Reading fee

From Guidevines

[edit] Reading Fee

A charge demanded by supposed agents and so-called publishers which you must pay before they will even look at your work.

This is considered non-professional, a scam. This permits those who are asking for it to get money for doing almost nothing, since it does not guarantee either representation or publication.

Agents who ask for a reading fee may actually represent something good that accidentally falls on their desk, but on the whole these are persons who either do not actually represent anybody or make any sales, or who make so few sales that they could not keep their doors open. Reading fees allow them to make a good living for doing what they ought to be doing anyway: looking through submissions for something worth selling. Experience has proven that any critique received back from them will be boiler-plated on general topics, rather than being the line-by-line and high-level suggestions of a genuine book doctor.

"Publishers" who ask a reading fee are, at best, vanity press who will publish anything for which you ante up the money. More often, they are the first stage to milking your bank account, as they run you through a serious of fake book doctors and book packagers, so that if anything of yours actually sees print, you have little or no rights left, and have paid heavily for the privilege.

The direction of money flow should always be from the publisher to the writer. As soon as any of it is the other direction, you have a vanity press.