Last reviewed by Robert Prime — September 2026
Quick Answer: Paying to be published is not automatically a scam, and being paid to publish is not automatically a service. The contract is what tells you which you are looking at. Seven clauses decide it: the rights grant, its term, reversion, what the fee buys, the royalty base, who controls the finished book, and how you get out. Ask for the whole contract before you pay anything, and check the company on ALLi’s Watchdog.
This page names no companies. It is about what to read, in what order, and what the words mean.
Table of Contents
- The one useful distinction
- 1. What rights are you granting
- 2. For how long, and reversion
- 3. What does the fee actually buy
- 4. Royalties: net receipts or list price
- 5. Print runs, stock and who holds it
- 6. Approval over your own book
- 7. Termination
- Before you sign anything
- Frequently asked questions
The one useful distinction
There is a lot of heat in this corner of publishing and not much light. The labels — vanity, hybrid, contributory, partnership, assisted — are marketing terms, not legal categories, and none of them tells you anything reliable.
Here is a distinction that does work:
A service takes your money and gives you a deliverable. You pay for editing, design, formatting or distribution. At the end you own the files and the rights, and you can walk away with them.
A deal takes your rights and gives you a share. A publisher invests, controls the edition and pays you a royalty. You give up rights in exchange for their money and reach.
The arrangement that causes trouble is the one that takes both — your money and your rights — and returns neither on request. That is not a category of company. It is a shape of contract, and you can see it in the clauses.
So read the contract, not the label. If a company will not show you the contract before you pay, you already have your answer.
1. What rights are you granting
Find the grant clause. It is usually near the front and usually the longest sentence on the page.
You are looking for three things:
Assignment or licence? An assignment moves ownership of the copyright. A licence is permission, leaves you the owner, and can be limited. For a paid arrangement, a licence is the norm and an assignment should make you stop and ask why.
Section 90(3) CDPA 1988 is the rule that makes an assignment effective at all:
“An assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor.”
That cuts both ways. It means nobody takes your copyright by accident — but it also means that if you sign, you have signed.
How wide? Section 90(2) allows a grant to be partial — some of the exclusive rights, some of the term. So “all rights in all languages in all formats throughout the world in perpetuity” is a choice, not a necessity. A company publishing your English-language paperback in the UK does not need your Japanese translation rights or your film rights to do that job.
What is carved out? Audio, translation, film and TV, merchandising and serial rights are separately valuable. If the grant sweeps them up and the company has no plan to exploit them, they are sitting unused in someone else’s contract.
2. For how long, and reversion
The term clause and the reversion clause are the two that decide whether a bad decision is recoverable.
Term. Look for a number of years. “For the full term of copyright” means the rest of your life plus seventy years (s.12(2)), which for a paid arrangement is a very long time to be locked to a company you are paying.
Reversion. This is the clause that gets your rights back, and it is the one most worth negotiating. Good reversion language is specific and automatic: rights return if the book goes out of print, if sales fall below a stated threshold over a stated period, or on notice after a stated number of years.
Weak reversion language is discretionary — rights revert “at the publisher’s discretion” or “by mutual agreement”, which means they revert when the publisher feels like it.
Watch what “in print” means in a print-on-demand world. A title is technically never out of print if a file sits on a server. Reversion tied to “while the work remains in print” can therefore never trigger. Tie it to sales instead: a number of copies, over a defined period.
3. What does the fee actually buy
Get an itemised list, in the contract rather than in an email.
For each item, ask what you would pay for it separately — editing, cover design, interior formatting, ISBN, distribution setup, marketing. Those services all have market rates and you can get comparison quotes in an afternoon. Our guide to self-publishing costs in the UK has the going rates.
Two specific things to look for:
Marketing described in activities, not outcomes. “A press release distributed to our media list” is an activity. So is “inclusion in our catalogue” and “a social media campaign”. None of them is a result, and none is measurable. That is not necessarily dishonest — nobody can promise sales — but you should know you are buying effort.
Anything you are paying for that you would own anyway. If you pay for the cover design, you should own the cover. If the contract has you funding the design and the company retaining it, read that twice. The same logic applies as with any commissioned work — see who owns your book cover.
4. Royalties: net receipts or list price
This single distinction can halve your income and it is easy to miss.
List price royalties are a percentage of the book’s cover price. Simple, and you can calculate your earnings.
Net receipts royalties are a percentage of what the publisher actually receives after the retailer’s discount. A book with a £9.99 cover sold to a retailer at a 55% discount brings in about £4.50, and a “25% royalty” on that is roughly £1.12 — not £2.50.
Neither is wrong, and net receipts is standard in trade publishing. But you must know which you have signed, and the contract should define “net receipts” explicitly. If it does not define the term, ask for a definition in writing. Deductions that appear in some definitions and not others — distribution fees, returns reserves, bad debt — move the number materially.
Also check: royalty on your own copies. Some contracts have authors buying their own book at a discount off list, with no royalty. If you are going to sell at events, that rate is your actual margin.
5. Print runs, stock and who holds it
If the arrangement involves a print run rather than print-on-demand, three questions:
- How many copies, and who pays for them?
- Where are they stored, and who pays for storage?
- What happens to unsold stock, and are you obliged to buy it?
An author who has paid for a print run and holds the stock is a distributor with a garage. That may be fine if you sell at events and speak regularly. It is not fine if you were told the publisher would sell them.
6. Approval over your own book
Find out, in writing, whether you have final approval over:
- the edited text
- the cover
- the title and subtitle
- the price
- the metadata and categories
Authors are frequently surprised to discover the cover is the publisher’s decision. In a traditional deal, where the publisher carries the financial risk, that is a defensible bargain. Where you are paying, giving away approval is a strange trade, and it is worth asking why it is in there.
7. Termination
Read it assuming the relationship goes wrong, because that is the only situation in which you will ever read it again.
- Can you terminate, and on what notice?
- What does it cost you?
- Do the rights revert on termination, or does the grant survive it?
- Who keeps the files — the edited manuscript, the cover artwork, the typeset interior?
That last one decides whether leaving means starting over. A contract where you leave with your rights but without the production files has handed you a very expensive blank page.
Before you sign anything
A short, practical sequence:
- Ask for the full contract before paying a deposit. A company that requires payment before disclosure has told you something important.
- Check ALLi’s Watchdog. The Alliance of Independent Authors runs a Watchdog desk that rates services against its Code of Standards, specifically flagging services that “overcharge, over-promise, under-deliver, or in any way exploit authors”. It is the closest thing UK self-publishing has to a consumer register.
- Get comparison quotes for each line item. Not to haggle — to know what you are buying.
- Take advice if the numbers are significant. The Society of Authors offers contract vetting to members, and that membership costs a great deal less than a bad contract.
- Sleep on it. Urgency in a publishing offer is a sales technique, not a publishing reality. Books do not have a season that closes on Friday.
Frequently asked questions
Is paying to publish always a bad idea?
No. Every self-publisher pays to publish — for editing, design, formatting, distribution. The question is whether you are paying for services and keeping your rights, or paying for services and also handing over your rights. The first is normal. The second needs justifying.
What is the difference between hybrid and vanity publishing?
There is no legal definition of either, and companies choose the label they prefer. Judge the contract: rights grant, term, reversion, royalty base, approval and termination. Those are facts. The label is a description of itself.
They want all rights for the full term of copyright. Is that normal?
For a paid arrangement, it is a lot to ask, and it is worth asking what they intend to do with the rights they are taking. A publisher who will not exploit translation rights has no obvious reason to hold them for seventy years past your death.
Can I get out of a contract I have already signed?
It depends entirely on its terms, so start with the termination and reversion clauses. If you signed recently and at a distance, consumer cancellation rights may be relevant depending on the circumstances and whether services have begun. Take advice on your specific contract rather than relying on a general answer.
Do I still own my copyright if I signed a licence?
Yes. A licence is permission to use; ownership stays with you. Only an assignment moves ownership, and only in writing with your signature (s.90(3)). Check which word your contract uses.
What if they have already published it badly?
Your route back is the reversion and termination clauses, and then the question of who holds the files. If the edition is live and selling, you may also want to deal with the ISBN, because the edition they published is recorded against their imprint, not yours.
Final thoughts
Almost everything that goes wrong here is visible in the contract before any money moves. The rights grant tells you what you are giving up, the term and reversion tell you whether it is recoverable, and the royalty base tells you what you will actually be paid.
None of that requires a lawyer to spot. It requires reading seven clauses and asking for a definition when a term is doing a lot of work without one.
If you decide to publish it yourself instead, the paperwork is smaller than people expect and it stays yours. Our formatting service handles the files from £69, and you keep everything.
— Robert publishing.co.uk
Doing it yourself? The UK Author Legal Pack is the paperwork for the independent route: a copyright page, contracts for a cover designer and a ghostwriter that actually transfer the copyright to you, a permission-to-quote letter, ARC reviewer terms, and the legal deposit duty most self-publishers miss. Editable Word and PDF, every statutory claim carrying the section number it came from. £29.
