Self-Publishing Survey

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Parent Category: ROOT

Category: Publishing

Last Updated: Tuesday, 04 May 2021 10:46

Published: Wednesday, 31 March 2021 12:29

Written by Leo Hunter

The Society of Authors (SoA) and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) have teamed up to run an important survey in association with the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), with the closing date of 25th April 2021. Writers and authors who have been approached by and or subsequently paid any said publisher etc to have their work published are urged to take part in the survey. Click on Read More for details.

The survey relates directly to alleged exploitative practices of some publishers charging authors four and five figure sums in terms of thousands of pounds sterling in recent years to publish their work. Akin to unacceptable vanity publishing, such ruthless publishers now describe themselves as being hybrid publishers, contributory publishers, or subsidy publishers, on a said print-on-demand basis, for example. Some have even disguised themselves as being said ebook retailers and distributors, whereby they offer to supply ISBNs said to be free of charge to authors; but of course if they enter a said services contract with them such as distribution and or marketing. But the fact is, if they are supplying ISBNs they can only do so if they're registered imprint publishers. And there has been a sharp rise in complaints from authors relating directly and indirectly (implied via ambiguous contracts, processes and services) to what has been described as being such '...opaque...' practices and approaches during the last few years re same in both the print-on-demand and ebook contexts.

A major problem for the SoA, WGGB and ALCS, is that due to the huge marketing budgets of such said publishing companies, and endless opportunities provided by ruthless online advertising gurus and digital technology gurus, such said publishing companies have now become what has been described as being '...ubiquitous...' In such contexts, ruthless companies are more than often top ranking in search engine searches, whereby the more they pay to use the search engine advertising service/s, the higher their ranking etc. Those in turn are thereby what self-publishing authors etc see when looking to have their work published.

Now l have covered all of the above in contexts of reciprocally implied terms and conditions of such said publishers, retail outlets, and search engines, along with lots more juice. But the publication date of my book covering all those issues is during May 2021. With the survey closing date late April 2021, the considerations raised in my book will come too late for aspiring writers and authors before that May 2021 publication date, of course. However, it will be very intriguing, to say the least, to sift through the survey findings and conclusions. 

I really do hope as many writers and authors as possible participate in the ongoing survey, all-the-same. It's no joke being approached by any vanity publisher and any hybrid, contributory or subsidy publishers, who know for certain authors who accept their terms and conditions have no real hope of regaining the costs to publish their work. Exploitation? - That goes nowhere near concisely describing the impact on the creative writing trade!

To find out more about the SoA and WGGB survey, and how the data gained will be used, go to https://authr.uk/survey2021 and good luck with your writing projects.

Leo Hunter