A Publishing Company e-mail

[ZOEgirl 4 GOD]

I got an e-mail from some publishing company but i'm not sure if it's a hoax or not, here's the e-mail:

Dear Jamie,

My name is Mercedes and I work for Xlibris, a print-on-demand self-publishing company. If you don't mind, I wanted to take a moment to let you know how we can help you become a publishing success. If you are not interested, please let me know by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message.

Xlibris is partially owned by Random House Ventures, LLC, a subsidiary of Random House, the world's largest trade book publisher. Every day, we help authors just like you by offering flexible, inexpensive methods of editing, marketing, distributing, and selling books. To date, we have published over 10,000 titles, paid our authors more than $1,000,000 in royalties, and paved the way for many of them to win contracts with traditional publishers such as St. Martin

[Guest LadyC]

xlibris is one of the more reputable (and more expensive) POD publishers. another reputable one is iUniverse. but please keep in mind, POD is essentially vanity publishing. you pay them. they will not give you an advance on your work, they will not promote your work, they will not do much at all other than take your manuscript, put it on disc, and print it out when someone orders a copy. it is entirely up to you to market the book, i.e. find people who want to order!

sure, they'll give it an isbn number, and a LOC number, and even a barcode for a price. it will be available to bookstores. but it won't be stocked in those stores unless you can personally convince the store to carry a copy. sure they'll make it available in their online catalog... but aside from me, i don't know anyone who "shops" for books at a POD website.

in the end, you'll be very lucky if you an recoup your investment. now, if for example, worthyboards agreed to promote your book, you might break even on your expenses, but considering the cost per book and the cost of getting it published, it won't be easy. you'll never get rich, and chances are, a traditional publishing house will not be interested in it... unless you manage to sell a tremendous amount on amazon.com.

speaking of amazon, if you choose to sell your book there, they'll take a huge cut of your royalty.

bottom line, are you wanting to earn money off this book, or do you want to publish it for your own personal fulfillment? there's nothing wrong with going thru a POD publisher if money is not the goal.

but read the fine print of their contracts very closely, and if you can, make personal contact with other authors who have published through them to see how they felt about the experience. never go by the testimonials on the POD website! if you need help figuring out how to contact authors, let me know. i've been known to track down POD authors on a number of occasions.