Scam Alert: Dorrance Publishing and the 3 Red Flags

Hilariously, Dorrance “Publishing” just sent a spam email to the Writerwerx University inbox! 😂

That seems like a sign that it’s time to review three red flags of scammers and criminals who pose as “publishers.” If you pay attention, stay calm, and don’t let your excitement about the idea of publication muddle your logic, you can easily avoid these kinds of companies who prey on unsuspecting newbie writers.

1. They Contact You First

This is the easiest one to recognize.

If there were only a single red flag that I hope everyone would heed, it’s this one.

If someone contacts you out of nowhere (just like spam callers and telemarketers do!), there’s about a 99.99% chance that they are just trying to sell you a bunch of stuff you don’t need. In nearly fifteen years of helping authors develop their books, I have never cold-called or randomly texted / messaged / emailed anyone. Ever. That’s because I have no desire to swindle people or coerce them into working with us by playing with their emotions. I want people to work with us who clearly understand what we do and want us to be part of their book development team. In the spirit of this, about 90% of Writerwerx University’s new clients come from referrals by current clients. There’s no need for the spammy strategies, sneaky sales tactics, or bait-and-switch routines a lot of scammers use.

People who only focus on profiting from you aren’t concerned about whether or not their service is a good fit for the success of your literary career. They just want to get as much money out of you as they can as quickly as possible. So they spam (contacting you without you contacting them first) via email and phone until they find their next victim.

The kind of publishers that you as a newbie author are likely hoping to become involved with (Tor, LBC, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, etc.) don’t randomly email or call people in order to convince them to submit their work. This spammy tactic is one often utilized by telemarketers who are trying to sell products and services that aren’t in high demand, such as vanity publishing services (also called “hybrid publishing”).

Take into consideration the fact that no one has to beg you to purchase groceries for your home. Why? Because every human on the planet actually needs food to survive. So no one has to randomly call, text, or email you to try to persuade you to buy food. If you ever got this kind of call from Kroger, Publix, Whole Foods, or Target, you’d immediately know it was a scam and hang up having gotten a nice giggle for the day.

Hold on to that perspective to protect yourself against predatory companies like vanity / hybrid publishers.

Because there are so many authors all over the world who would give up a kidney to get published by a publishing house, professional publishers like HarperCollins or Penguin Random House have plenty of manuscripts to sift through in order to find the books they think they can profit from developing and selling. There is no incentive for them to add to their workload by seeking out even more drafts from unknown, un-agented, untested writers.

It looks like Dorrance has bots and people crawling the web (sites, social media profiles, forums, etc.) for people who have books coming out soon. In my case, based on a follow-up phone call I received a few hours after this email popped up, they saw that I had submitted my copyright registration for Intro to Indie Publishing. Bizarrely, they are reaching out to me about a book that is completed and scheduled for release already. People have already had ARCs delivered to them and the audiobook is currently in production. What would their role even be at this point? These kinds of nonsensical details are just another hint that you’re dealing with a spammer who is mass-emailing with little regard for who will be receiving those messages. They are desperately grasping at straws instead of establishing genuine connections with people.

2. They are Charging You for Publication

Publication just means making your work available to the public for free or for a fee.

Therefore, publishing the book doesn’t cost anything.

For instance, you could create a PDF of your book ($0.00), upload it to your website ($0.00), and start telling people they can buy it / download it ($0.00), all without spending a dime.

You could also create a KDP account ($0.00), upload your interior and cover files for the book ($0.00), and submit it for publication on Amazon ($0.00). Again, all this can be done without opening your wallet a single time.

So, if someone says that they will publish your book for thousands of dollars, that’s usually a major red flag. Why are they charging so much for something that can quickly and simply be done for no money at all?

The hope would be that they plan on doing other things for the manuscript in order to prepare it for publication, such as developmental editing, copyediting, book design, and the like. But that’s rarely, if ever, the case. Even when I’ve run into people who were told that their book would be edited in some fashion, the resulting manuscript didn’t look like it had been touched by a professional at all. Even though the “publisher” claimed they would be developing the book, they either didn’t do any work on it at all, or did a job entirely too poor to warrant paying dozens of dollars for, let alone hundreds or thousands.

An additional problem with this idea is that, if they were indeed a publisher such as Macmillan or Wiley, they would be paying for those book development services themselves, not charging the author for them.

Vanity publishing turns the traditional publishing process on its head in a way that drains money from the author instead of being a no-cost proposition or providing the author with an advance after the contract is signed. In traditional publishing, money flows from the publisher to the author, not the other way around.

3. Their Fees Make No Sense

In addition to charging for free things like publication, if you see a contract from them, you may notice a lot of other strange fees.

One of the weirdest that I’ve come across is a fee for digital storage on the company’s website. So, in addition to having paid them money to “publish” your book, you will pay them a hefty percentage of your royalties, and then pay them a monthly / quarterly / annual storage fee on top of that for having your ebook available on their website.

Sound like being nickled and dimed to death? Well, that’s because that’s exactly what’s happening.

Amazon doesn’t charge you a monthly fee for having your book on their website, and they have exponentially more traffic than any of these so-called “publishers” do. Same goes for websites by Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Audible.

The odds that someone will find and purchase your book on these larger, more popular sites are way higher than on a website like Dorrance’s. With traffic (and therefore sales) already taking a hit by being on the scammer’s site, why then toss in an extra fee on top of all the money you already handed to them? Because their focus is on their profits, not your success as an author. They make the majority of their money from the fees that they charge you, not sales of your books (except, of course, when they are selling you copies of your own books!). So you’ll generally notice that there isn’t a lot of activity on that front.

For example (per SimilarWeb), the page for books on Amazon gets just over 76 million visits each day.

Meanwhile, the bookstore at Dorrance gets about 1,300 visits each day.

In the next 24 hours, where do you think your book would have a better chance of making a sale?

If Dorrance were the kind of company to charge for ebook “storage,” wouldn’t that seem off since Amazon doesn’t? Why charge for something that is more than 58,000 times less beneficial and could be done for no money at all?

Protect Yourself by Asking Questions

Does this make sense?

It’s a simple question that, when you ask it before you engage with these spammers and criminals, can save you time, money, and heartache. But if you get overexcited by the idea that someone contacted you about publishing your manuscript, it’s easy to get swept up in their offers.

And they know this.

This is exactly why they come after you and not seasoned authors with a successful catalog of books. They’re hoping to feed on that part of you that wants so bad to be published that you’ll do just about anything — rational or irrational — to make that dream come true.

If you see one of these red flags, proceed with extreme caution.

If you notice two, JUST RUN AWAY!

For more information on avoiding scam, vanity, and hybrid publishers who are just out to drain your wallet, check out WriterBeware.org.

Look at this Google search on Dorrance in particular. There are a lot of horror stories available about them that you may be interested in reading. This can help familiarize you with the kinds of tactics that they use so you can avoid becoming another victim.

Don’t fall for it!

Stay safe, writers!