are incredibly busy people. They had hundreds to thousands of submissions a week and whatever you have is just another piece to add to the slush pile. Even getting a rejection that is an automated is uncommon. However, there are those that masquerade as legitimate businesses that will try to take advantage of you and part you with your money. In the following I want to talk about vanity publishing, scan publishers and my experience with one.

My experience with a scam publisher

First, I want to start with the fact that I haven’t been as persistent as I should be when pursuing publishers and agents. I should be approaching far more than I have been so far. However I have been until recently working a full-time job and haven’t found the time to be able to find someone. Next I have been the victim of scanning before after which I have been incredibly careful about any dealings I’ve had. I got the email yesterday from a company calling themselves Europe Books. The subject line was, “publishing proposal”, so naturally I was very excited. I showed it to my wife and she was thrilled. Finally a publisher who had more than three words to say to me. One that appreciates my work and in the email tells me, “it has great potential”. They invited me for resume this morning on Wednesday, 31 August. At the moment my full-time job is looking for a job so I didn’t have too much time to research the company. The first warning signs I had was when I did do some digging on them and found a single webpage very sparsely populated by information, bad grammar and spelling mistakes. Not exactly the best first impression for a publishing company but I digress. I then went on to another website they had which showed a few of their published authors however the information provided on the website was different to any Google searches I did of the books and authors. This was still early days however the warning lights to beware of Europe books were beginning to flash. Even the noncommittal broad name itself was a red flag.

The next thing I have to bring up was when I searched the company it is clear that they put quite a lot of their budget into their Google ads since it came up quite prominently. “Open for submissions was also somewhat suspicious since they didn’t list any of their agents or distribution partners. Another glaring problem was their lack of information on publishing rights which is quite prominent on the websites of many other more reputable firms. Aside the lack of information on their website, the searches that brought up very little concrete information and being unable to find the individual I was supposed to have a zoom meeting with I searched a little more specifically. After looking up “Europe books scam”, that’s where I found testimonials from people who had fallen prey to their insidious tactics. One individual said that they lost nearly £4000 on their empty promises while another less substantial yet no less tragic lost just over £2000. If I with my limited experience in the publishing world managed to cite them as the scam they are, then how did these people fall prey to their methods? Well, I’m about to answer that.

Hollow promises and honeyed words

If I’m absolutely honest, even after finding out everything I did about the company I still had a pang of longing. I hoped against all odds that Europe Books was not a scam and then I will be on my way to a successful writing career in just moments. I’ll call the woman who met me Maria however I doubt that she used her real name anyway. In appearance she looked like a typical editor. Middle-aged with librarians smile and stylish prescription glasses. It wasn’t her Eastern European accent that threw me off since four many great editors English isn’t their first language. It was more the Ramble she went into about how great my book was. After she asked me some cursory questions about my writing career to which I gave very insubstantial broad answers she started telling me about how great my book is and how much potential it has.

This is the first part of the scam, giving your work validation. Being a writer is hard on getting published is harder. So, when you finally get some positive feedback from a publisher or an agent you finally get that feeling you’ve been craving. It was evident however that she had read very little of the five chapters. Using broad terms like the “contrast of black-and-white”, or the “defiance of evil”. She didn’t even recall the names of my characters. Citing the one as “the girl” and the other one as “the young knight”.

The next part to the scam is getting you to talk. She prompted me to give her answers about the future of my writing and tell her more about the series I was planning. This part is to give them the appearance of being interested in your work. That they genuinely believe in it.

The third and most important part is to come off as being experts in their field. Maria told me about how they were going to use their expert marketing team, graphic designers and editors to turn my book into an international success. While I don’t know much about publishing, I do work in marketing and have extensive experience in it. So when I asked her about their different distribution channels and whether they did more traditional forms of advertising or if they utilised online platforms more she gave very noncommittal answers. Telling me how they were going to promote it in Waterstones and arrange book signings. While it wasn’t her department (I assume since she never actually gave her job title) you should have a level of knowledge on the matter.

The final part of the scam was to dangle the hook. After she told me how great my book was and how successful it’s going to be, she then started giving me the critiques. The book was going to need a new cover, translating into various languages (for some reason), it was going to need an excessive amount of editing and there will need to be a first run of prints.

I have heard of co-publishing before but I’ve never been attracted to the idea of giving money to a publisher. She told me about all the benefits of publishing with them and giving me vague answers about the international publishing process until I started asking her about the upfront cost. Inexplicably she wasn’t willing to give me a number until I pressed her a little harder. She finally said well be a ballpark of starting at a thousand euros plus. Now, even if I want to go along with this deal, I certainly don’t have €1000 lying around to give to this shady company masking itself as a publishing firm. We ended the conversation after that with her asking me for the full copy of my book which I said I would send over to her (eventually).

Conclusion: why do people fall prey to this?

Because as a writer we are always fighting an uphill battle. I am not even a full-time author but I know how difficult it is to get your first work published. People who are much smarter than me and far more savvy fall prey to these kinds of scams all the time. It’s not that they lack intelligence, it’s because they are desperate to publish their work. Just like me.

Instead of giving your precious time and money to a sham like Europe Books and you’re not getting published just like me. There are plenty of other things you can do. You can perfect your website, re-edit your book, keep on approaching publishers and if all else fails you can put it onto Amazon and see what can feedback you get. At the end of the day, that minimum of €1000 that they are trying to squeeze from you can be much better put elsewhere. You can pay a legitimate editor, use your funds to promote your work online or otherwise use the funds on other more important things. Just don’t give it to these scumbags.