[J m HofMarN]

Ya know those publishers who advertise in the google ads asking you to give them your book? They're not real publishers. To the uninitiated they may appear like a good idea but let me show you why they're not.

Let's say that you make very good portraits and sell them over the internet and you wish to advertise. You'd advertise "portraits for sale" right? That way you'd sell portraits and make back the money spent on advertising. That's what a legitimate publisher does. They don't go about begging people to send them books.

However, if you make people pay you to draw a crappy portrait of them, then you're going to adverise "will draw your portrait" and then take peoples money to do a crappy portrait of them. Even if you don't get money from the person you can still get money from friends of theirs they might talk in to buying it.

and that's exactly the scam that places like Publish America and Author House run. Some agents are the same but its easier to recognize them. A crooked agent will always ask for money up front and you should always tell them where to stick it. If your agent wants to edit your book themselves and needs payment tell them that they can take the payment out of your royalties when they sell your book.

[Mirithorn]

Just a note- the same is true of poetry. Most legitimate poetry contests can be found in poetry journals, but almost none on the internet. Be especially wary of Poetry.com, because their ads are everywhere. The whole thing is a scam- they take any poem of a certain length or less, put it in small print, and put it in a book. There is a publishing fee, and, of course, to buy the book costs money. Tests were done, and no "poems" were refused, no matter the quality. Gibberish, was, in fact, accepted, along with the poetry of a second grade class. They were simply told to write a poem, and the quality was what you would expect. The class was delighted when they got the letter saying that each and every one of their poems was going to be put in a book before the teacher explained what was going on. An easy way to tell if a poetry contest is a scam is to check if there's an entrance fee. If not, then ask yourself how this contest is being financed.

[Otal Nimrodi]

I sent them Chefelf's rather poem-ish update.