Have you even wondered if a publishing compancy is legitimate? Or if you should sign up for that marketing package?
Victorica Strauss has been running Writer Beware for over two decades now to make sure writers know what they should look out for. In this episode I talk to her about a personal story of mine plus more things to look out for in these times. Plus, Victoria is a fantasy and historical writer who has seven books of her own for you to check out!
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Find the Transcript of the episode here.
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Transcript Starts Here:
Kat (00:14)
Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee, perhaps some paper and pen and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat it with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing experts, as well as Cat’s thoughts on writing in her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Well, hopefully not actually cry, but you will probably learn something. And I hope you’ll be inspired to write because as I always say, you have a story, you should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick. Hello everyone. This is episode 122 of the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast and I’m recording the intro a few days early on March 7, 2022, because in about two days and 6 hours I’m leaving for England and I’m so excited. I am not only going to spend a few days in London with my family, but we are going to bear to drive on the other side of the road in our adventure to go to Stonehenge and Bath and Stratford Upon Avon in Oxford and then back to London and of course see Harry Potter. At least the Studios, right?
Kat (01:41)
We are going to have so much fun. It has morphed into this sort of thing because this is a good moment for my husband to take a vacation and I cannot wait. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And honestly, in all my travels I spent a lot of years wanting always to go to a non English speaking country. And when this trip finally got put together, I started realizing how excited I was to the point where I couldn’t sleep at night because I was so excited. And I realized wanting to go to England has never really left my bucket list, even though as an adult I sort of forgot about it. But as a kid I always wanted to go. I subscribed to this England, which was a magazine back in the 90s. I don’t know if it still exists where I would just pour over images of England and for various reasons I never got over there, but I’m going there now. Can you tell that I’m excited? I’m also excited to bring to you guys Victoria Strauss this week. She is a fantasy and historical novel writer. She writes for adults and young adults, but she’s also one of the founders of Writer Beware.
Kat (03:06)
If you don’t know whatriderbeware.com is, you are going to find out a whole lot more in this interview. But you definitely should know about Writer Beware. It is a one stop shop to check up on agents and publishers and scams and all the things that are going on in the publish team world. Now she talks about there’s a lot of marketing scams now and it is the place that you should go to do some research to find out what are the trends, find out what you should be looking for so that you don’t get sucked into spending money on things that are just a waste of your money. I know some of us always think that we’re going to know these things. Like whenever somebody slips into my DMs on Instagram telling me that they’ll review my book, if only I pay them $35, you think like, okay, yeah, that’s not going to happen. But not all scams are that obvious. And in fact, I talked to her about back in 2001 being one of the very early people to be picked up by Publish America, which turns out it is a vanity press. And I talk about it more in the interview.
Kat (04:21)
But at that time, I was very young and I specifically looked it up as being whether it was marked as a vanity press and it was not because it was quite new to the industry. And Unfortunately, Published America was a scam. I’m very fortunate that I was very poor at the time, and I did not buy any books. I think about ten. In fact, they were not very happy with me because I wouldn’t buy more. But lots of people got scammed out of a lot of money, and we talk about that. So I bring to you one of my personal mistakes in this writing and publishing journey. As far as what is going on behind the scenes and all around me, I want to direct your attention a little bit to Turning Readers into Writers podcast. There is a great episode right now talking about Setting Up your Book Proposal with Vanessa Soto. Emma does a great interview with her, and I’ve had a couple of requests from people through my newsletter asking about book proposal writing. And so this came at a really great time. So head over to wherever you’re listening to this podcast and make sure that you check out episode 61 of Turning Readers and Writers with Emmaese.
Kat (05:46)
And that one is Write Your Book Proposal with Vanessa Soto. In the creative writing community, we continue to meet every single week. We have what we are now calling writing sessions in order to not scare people away. We have those eight to nine times a week. We have marketing sessions every Friday, and we are going to bring in a couple of published authors and Editors in the coming weeks and have them come talk to us. It’s going to be really, really exciting if you don’t really understand what the community is about. It is just a lot of authors, writers at all stages of life who want a place to talk about all the other steps that go along with it. We have a private stock community. We talk about newsletters and websites and promotions and collaborations and Editors and what you should get in an editor and book covers. And there are a lot of things that go into it. What do you do when your book doesn’t show up and all the different tools that we use, what we’ve tried to use and don’t like. We have marketing sessions every Friday and we have people come in and talk to us about what they’ve learned, what services they might provide, and we’re always learning and we’re always able to point people in certain directions.
Kat (07:20)
Oh, I learned about this or ask a question about something else. It sort of brings the independent writing world. Although we’re not all in the writers, some of us are traditionally published and it sort of makes that world smaller so that we can communicate and interact and feel heard, but also contribute in the creative writing community membership, you also get access to all of the writing session membership. And honestly, the writing session membership is separate if you want it to be. And we have a lot of fun there too. We always chat for about 5 minutes and then we write. And because I have shown up, I personally host a little over half of the writing sessions and then I show up to some of them that are hosted by different women in the group. I have now gotten 65,000 words written in my next novel. I’m really excited. I actually checked that this morning. And despite all the other things that I do, the podcast and there’s a few children running around here somewhere and at some point people ask if they can eat food, so I do that as well. And every once in a while I vacuum.
Kat (08:38)
I’m just kidding. So all the things that I do, the writing sessions have really made sure that I get my novel written and I choose to spend time on it. Sometimes they’re writing sessions. I also get my newsletters done and things which is fine, you can write whatever you want, it is the time to come and write. But it has allowed me to say, okay, these are the hours that I’m writing today and really stick to them. And so as I go through this novel, I’m really starting to get into it. I am now at the point about two thirds of the way through, and the protagonist has found out that his brother is kind of deceiving him and trying to trick him into committing to a situation. And of course he has all these certain conflicts and now I’m trying to make a decision on how I’m going to make my hero really fall. I’m just going to throw everything at him, remembering that this is a rough draft and things will change as we edit, right? So in this time of writing, I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to get to the end.
Kat (09:52)
I know what the end is going to bring, but I really have to start throwing a few more things at him. I’ve been very polite with the girlfriend and the girlfriend’s about to be the person that we turn against. And so I have to find a really humiliating way for him to find out certain things. So that’s fun. You hear the smile in my voice, I’m sure, because it’s actually really fun writing. I do like writing the background, but I also really like writing the terrible things that will happen to the protagonist and then how they get themselves out of it. So this book is actually going to be a duology. So of course, as I’m writing it, I’ve never written a series or duology. And this time as I’m writing it, I’m sort of thinking of the next book in the series and how his journey will continue to meet the love of his life, of course. And if you don’t know, I started that book already and realized that the back story to that book should really have its own book because I was just spending so much time writing backstory on the brother and the betrayal and all that, and I thought, well, it really should have its own book.
Kat (11:06)
So that’s where I am. I’m also starting to gather information about my historical novel that I want to write, and I am trying to remind myself that research counts as part of the writing process. But I really do have a hard time having days in which nothing gets written. And so I’m almost like approaching writing that with apprehension because I know that I need to do a bit more research. I need to research Spain and England in the 1830s. I just really like writing. I’m so impatient. I always want to just get to the writing, but I want to have details in the book and I want to be accurate. Actually, I don’t mind reading, but there’s something about not getting those words in every day. I don’t know. It’s just this inner struggle that I have. I don’t know if you’re like that at all that you sort of measure your success, I guess, or your daily success by certain measurements. And I think that I am a little too into measuring mine by word count. I’m just going to admit that. But things are going well. I’m quite pleased with myself. I did start out 2022 with the Google to finish four rough drafts this year, and I think that might happen.
Kat (12:36)
I really do. On the other hand, you know, it’s nothing set in stone. There’s no contract. So if things don’t go as planned, then, well, too bad I am beholden to nobody but myself. But it looks like I’m going to have at least two, because this is I’m two thirds of the way down. So, as always, I encourage you to find a writing community, to find a place in which you can take your writing seriously, and those around you take your writing seriously. Try to write every single day, if possible. I usually take Sundays off, although this weekend I did not. We had a writing session on Saturday, and then I wrote as well on Sunday because I’m going to London. Did I tell you I’m going to London. Did I tell you I’m excited about going to London? So that is my news for today. I will have tons of news about London. I don’t know what I’m going to do to gather all the information, but you guys will probably have to bear with me on the whole London thing for a while. I’m just saying that’s how excited I am. So today, this week, I’m actually, as you listening to this, I am in London right now.
Kat (13:44)
And if you are excited, as I am to listen to this episode with Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, you should subscribe to Pencils and Lipstick and you should think about becoming a patron at Patreon. Compencil lipstick. You will get a shout out if you sign up for just $3 a month and all of the benefits start to go up from there. And I am trying to spend a little bit more time over there on Patreon and to give you guys a little bit more. It’s funny because writers don’t really like to be on video, so a lot of them don’t really want to do a video interview because that was my idea. Like I’ll do the video for the patrons. But if you would like to support the show, that would be wonderful. It can be a one off. It can be monthly. It is what keeps this show going. Honestly, it takes some work. It is so much fun to do. But you becoming a patron obviously benefits and make sure that my editor stays caffeinated because she will be paid and make sure I’m caffeinated, which is always a good thing. So they come at you with energy.
Kat (14:56)
I will have all the links in the show notes for Victoriastrous. Victoriastrous.com, you can find all of her books and writerbeware.com. You can make sure that you are up to date with the scams that are happening in the writer’s world. So without further Ado, let’s get into the interview. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Pencils and Lipstick podcast. I’m very excited to have with me, Victoria Strauss. She is a writer and she is also one of the founders of Writer Beware. So I’m very excited to be talking both about all of the publishing industry scams and not just scams the news, as well as the writing that Victoria does herself. Thank you, Victoria, for coming on the show.
Victoria (15:46)
My pleasure.
Kat (15:48)
You are personally requested by somebody. I told you right before we started recording. I think as people get into the publishing industry and all that, they find your very big website Writer Beware. I think almost everyone in the indie space knows it. But when I went in and looked at you, I realized that you are writer as well. So will you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you write and then we’ll talk about your journey?
Victoria (16:18)
Well, I have published nine novels. I write for both adults and young adults. My most recent books are Passion Blue in Color Song, historical duology for teens. That in the Renaissance, in Venice, Milan. I had a lot of fun doing research, and my other books are fantasy. I have several fantasy novels for adults. The Burning Land and City are the most recent of those. And I don’t have any projects at the moment, but hopefully I’ll be working on something soon.
Kat (17:14)
Yeah. So the Passion Blue duology is purely historical fiction. It’s not speculative or anything.
Victoria (17:20)
It’s got a small fantasy element, a little bit ambiguous. Is it real? Is it not? But mostly they’re primarily they are historical fiction.
Kat (17:33)
That is really cool. I mean, you have a carcass review on there. So the Congratulations for that. That and I will definitely have links in the show notes. That sounds like a not very tapped historical moment to write about. I don’t know. I’m not very aware of that many people writing about the Renaissance in Venice.
Victoria (17:55)
In the teens space. That’s true. A lot of books. What interested me was the books have an element of astrology, and they’re about a girl who has talent painting. But in the culture of the times, that was not something that women could do.
Kat (18:23)
Okay.
Victoria (18:23)
So it’s about her struggle to follow her talent and find a way to be a painter in a world where women’s roles were very defined. And the first book is set in a content because she is the illegitimate daughter of an old man, and when he dies, his wife sends her off to a continent to just kind of get rid of her. But as it happens and this is actually based on a real historical person, there is a nun in the continent who runs a painting workshop. The heroine, Julia, is taking a workshop, and she discovers what it’s like to really be a painter within this very close and female centric setting. And various things go on. And in the second book, she has to leave the content, disguise herself as a boy, and run away to Venice, where she becomes an apprentice to painter. But I was interested in I’ve always loved Renaissance art, so it was a real treat to bring that into a book and research painting techniques time and just create this alternate world in a setting that I think is something people haven’t seen before.
Kat (20:10)
Yeah. So that must have required a lot of research. Did you start out kind of knowing a little bit about the Renaissance? How did you stumble across the story of this nun giving painting glasses?
Victoria (20:25)
I always love Renaissance Park. My first novel is historical, and I had this idea of a girl who has painting talent. So I just started doing research, and I discovered this nun who painted the workshop. Her name was Tautilla and Ellie, and she did a painting of The Last Supper, which has recently been restored. And she’s sort of along with other female painters of the Renaissance. She’s kind of being restored to her rightful place and elevated from the obscurity into which female managers really had fallen. But I stumbled on her story quite by chance, and it really captured my imagination. I thought it was so interesting that in a time when women really could not do much anything within the continent, which I think when people think about a continent, they think of prison restrictions, they think of privation and religiosity. But in reality, there was a good deal of freedom for women in this convent setting, because although the Church was dominated by men, these events were run by women. So within this restrictive setting, Plateau and Nelly was free to be a painter, really, just like her male contemporaries. And she was actually well known at the time.
Victoria (22:27)
She sees missions very little of works by historians weren’t interested in art. Historians weren’t particularly interested in female artists. So she, along with others, really fell into obscurity. So there’s a lot about her life that has been lost, but there was enough for me to do some research and kind of create my own version of her shop in this continent.
Kat (23:03)
That’s really cool. I think even as her art comes out of obscurity, you’re kind of helping us look at history a little bit differently. And I’m always amazed at how different history is from the historical textbooks that we get written for a specific genre or a classroom setting compared to just a history buff looking back and trying to bring to life other stories. And it’s always a little bit different. There’s always a lot of people missing. It is.
Victoria (23:40)
And when you’re writing for young adults, when you’re writing history, you have to kind of balance being authentic to the attitudes of the time, which is different from ours today, and creating characters that a contemporary reader will relate to.
Kat (24:06)
Right.
Victoria (24:07)
So that’s always a challenge in writing history. But I write both history and fantasy, and I think the two are very similar because although when you’re writing history, you’re writing about reality, it’s not a reality. You can direct the experience. So as much research as you can do, you still have to fill in the caps with your imagination, which is exactly the same thing with NASA’s Uber building. But I also do a lot of real world research, right?
Kat (24:46)
Yeah, of course. I think there’s nothing worse than building a fantasy world. That where nothing is wrong or there’s no struggle whatsoever. And looking into history, you can find a whole lot of examples of struggle that you can then place into a fantasy world, maybe with a twist. Now we have books where the females are at the top and it twists history from men to female. I mean, it’s great knowing more history, I think, really enriches your ability to write, whether it’s fantasy or historical fiction or contemporary, really. You’re able to draw on different parallels and world build with more detail, I guess.
Victoria (25:31)
Exactly. In fantasy, you can explore real world issues like my way of Aratadoology, The Burning Land in Lake and City with those books for the adult market. I take a look at at religious bias and prejudice and persecution, which is a very topical subject. But when you’re exploring it in fantasy, you can kind of highlight it in a way that isn’t bogged down by historical references and biases and things that people already know. So one of the things that attracts me to Angesty is kind of an allegorical element that you can incorporate.
Kat (26:30)
Yeah. And people don’t have I mean, we all have our biases or whatever. We grew up with the things that we will defend automatically. And I think when you see it presented in fantasy, you’re able to shut that part down of your brain and maybe look at the world a little more critically in a sense that you might not be able to if it was presented true to the day with all the things, all the names presented as things are.
Victoria (27:01)
Yeah, exactly.
Kat (27:01)
In reality.
Victoria (27:02)
Exactly right. That’s why I love writing status, because I wouldn’t say it’s easier than writing historical novels, but it does give you more scope for controlling the world.
Kat (27:25)
Yeah.
Victoria (27:25)
But that said, if you do create a fantasy world, it needs to be internally consistent. And one of the things that drives me crazy, especially about movies, is that they nearly always violate their own world building principles.
Kat (27:53)
Yes. For the sake of plot, or perhaps because they think they won’t get good reviews on social media.
Victoria (28:00)
True.
Kat (28:03)
I can’t remember what we were watching the other day, and I just said that person would not do that because of what they set up in the beginning of this movie. And it just irks me.
Victoria (28:13)
Yes, it irks me.
Kat (28:14)
Too, because I think we’re so much in this world. I just read a review on Inventing Anna.
Victoria (28:22)
I don’t know if you’ve seen that.
Kat (28:25)
I thought it was great storytelling because Shonda Rhymes is a great storyteller. She does a great job of directing the show. And I read a review of somebody saying Shonda Rhimes thinks this uses it as feminine or something because of what happens in the show. And I think we’re just living in that time where everyone accuses the creator of, like, believing exactly what their world believes or that they create in their book or their characters. This isn’t true.
Victoria (28:55)
Yes. I got letters from readers assumptions, and sometimes it’s flattering and sometimes it’s not. All my books deal, in some sense with religion and religiosity because I think that’s something that really holds up a mirror to humanity in human history. And I’ve gotten some very angry letters from people who accuse me of blasphemy or who take issue with some element of the book and accused me of believing this. It’s interesting.
Kat (29:50)
It is interesting. Maybe then it’s just magnified by social media and getting things out there. Maybe it’s always been like that where people think you write exactly all the characters believe exactly as you believe. I just don’t find that true. It would be so boring if we wrote characters in worlds that were only exactly how our world view was.
Victoria (30:12)
That’s right. And if that were true, we would have so many serial killers.
Kat (30:21)
That is a very fair point. What is going on with all those horror writers? That’s so true. So when did you start out in historical fiction, and then you moved into fantasy fiction a bit. Is that how it went?
Victoria (30:39)
Yes. You don’t have any ambitions to be a writer? I wanted an excuse to take a year off between high school and College. And my dad, you must be engaged, said, okay, you can take a year off, but you have to have a project. I’ll write a novel. And my idea was I would write a couple of chapters, it wouldn’t work out, and then I could just do what I wanted for the rest year. But I really was hooked and turned into a real novel. I had no writing experience before that. And then I just kind of set it aside. And my mother, who actually published the novel when she was in her 20s, and you have to at least try to get published. So I sent it out to a few places, and it landed on the desk and editor whose publisher was going out of business, and she was transitioning to be an agent. So she said, look, represent this novel. And I was like, okay, I have no idea. And at that point in my life, I knew, like, so many writers, I knew nothing about publishing. So if I had met up with her, I might very well have got ripped off.
Victoria (32:20)
But she did manage to sell it eventually to an editor who made me completely rewrite it. I had written it in third person. She made me rewrite it in first person.
Kat (32:35)
That’s a lot of work.
Victoria (32:36)
A lot of work. But I learned a huge amount from her. And then she was very supportive, and she bought two bar novels from me. One was a straight up fantasy, one was a fantasy star mix. And by the time I finished the third one, I was feeling young was very different back in the 1980s, which I hate to say because I’m dating myself. But why was really different back then? It was much more restrictive. And what you could and couldn’t write about it was not super, hugely popular the way you were supposed to read the classics.
Kat (33:33)
Right.
Victoria (33:35)
Right. And there are wonderful writers from that time.
Kat (33:41)
Oh, yeah.
Victoria (33:42)
Some of them were still writing, but it just was a very different market. I was feeling constricted. I decided to switch to the adult market. And I love historical fantasy really is my first love as a writer. So I wrote a duology, The Arm of the Stone and the Arms of the Stone. My agent was able to sell those for me, and I thought, now I’m an adult novelist, I’m never going to look back. But, you know, with the transformation of the Ya genre, just how open it is to different viewpoints and different kinds of writing, I did eventually go back to it for Passion Blue and Color Spawn, and that was a wonderful experience to be doing Ya can for a very different market and a very different audience than I had before.
Kat (34:54)
Did you continue in the traditional publishing?
Victoria (34:57)
Yes, I have only ever published traditionally. I resolved my books a few times. My early Yas are with Open Road Media, which publishes backlist books.
Kat (35:16)
Okay.
Victoria (35:16)
But I do have rights to my Stone duology, and I am planning to self publish. That’s the world for writers. The options for writers are so much greater than I used to be. In many ways, it’s a wonderful world for writers now. And in many ways, in many of the same ways, it is not a wonderful world for editing.
Kat (35:45)
Yes. So it has changed significantly since I guess stepped into the scene of really thinking that I would write. And I guess that would be like 2001. I finished the level and was very excited about it and sent it out to a couple of different queried around. I can’t remember specifically who I sent it to and got some form letters back and then two. Very encouraging. No, thank you. But with some suggestions, which when I then got an offer from something called Publish America, I was very excited about it. And I had an inkling that things were changing. We did have the Internet at that time for all of you very young people that I was in the University checking this company out, had my stepdad look at the contract and all those things. As far as we knew, it was fine. Right. But it wasn’t fine. It was not fine at all. It was pretty much that time when they would be the Amazon for you. But how did they make their money? Basically, by you buying the book.
Victoria (37:05)
Right. Because I didn’t do anything. Yeah. By you buying the book. And then increasingly over the years, buy extra services, like if you pay us XML, we’ll publish faster or we’ll do this or that. And one of the ways they made money was by slapping huge shipping charges. If you ordered your book with the special offer this or that, you would get a discount on the book, the shipping charges would be enormous.
Kat (37:42)
Yes. And the shipping charges would go down. The more hundreds of books you ordered.
Victoria (37:46)
Yes, I remember. That’s a classic vanity.
Kat (37:55)
Well, when did you start writers before we get into this? Because Writers Deware is a website where we can sort of go and check, look people up. It’s like a one stop place to check on the industry, check on as much as you can possibly keep up, the companies that show up. So what year did that start?
Victoria (38:14)
We started in 1998.
Kat (38:16)
So you were definitely around when this was happening.
Victoria (38:27)
So I was never scammed, just purely by accident, really. But when I first started to go online in a serious way and I was joining writers groups, I was seeing all these stories about feature literary agents and vanity publishers and editing referral schemes and people just getting ripped off. And I had no idea that anything like that existed. And I got interested. And around the same time, I joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy America and they had a call for a volunteer to create a page of scam warnings on the organization’s website. So I volunteered and I was introduced and Crispin, who at that time was vice President, and she was looking into setting up a committee to investigate writing scams. So we joined forces to create Writer, which originally was just a website, but later evolved into a blog, Facebook page, social media presence. So we have a website@riteofaware.com and that is devoted to information and warnings about various schemes and scams. We have a page on literary agents, Editors, self publishing, vanity publishers. And the aim of the website is really just to educate writers about what’s out there, what they need to watch out for, how to identify bad practice, and to give them links to helpful online resources.
Victoria (40:37)
The blog, which is, I think what most people are familiar with, deals with all of those. It covers all of those issues in real time. So it’s where we write about specific schemes and scams, publishing industry news and issues. And I like the weird stuff. There’s a lot of weird stuff in a publishing weird ventures and strange people who operate bizarre scams as well. So the blog provides specific warnings about specific companies and issues. And then Facebook page, I post warnings and information and we can have conversations there. And then my own Twitter feed also is part of that. Last but not least, we have an email advice service, which is you can contact us at Aware@sfwa.org. You can send a report about a scam that you got off by. You can ask me, you can say, hey, I just got a request from this publisher. Are they legitimate complaints, advice about the writing process, whatever.
Kat (42:15)
And does it deal mostly with science and fantasy?
Victoria (42:18)
No. Fiction? No. We deal with the entire range of genres, markets. We can be used by writers in any Englishspeaking country, Camp, UK and Australia, and anybody at any stage of their career or writing in any genre. We want to cover the whole world and be useful to everybody.
Kat (42:51)
I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity for scammers or just tricky schemes, I guess, because when you write a book, you’re so excited to get it published. So 2001 was when I got published America and that whole horrendous thing. And it went down in about 2008, didn’t they?
Victoria (43:11)
No, they didn’t go down until 2017. No. They weren’t even as bad as it came.
Kat (43:23)
No, they got yes. In the beginning, I had the same person I noticed. So to complete my story, I went through the whole process, thought I knew what I was doing because I had been following a couple of different people online and making sure Writer’s Digest was around already at that point. And I knew about vanity presses, I knew about that. But at 20, I was very arrogant, thinking that I reading a few articles and I already knew what I was doing. And so I realized something was wrong when I very excitedly gave my book out and people came back and said there’s a lot of formatting issues and spelling mistakes. And I wrote to my representative, my agent there, they got very defensive and said that was your issue because you’re sending in like a Doc manuscript. And I started realizing, okay, there was no editing that happened. This is a red flag. And eventually I realized something was going on. Personally around 2008, I was telling you, before we started recording, I got in with a group of people who we just kept demanding to get our rights back. And at first, like you said, they wanted $500 or something crazy like that, which I didn’t have at the time.
Kat (44:47)
And then eventually my husband said we might as well pay it to get your rights back. And I technically got my rights back. But now that, as I talked to, I should probably check that contract.
Victoria (45:01)
You have your right back for two reasons. The company is dead and your contract expires forever. Yes.
Kat (45:12)
Seven years, right?
Victoria (45:14)
Yeah, occasionally ten years. Most of the country for seven years. But when publish Americans went out of business, it did it what a lot of scammers do. It just like it closed the door and fled. And they did not terminate their Kindle account in Amazon. So there are a number still of published American books that are for sale in Kindled editions. Even though the company is dead, the contracts have long expired. And I often hear from authors who are in this situation. And the only thing that you can really do is to try and get Amazon taken down by reporting Copyright infringement. And Amazon has a form that you can use.
Kat (46:27)
Are they very responsive?
Victoria (46:29)
Well, I was on Amazon. No, there is not a lot of logic for either the yes or no, but this is an example of how bad publishers don’t just damage writers at the time. The damage can extend beyond life company.
Kat (46:57)
Yeah. I didn’t realize that they had lasted that long. And that’s pretty sad because really, again, it’s a contract that they send you unless you’re really into. I don’t know, I guess reading on writers beware you’re just excited. And it looks legitimate. I mean, it is a binding contract. That’s one thing. It’s definitely. But they don’t do what a normal publisher would do. And the other red flag that I got was when I went to the local bookstore and tried to get them to buy it, and they were interested as a local writer. And then they called me back and said, this is not a normal ISBN or barcode. We can’t order this. That’s a really big red flag.
Victoria (47:45)
Yeah.
Kat (47:45)
So are there things still going on like that? I mean, we’re 20 years later. Is that kind of the scam that people should be looking out for more vanity presses or has things evolved into something else?
Victoria (47:58)
Always evolved. There really are two dangerous for riders. One is the scams like Poacher, and the other is just people who are offering people who set up publishers or offer services that they’re not qualified to provide small. This is a real problem in the smaller world where a lot of people with best of intentions but little experience or knowledge decide that, hey, I’m going to be a publisher because all I need is an account with KDP and some software and maybe some friends to help. And we can publish books and help writers get their work out into the world. And this can be well intentioned, but they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know how to run a business. So they get in trouble in various ways, financial, logistical, publication delays, or royalty checks in time, and then they go out of business, leaving writers high and try. There are a lot of stories like that I written about on the writer blog.
Kat (49:27)
Okay.
Victoria (49:28)
So when you’re signing up with a publisher, you really need to do some checking and some investigation, make sure it’s been published in books for a while. If it’s brand new, you don’t know if it’s going to succeed. So it’s not a good idea to hook up with brand new publisher.
Kat (49:52)
Okay.
Victoria (49:53)
You always contact writer, and if I’ve got complaints, I’ll let you know and also take a look at the publisher and give you an assessment. My assessment ones are pretty harsh.
Kat (50:09)
But rightly. So, I mean, you’re dealing with a lot of times a seven year contract or more or less somebody’s hard work.
Victoria (50:21)
Often inexperienced publishers either wind up with bad contract language or they don’t understand their own contract language. Okay, so it’s kind of wild west out there in the world. And if you add that to the actual scams, because there are vanity publishers that charge inflated fees or disguise their fees, one of the ways that Publish America was able to claim that it was not affinity publisher was because it didn’t charge an upfront fee. But its entire business model was built on pressure writers to buy their own books. So even whether you’re giving a publisher money upfront or you’re giving it money because you’re buying a product or buying your own books, you are still paying to be published. Yeah, that’s a common exploitive technique.
Kat (51:28)
Yeah. And your royalty checks would be off of what you bought.
Victoria (51:32)
Or another way, another sneaky technique is to withhold royalty payments and production costs are recouped.
Kat (51:43)
Yeah, I heard that one, too. Fortunately, I had too much pride, I guess, to push a book. I stopped pushing it, and I got really mean emails about how I wasn’t pushing, I wasn’t doing the marketing and which isn’t really in the contract. You’re not supposed they didn’t edit it. They weren’t putting it out to the bookstores. And I got some nasty letters about how I wasn’t selling. I mean, my book wasn’t selling because I wasn’t pushing it, but because they want to change the format of it. They wanted me to pay to change it, I guess had really weird formatting, and I refused to push it. But their contract, once you sign it, you’re very excited. You think that you’re getting published, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t get edited at all. So it’s not a product that unless you went and paid for editing outside of it, it’s still a rough draft. Technically, it’s nothing like you went through where the editor worked with you and said, hey, I can see with my experience that if you do it this way, the book will be a nice thing, and then it all just goes downhill from there.
Kat (52:56)
There were stories at that point of a couple of different self published people who are going around to book fairs and selling all these books and making money from it. But of course, those are always very few and far between, but they’re amplified so that if I just notice enough.
Victoria (53:17)
You really got involved very early, not just in the life of Publish America, but in the transition to digital publishing.
Kat (53:28)
Okay.
Victoria (53:28)
And I think Publish America was originally modeled on Ex Libris, which is now owned by Office Solutions at time with an independent company. And it was the first kind of vanity publisher that was inexpensive, excellent, and use digital technology to produce books rather than doing print runs as the old fashioned vanity published. So you could self publish or vanity Polish for a very small fee, using this digital technology, which was brand new at the time, and Publish America sort of modeled itself on that using digital technology, publishing very cheaply. But it called itself a publisher. It didn’t identify itself as a self publisher or vanity press, and it told all these lies about being selective editing all of that. At the time, there was really nothing else like it. There was a bunch of old fashioned print vanity publishers where you paid $10,000 and they printed 1000 books for you and sent you the boxes and they sat in your garage. But at the time when publishing artists put it up, there was really nothing comparable. So it did entrap a lot of people because the information just wasn’t out there. This is legitimate way of publishing.
Victoria (55:18)
However, it got on right over his radar very early on, and we got complaints about it almost from the beginning.
Kat (55:29)
Okay, that’s interesting. I do think that I must have hooked up with the group that was complaining, most likely through Rider Baware. I was actually looking back on the blog and I was like, this seems very familiar. I think this is where I probably came to check if things were true, because of course, you kind of want them to not be true. All indications.
Victoria (55:57)
That’S what these people do. They exploit writers, hopes and dreams, and they rely on that excitement that you mentioned to sort of cloud judgment or to make people ignore their gut instincts. Because I hear all the time from people who are reporting that they’ve been scammed and they say, I had a feeling, but it was so exciting and especially been rejected a lot. All of a sudden here’s somebody who’s validating everything. That’s the way all cameras work.
Kat (56:44)
Right. So how do you feel about these companies? I talked to a young woman a few years ago, and I don’t think she took my advice, but it’s up to her where it was only a couple of $100, and this is what her mom kept pushing. I think it was only like 300 or $400. And with that money, she was going to get a poster with her book cover. She was going to get her book cover. They were going to format it for her. And they said they had gone through and said, well, just getting a book cover would cost us this much. And I told them, listen, you’re not supposed to pay for this. It’s not technically. You’re still an indie published author. You’re not a traditionally published author. That was my opinion at the time. I wish I had remembered to send her to Writer Beware. So how do you feel about those industries that maybe they’re not really claiming to be a publisher? They’re like, but this is what you’ll get. We’ll do it all for you. Kind of all these little things that you have to do as an indie publisher.
Kat (57:45)
They did not edit her book at all. So that’s not something that they’re doing. But it’s a company. I wish I could remember the name. That’s really like creating this culture around them, too. They have a book fair where their writers can come and interact with each other. So I don’t know, it’s been a few years, if anything has been complained about. But how should people feel about approaching those kind of companies where you do pay up front, but they’re kind of selling it as like, yeah, but we’re doing all these services for you.
Victoria (58:19)
That sounds like it would fit into the assisted self publishing space.
Kat (58:24)
Okay.
Victoria (58:25)
There are a lot of companies in that space. So the appeal is that rather than doing it all yourself, like you have to do a Kitty PN and drafts to digital or free and reputable self published. These companies provide kind of a soup nut service, so you don’t have to DIY. They will do it all for you.
(58:59)
Right.
Victoria (59:00)
And there are some that are honest. They say, we’re not a publisher. Here are our fees. This is what we’ll do for you. If you want an edited version, you have to provide it yourself. If you want marketing, you have to provide it yourself. So they provide publishing packages.
Kat (59:26)
Yeah. Kind of like Book Baby, right?
Victoria (59:29)
Book Locker is kind of another no frills assisted self publishing. So there are honest and reasonable businesses in that space. But they’re also very predatory ones. Most of the Author Solutions imprints, Other House, Universe, Trafford. But they have Office Solutions as a bunch of different assisted self publishing prints. Those are very high priced. You do get what you pay for, but you’re paying more for it than you necessarily need to. And where the real predation comes in is in the marketing services. And you should hear marketing in quotes, because most of it is just junk. It’s cheap to provide. It can be sold in a huge markup. And it’s not very sexual promotion. Press releases, book videos, Internet advertising, SEO optimization. They cost very little to provide. They can be sold for a lot of money. For many of these self publishing services, this huge range of marketing is a major profit center. So it’s aggressively sold and pressured. If you sign on to publish your book, you get constant pressure by this. The other thing, Hollywood treatments, screenwriting, New York Times advertising, I mean, for thousands and thousands of dollars.
Kat (01:01:26)
Right.
Victoria (01:01:27)
So technically it’s not a scam because you can pay, you actually get it. But it’s exploitive and predatory because the benefits are misrepresented. It costs much more than it’s worth. And then yet another layer of complexity. The past four years or so has seen a real explosion of really scamming companies of this type that charge even bigger amounts of money, tell even bigger lies, and very often don’t deliver at all. Based money and run.
Kat (01:02:15)
Oh, my God.
Victoria (01:02:16)
And a lot of these are based overseas, and they aggressively solicit, especially self published writers with offers services, marketing services, Hollywood book to screen, impersonate publishers, literary agents. They just do all kinds of memory. And one of the giveaways is that their solicitations include really poor English, because it’s being done by people who English is a second language. I’ve been writing a lot of blog posts about these companies lately. So really, you have the relatively honest self publishing companies that provide a decent service, you have the more predatory ones that overcharge. And then you have the just stone scammers.
Kat (01:03:26)
Okay. And if they’re overseas, are they harder than to sort of go after? I guess if you get paid, there’s not much sense.
Victoria (01:03:36)
Many of these companies do business under multiple names in the Philippines, where most of them are based. They’re doing business under yet other names. So, yeah, it’s very hard to trace them back to the source. I say most of the questions and complaints I get these days are about those scams. I recently did an article on Writer Unboxed, which is a great website for writers about solicitation scams. And if people want to look that up, it discusses the entire range of scams I’m seeing that you’re like, out of loose solicitations for. And there are a lot of these companies, they’re very aggressively looking to recruit victims. So especially if you’re an indie writer, you’re almost guaranteed to be solicited by one of these outfits.
Kat (01:04:43)
And they solicit you by email.
Victoria (01:04:45)
By email, by phone call.
Kat (01:04:47)
Okay.
Victoria (01:04:48)
And the thing to remember is that reputable literary agents and publishers do not generally reach out of the blue to writers if they’re not already representing or contracting. So if you got an email that says, Hi, I’m a literary agent, somebody discovered your book, and I like to represent you. It’s almost guaranteed to be a spam.
Kat (01:05:16)
It’s like the FBI would show up at your house if you had a warrant out for your arrest. We always have to look at these things. I’m sure the first initial thought is like, oh, somebody found my book, and then you have to have more of a cool head when it comes to these things.
Victoria (01:05:39)
It’s difficult because some of these scammers actually impersonate reputable people.
Kat (01:05:46)
Oh, wow. Okay.
Victoria (01:05:48)
There’s one that I’m getting. They send emails in the name of well known producers and production producers, and they say, we discovered your book. We’d love to turn it into a film. Do you have a screenplay you can send us? And of course, most people won’t. And the idea then is to refer the writer to real scammer who sells screenplay writing services for like $10,000. Okay.
Kat (01:06:22)
Oh, my goodness.
Victoria (01:06:25)
Yeah.
Kat (01:06:27)
Definitely make sure that what’s the best thing to do, to just delete it and not even answer.
Victoria (01:06:33)
Yeah. And if one of these catch your email, you’ll probably hear from others also. And they can be insanely person. They use spoofed phone numbers, so there’s no way really to block them because it’s going to be a different phone number every time.
Kat (01:06:59)
Oh, man. Technology is so great and so terrible at the same time.
Victoria (01:07:03)
I know.
Kat (01:07:07)
Is there anything else that you would advise both indie and traditionally published authors other than going to writerbeware.com? Because that is always some place that you can go to sort of check that out, become part of the Facebook group and ask people personally get some advice. But as we wrap up, is there anything that you would advise writers these days after we come out of Covet? Who knows all the schemes people have been plotting during Covet?
Victoria (01:07:36)
Yeah, I think it has to do something to do with how many scams are around now. I would say my one universal piece of advice is educate yourself, the knowledgeable writer. Don’t trust. Try to just jump into the publishing process and learn on fly. Take time out, do some research. There are good books on how to get published. How to self publish. The more you know, the easier it will be. The more you understand about how things should work, the easier it will be to recognize when you’re being approached by somebody who is not doing it right or as bad business practices. Knowledge is your greatest ally, your best. I hear all the time from writers who say, I’m really experienced, I’m new to the game and have fallen into the clutches of one scam or another because they didn’t take the time to study up on the publishing industry first. And even if your goal is self publishing, you need to understand how publishing as a whole works. Because whether you publish traditionally or self publish, you’re going to be in the same distribution system, you’re going to be using some of the same technologies, you’re going to be encountering some of the same kinds of people and schemes and scams.
Victoria (01:09:19)
So you really do need to be as knowledgeable as possible before you start trying to get published. Don’t query a publisher and get a contract, only then try to discover if a publisher is reputable research ahead of time. Spare yourself heartache and potential mistakes. Because even if you have a bad feeling about a publisher or if you have a contract in hand, it’s still hard to say no to yes.
Kat (01:09:56)
I personally walk through that. And I think you’re absolutely right. Even if you’re an indie author, because you will be approached to translate your books. Just sign here or we’ll do your audiobook. Just sign here. Or the movie thing. Even as an indie author, you might be hooked because you now realize how much work it is to both produce your book and market your book. And the relief of okay, somebody else can figure that out. I’ll just sign on the dotted line. You definitely need to know how that works, how it should work before you sign. So yes, definitely, we will have the links in the show notes because there is a lot of information right everywhere. Also check out Victoria Strauss’s books, especially if you like historical fiction, fantasy fiction or historical fantasy. Thank you so much, Victoria, for spending your time with us.
Victoria (01:10:51)
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Kat (01:11:07)
Hey, you’re still listening? Since you are, could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you’re listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show. It would really help the pencils and lipstick podcasts get out into the world. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it. As well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over to Catcalldwell.com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one on one coaching information and information on my creative writing community membership group. If you’re looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market and all the things that go into being an author these days. Check out the membership group. There is a 14 free day trial that you can try it out, get into the masterminds, find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.