: Re: Vanity publishers - authors who have paid for a service- what are our rights? Once upon a time I published a book via what you could call a vanity publisher. I paid money for the full process

Vanity presses make money from authors, not from selling copies, so there's at least a decent chance you've kept or can get back your copyright. Unfortunately, if you didn't study your contract to begin with, and they've proven so very poor, they're probably optimized mostly to wring more money out of you :-/

You need to check your contract to look for:

Who owns copyright.
Who owns the book design, which is different from who owns copyright over the text.
Rights reversion or contract termination, which are the procedures to get back copyright from them if you've sold it.
(I have also found reference to an abhorrent practice where they don't claim copyright, but do stipulate that "that "Author agrees that 1st Books indefinitely will retain possession of the materials submitted by Author to 1st Books and used to format the Work." i.e., your manuscript. I am not a lawyer and don't know if such terms can be challenged or interpreted more reasonably.)

This should, at least, help you know where you stand.

The other thing that can be very helpful is to search Google for stories of others in the same situation, with the same publisher. Try googling "[publisher name] scam". You might find others who have already dealt with this successfully.

Best of luck to you.

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: Re: Vanity publishers - authors who have paid for a service- what are our rights? Once upon a time I published a book via what you could call a vanity publisher. I paid money for the full process

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: How to prepare a manuscript for submission? When my book is ready to give to some volunteer readers/reviewers: Suppose some of the reviewers want a hard copy. What's the best way to prepare

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