It has always been a childhood dream to publish a book or two in my lifetime; whether it becomes a hit or I become a renowned author, does not matter. I just wanted to see my name in print and hold my book in my hands; to have people reading my words and thoughts nad ideas.
I have always been writing in my free time; it is a form of escapism for me, to vent and let out my thoughts; to live the dream live and hold the dream conversation in my characters.
Back in high school, I would write using pens literally, and fill up the pages of thick notepads. I wrote in class discreetly, and wrote at home, even if my hands were aching from all that writing.
Then in college, computers took over the pen's roles, and I would type out my works in Microsoft Word documents and edit as and when necessary. So far, I have written a few teenage romance, a vampire fiction (halfway) and a chick-literature genre book.
The Search for Publishers
After sending my manuscripts to several friends to help proofread and give feedback, I edited and re-edited my drafts.
Finally, I was ready for potential publishers to read my book.
So, with the help of friends in the United States and United Kingdom (I did not want a local publisher. No one here supports local publishers or locally-published authors anyway), and my own online research, I managed to send out my manuscripts to a few publishers.
Some publishing houses have rather strict submission guidelines, so I had to tweak my font size, spacing, margins etc to match their criteria. Most of them needed a Sypnosis as well, so I worked on one to send together with my raw manuscript.
The wait was exhilarating. Everytime I saw a response, my heart would pump very fast as I clicked on it, hoping against hope that it was a positive response from some publisher.
But, after ten polite rejections informing me that the contents of my book was not suitable, or that they were sorry my story did not fit what they had in mind etc, I started to lose hope, and believe that maybe I needed to look for more publishers, or scrape the idea of getting published.
Either that, or pay a small fee to self-publish.
The Positive Response
Finally, a positive response came in!
My manuscript has been accepted by a US publisher, someone was willing to give my book the chance it deserves! I was delirious with happiness and hope.
Though, I still took the precaution of conducting some research on this company. While there were some bad publicity out there (oh well, all big companies have some of that, right?), there seems nothing major or worrying.
It was a huge company all right, and even has its own television channel. Plus, all the books on sale online, do exist; all the authors wrote testimonials. Among them were some famous or celebrity authors too. This somehow made me feel more reassured. Wow, would they invite me to fly over to discuss the contract or marketing strategies for my book, perhaps even squeezing in a Book Reading or Autograph / Book-Signing session?
The Procedure
Oddly, there was no mention of an editor re-editing my book to correct grammatical mistakes or give the story the X-factor it needed. They sent me an Author's Questionnaire, and I filled it in and sent them back.
Then their marketing department contacted me, and it felt so surreal. They agreed to work closely with me on marketing my book in hard copies. Best of all, they claimed that they were not an OTP (Order to Publish) company - where they would only print upon receiving orders.
I imagined the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble, and Kinokuniya stocked with my book. It was so enticing.
The contract was sent over for me to go through; everything looked official and good. I signed it, even though I knew that it was a ten-year contract, and I would not be able to give the rights of publishing this book to anyone else during this ten years!
After that, the Design Team got in touch with me and designed a coverpage for me. I was so pleased with the effects. The odd thing was, even though they had no idea of how I look like at all, they were able to come up with an illustration with a female that resembles me greatly (all my friends who saw the coverpage commented that, too).
I even received a USD cheque in my mailbox shortly, for a very minimal royalty amount, but it was, like, their guarantee / assurance to me. I imagined receiving more frequent cheques from them in time to come, with larger amounts for royalties paid for books sold.
Within weeks, my book was up and running and featured on the publisher's website. I received an offer in the meantime, from a publisher based in another part of Asia, which I declined. They were so stringent in their selection I was both honored and surprisesd to have been chosen, but I had already sold my rights to the current publisher, therefore had to abide by it.
The Stunner
Then my publisher stunned me. Firstly, they made it clear now, that it was strictly E-books and not hard copies. They suggested that if I topped up a certain fee, they could print hard copies for me. We got into a short argument on this (I have the document from their Marketing guys that mentioned it was to be hard, physical copies) but I backed down since they were threatening to bring their attorneys in.
Secondly, they charged a rather high price for an E-book - it was to be USD$9.99. Actually, if you just look at this figure, it is nothing. Even if we convert it into Sing Dollars, it would be around SGD$15.00 - SGD$20.00, which was still expensive for an E-book, but acceptable to a certain extent. I have a list of friends who had already pledged their eagerness to purchase my book.
The real shock was the additional USD$12.99 that one had to pay on top of the E-book, known as "shipping fee". Yes, you heard me correctly. A shipping fee that cost more than the book itself, making the total price USD$24.98 or around SGD$30.00 - $35.00.
Now, that is seriously and ridiculously overpriced for an E-book! Furthermore, what is there to ship, the url? E-books are downloadable, so how could they charge a shipping fee? When I raised this issue, they merely said it was procedure.
In the end I realized I now knew what the others meant when they felt "ripped off" or "scammed" in the other negative reviews. The best revenge was for them to receive zero sales from my book; let them waste a little efforts at having underwent the trouble of illustrating the book and preparing the contract etc.
I told all my friends not to buy the book; that I would send them my manuscripts to read if they were keen. After all, they could not reproduce any part of this book that is contracted and legally bound to my scamming publisher.
At least it has been a good learning experience, and I now know the procedure, and what else to look out for in future. I am still working on another couple of books currently, and I will never, ever give my works to this publisher again!
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