Beware of Your Own Culpability:  Writers’ Traps and Scams

By

Joyce Faulkner

          Many folks dream of making it to the top of an enormous pyramid of literary talent where they will rub shoulders with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger.   Others fantasize about writing a runaway best seller and becoming the next Stephen King or Dan Brown. 

For most, fortune is an elusive pixie that dances just beyond their fingertips.  Not everyone with a story is talented enough or persistent enough to finish a book.   Not all of those who do end up with a professional, commercially viable product.  For the gifted, determined few who complete publishable projects, the industry is a maze of questionable opportunities, u-turns and dead-ends.   The odds are against any one writer being at the right place and time with the right book.  No wonder many would-be authors end up frustrated and vulnerable. 

Impatient with the seemingly endless process, hopeful writers sometimes pay to see their work in print only to feel cheated and embarrassed by the effort later on.  It happens so often that bookstores and writers’ sites feature books, websites and magazines filled with advice and warnings.   Watch out for fraudulent agents and publishers, they say.  Stay clear of anthologies that ask accepted authors to buy several copies.  Don’t pay reading fees.  Be careful of publisher referrals to editors who expect payment.  Don’t write for free.  The laundry list goes on and on.  Given that so much of the traditional approach is out of the author’s hands, these cautions make non-traditional routes seem all the more treacherous.  There are so many ways to slip up, it seems.

Certainly, there are scam artists out there who take advantage of those who dream of being ‘published’.   Swindlers rely on their victims to participate in the double-cross which makes the result all the more humiliating.   However, not all unhappy endings come from fraud.  Some new author grief has to do with unmet expectations.  One writer thought that once his book was accepted all he had to do was sit back and wait for the royalties to come rolling in.   He learned otherwise when his handsome, well-written novel sold very few copies.   Another author paid $500 to a publicist who told her that he’d present her book to the chain bookstore buyers.  She imagined dozens of books on the front table at Barnes and Noble.  There are no guarantees, she learned.   Neither of these writers were duped.  They didn’t understand the book business and their decisions were injudicious.

Regardless of which publishing approach an author pursues, here are a few attitudinal perspectives that might make the process less stressful.