Brandon Sanderson Lecture 12: Avoiding Being Scammed (1/6)

okay that's actually quite appropriate since we are going to be talking about contracts today so so yeah I'll let you guys make your call on that certainly there's nothing to lose with short stories the contract looked pretty decent that way the big unknown factor in something like this is how much marketing they actually didn't put into it what kind of editing are you actually going to get and with it just starting there's no way for you to know unfortunately I did look at the contest that entering the contest does not obligate you to sign the contract so you could enter the contest if you win you could look at the contract and decide if it's something you want to go go through with or not they seem like they're they're very upfront straightforward people there is some time there are a lot of people though in publishing who are who give people bad deals not because they are bad people but because they have no experience of what a good deal is and so they just make a deal they've worked in another industry perhaps and they just assume that that's that sort of contract is standard everywhere or whatever there are a lot of good well-meaning people who who don't who don't do a good job and that can be just as bad as someone who's trying to scam you today though we will talk about one of the main things is we're going to talk about you're actually in the class you don't have a seat you like this one okay you're cool so we're going to talk about how to get an agent we've basically covered all this but we'll talk it will do any questions you have on publishing or agents we'll talk about how to avoid getting scammed and all those sorts of things do we need another chair okay he'll grab a chair it's fine anytime you want to go chair or if you want to sit on the floor there is once one more seat in here if you want to come in and sneak around the around right there that's a what's that oh yeah there's this one do you want this chair I'm not gonna be sitting so I just pulled that over there and have a seat so one thing to remember is boy what is this thing called someone's gonna instantly is it pose law money flows toward the author this is based the basic rule of thumb to keep in mind as a way to avoid being scammed all right money flows toward the author this means that almost be wary of anything that has an upfront fee this includes Co publish where you pay half the published publishing price this includes reading fees this includes will publish it if this one means that there are sometimes people who will say boy we we liked your book it really means a professional editor will publish it if you hire a professional editor to go over it here's a professional editor that we like which is oftentimes either their husband under a pseudonym or their wife under a pseudonym or themselves under a pseudonym or something like this there there are a number of scams out there that are just basically fake agents who exist to cycle all the author's who try to pick them up as an agent through their pay for work for hire editing yes yes they do they go to cons mostly they're not willing to pay that much money to go to the con usually you're gonna find them online and they will look very very prestigious they'll make themselves look very prestigious so if you want to avoid this number one this number - you can go to rider beware that's an eye rider beware is a blog look for Roger blip beware a blogspot a blog run by the science fiction Association of America with help from the Mystery Writers Association of America it posts scam watches on publishers and contests and agents and if you read through the archives for a few years with their scam listings you'll get a very easy clue as to what type of things are truly scams and what type of things aren't and you'll see they'll post a lot about misguided misguided people who want to get into publishing but don't know what they're doing the other place that is pretty good is there's a place called predators and editors who have a big list of agents and editors and it's kind of hard to slog through it's just a big list but you can research a given agent editor or publisher there and they'll have if they've been recommended or not recommended I know it's probably spelled the real way is it spelled this way ok ok so it is spelled this way yeah actually yeah you're right I'm so anyway did I can never remember which one it is and so I just google it I don't everything good gets it and then the other thing is the absolute right I think it's spelled like that absolute right forums and absolute right forums have a place where you can post hey is anyone heard of this publisher tell me what's what is going on with them and a bunch of people will post to a you know it's like a place where a bunch of writers hang out and they a lot of them are very savvy when it comes to whether something's a scam or not and almost every time I've googled a publisher they have already had a threat on them where people talk about it and the legit ones often the editors show up on those threads and explain himself and talk about their their publishing game so those are three resources for you to use everyone got those down all right so you are watching out for anyone who's costing you charging go up front kind of in an onion a actually say it's particularly if they're doing it in a hidden way there are times when you will if you are self-publishing change this meaning this goes basically for all traditional publishing but now that self-publishing is taken off obviously if you're going to do your own cover art you're going to pay for it and if you're going to pay your own copy editor you're going to pay for it in those cases the money doesn't flow toward the author but you want to be wary of accidentally paying people reading fees agents who charge reading fees um basically the the agents the big major agents have gotten together and said this is something we're not going to do it's one of the things that's that is a big clue in separating the the serious agents from the fake agents the fake agents survive by charging reading fees or by sending people to editing houses and and whatnot so the big agents don't the good agents don't if an agent charges are reading reading fee you've got ninety nine out of a hundred chance that that is not a legitimate agent yes pay me $50 with your manuscript I will read it and see if I'm willing to take you on as a client they often counter that's there are so many people who want agents that it's taking me away from my other work and so therefore I have to charge a nominal reading fee to make sure the people who are sending to me are serious that's how they'll write it which sounds very legit when it's couched the right way the thing is agents our talent scouts this is one of their jobs they they that reading the slush is slowly moved to the agents and they sift through it and hunt out the authors they think you're going to be big and in exchange they get a percentage of that author's earnings and so paying them D incentivizes them to actually find talented writers and incentivizes them to publish them to promote themselves is just something you know send me this so I can make the money off of MIT doing the readings and it's basically it's it's not considered a legit business practice among agents that you know who knows if that will always be the case but so far at his hold held true yes he will probably do electronic publishing only if someone was making the books it would probably be the same people that you would hire to make the books printers I mean everybody uses basically the same printers this at least the same types of printers and so I recently sold a one of my novellas to subterranean press small press they do a print run of you know like ten thousand copies they will have hire a printer and order them just like I would if I were self-publishing it the reason to go with sub press instead of just doing myself is I don't have time to do all this myself and it's a really big hassle plus subterranean press has a very good reputation they do good work and they'll handle all the cover design and all these things for the same reason that I go with tor for publishing my books sub press the difference is being a small press is not going to get into all of the it's not going to get in the major bookstores usually they may get small orders from some of the major chains sub press does occasionally get into them but some of the specialty presses really don't but it's kind of seen as a prestige thing and a they'll sell them at science fiction conventions they'll be carried in science fiction bookstores and they'll do all the work and pay me in advance

Channel: Write About Dragons

Views: 15,077

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: 12, 16, Avoiding, Being, Scammed

Id: iVFcwGcmApQ

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 25 2012