Now that we revised the basics of copyrights, it is time to have a look at the dangers lurking in the self-publishing world, a relatively new industry that, unfortunately, is attracting crooks intent on making money from aspiring writer’s dreams.

These crooks come in three main categories:

• Those who intend to swindle
• Those who simply are not up to the task, bungle the job or go bankrupt
• Those who legally con aspiring writers into buying their services and skillfully play with the finesses of the law to remain a legal business, while knowing full well that their services are unlikely to ever fulfill the writer’s expectations.

Those who intend to swindle are, of course, the worse ones morally, but not necessarily the worse ones for the unwary writer.

 A recent example of such con artist is Peter Campbell-Copp, owner of Historical Pages, a publishing company. Currently facing 14 charges, nine of them being false pretenses or false tokens, two counts of bad checks, two of false advertising, and one count of theft of services, he is pleading not guilty on some charges.

The story goes like this. Campbell was charging his clients large amount of money, (up to US$16 000) to print, promote and distribute their books. Everything seemed fine, both authors and publishers happy with the deal until such a time that only the publisher was the happy one, at the expense (pun intended) of the authors.

Though money had been duly paid, not a page was being printed, hence neither promotion nor distribution were anywhere in sight. So, the unsatisfied authors decided to sue Campbell-Copp. Though they definitely lost a lot of time waiting for their book to be printed, they do have a chance of recuperating some of their monies.

 Those who simply are not up to the task are unfortunately legion in the epublishing still young industry. They might be authors intending to build on their personal self-publishing experience and monetize it by providing services for a fee or in exchange of royalties to fellow writers, or technologically gifted individuals able to format books, but maybe lacking any knowledge of the ins and out of the publishing industry, distribution networks, marketing techniques etc. A minority will persevere and ultimately be able to provide the entire array of services necessary to bring books to their readers, but most will either will limp through, providing half baked services or, more often than not, will fold, reverting to the author whatever rights they had secured. Though new epublishers are born and die everyday, some figure on the growing Rated List of ePublishers

Those who legally con aspiring writers, by far the worse ones, as writers who fall prey to these are skillfully bound by legal contracts concocted by experts and have no recourse. Due to concerns about legal action from these particularly nasty brand of crooks, I cannot afford to name any here. However, anyone intending to use the services of a publisher of any kind is strongly advised to check their background.

The first obvious place to do so is the Preditors and Editors list, alternatively, if the information on that list is insufficient, or simply for added security, it is a good idea to run a search on Absolute Write Forum  If the intended publisher does not figure in any thread, just ask the question in this forum : Bewares, Recommendations & Background Check that is dedicated precisely to help protect authors against crooks and well meaning bunglers.