A YouTube video by Julie Broad (Book Launchers) warning independent authors about five common self-publishing scams. The speaker lists and explains risks around rights ownership, misleading marketing promises (fake awards, hollow bestseller claims), royalty splits, ISBN ownership, and overpriced author copies, and urges careful contract review.
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Alright, if you're self publishing a book, I've got five scams you're going to want to watch out for. Stick around. Hey there, I'm Julie Broad of Book Launchers Dot Com. If you're self publishing a book, you might be looking at different companies to hire to work with to publish your book. I've got five things you're going to want to watch out for to make sure that that you own the rights to your book and that you can do whatever you want with the materials at the beginning and at the end. Number one, ask who owns the rights. A lot of deals out there will find that you don't actually own the materials in your book. In fact, you may be signing over everything to the publishing company that you're working with. Sometimes you might own the local rights, but they actually own the international rights or the audiobook. And, and maybe today you're not thinking about those things. But if your book is really popular, you may find international companies are looking to buy the rights to that book and you won't be able to sell it. So you want to make sure that you read any contracts you sign very carefully and ask who owns the rights to the materials. Number two, a lot of times you'll find that companies have big promises like guaranteed bestseller or they're going to make you an award winning authority. Find out what that means and exactly how they're going to achieve it. Because a lot of times it's a gimmick that you know, does give you an award. But every single author that works with their company gets an award. And what does that really do for your credibility? If you're creating a nonfiction book to boost your brand, grow your business and develop credibility, A fake award doesn't really do that. And bestseller status if they're just going to get you number one in some sub sub subcategory on Amazon. If you want to be selling your book and getting it in your ideal reader's hands, that's probably not doing it. So make sure that this promise is something that actually helps you achieve your goals. Number three, find out who gets the royalties. Because these days there's no reason for you not to get 100% of the royalties when you publish your book. In other words, you should be getting every dollar available when that book sells. So again, read the contracts. Make sure you know who's getting the royalties and if somebody else is getting them, make sure you're getting something very valuable in exchange. Number four, who owns the ISBN? The ISBN is a publisher identifier and a lot of companies will say, we'll assign you an ISBN. Or they'll say, you don't need to worry about bringing your own. We'll give you one. But if you want to own the rights to your book, you want to control it, and then you really should come to the table with your own ISBN. Now, if you're in Canada, that's no problem because you can get your ISBN for free in the US you're going to have to buck up. But one 25 bucks through Boker. I don't know how to say it. B O W K E R is how you spell it. Go there, buy your ISBN number and then you can rest assured that you own it. And watch out for any company that says that you don't need to own your ISBN number because there's something going on behind the scenes. Number five, how do you get copies of your book? A lot of companies, vanity publishers, they make money selling you copies of your book. The reality is you shouldn't be spending that much money on your book. This is one of my books and it costs $4.06 to order a single copy. It's about 200, about 267 pages long. There's a couple more dollars required for shipping and that's it. So if somebody's trying to charge you $10, saying that's the best price they can give you to order copies of your book, run away. If you can order them direct through your print on demand supplier like IngramSpark or CreateSpace, then you're getting them for the absolute rock bottom price. And somebody's not making money selling you copies of your very own book. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. Makes me happy, encourages me to film more videos and. And of course, so you don't miss any of these video tips, make sure you subscribe to the channel while you're here. See you next time. In the next video, I'm going to talk about how to avoid these five scams. So check that out. Since we just started. Got the loop again? Oh, yeah. I didn't even move. How does my hair do that? Okr ocher. I don't know how to say it. Order your copies now. How do you get. So if the. But.
