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"AUTHORS! Do You Have A Completed Manuscript?" blares the flyer under Commonwealth Publications' gothic letterhead and lion rampant. This Canadian publisher invites writers to send queries in all genres. Those who follow through receive a contract for a mass-market paperback, with a press run of 10,000 copies to sell at $5.99 retail and generate "total royalties of $12,728.25 (U.S.)."
Buried on page five of the 10-page contract is the "Author's Contribution" clause, whereby the author agrees to pay Commonwealth a non-refundable $3,800 fee "to offset a portion of the Publisher's cost."
The Edmonton, Alberta-based company calls this a "joint venture agreement," intended for "first-time authors whose book will obviously require effort on our part in terms of editorial preparation and/or marketing."
To anyone familiar with book contracts, this looks and smells like subsidy publishing. Subsidy or vanity presses take authors' money and print their books. At best, it's a publishing path packed with pitfalls. And Commonwealth in particular has provoked a plethora of complaints from writers on both sides of the border. Mention it to people in the NWU or the The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC), at Poets and Writers, Romance Writers of America or The Writer magazine, and you'll get groans, then remarkably similar stories.
First off, say writers who've dealt with Commonwealth, the company's approach is misleading. It offers three contracts: straight royalty, advance plus royalties and joint venture. By all reports, the bulk of the deals it offers are joint ventures, but it doesn't make that clear up front.
Before she even considered working with Commonwealth, Joanna Cohen, a member of NWU's At-Large local, asked if they were a vanity press. They indignantly denied it. So Cohen, who's been published in a range of genres, sent them a short novel she'd written, a cat story for adults illustrated by a well-known artist. Commonwealth made an offer. Almost as an afterthought when listing the contract terms, the Commonwealth rep mentioned that her "co-operative amount" to publish the book would be $3,275. She stopped him in his tracks.
"Cooperative publishing to me is the same thing as a vanity press," Cohen said. "But in any case, I never would've signed without talking to someone in the union," she said.
"There's no reason why any NWU member should ever get caught unaware by a subsidy contract, however the publisher presents it," said At-Large local grievance officer Helena Worthen. "Read the whole document-and take it to our contract advisor network."
Even writers who decline the joint venture don't escape problems. Many, like Claire Hornstein (mother of NWU Secretary-Treasurer Bruce Hartford), find that Commonwealth plays "take the book and run."
A few months ago Hornstein turned down Commonwealth's joint-venture contract and, at their request, sent them a check to return her bound, 600-page manuscript. She says they cashed her $4 check and never saw the manuscript. She phoned them eight or 10 times. No response. "I have the cashed check, adding insult to injury," Hornstein said.
The Better Business Bureau in Commonwealth's home province of Alberta cited the company for "failure to eliminate the basic cause of complaints"-specifically, "slowness in returning manuscripts when a contract is not accepted by the author. "
Such difficulties were simply a function of growing pains, said Commonwealth's vice president of marketing, Mike Bryan. He noted that the company went from a half-dozen full-time employees to around 40 in just three years. "Some of the organizational glitches we had in the early years. We're much stronger now," he told American Writer.
Lots of the authors who call The Writer magazine about Commonwealth got direct mail from the publisher and wonder how the company found them, said Senior Editor Virginia McDonough. One literary agent, David Hyatt in Seattle, reports that Commonwealth approached him offering a kick-back in return for the names of first-time authors. (He turned them down.)
The company also works closely with the Canadian Literary Associates (CLA), Associated Literary Agents and Eden Literary Agency, according to James Charles Rau, who maintained an on-line "Dubious Publishers List" last year. The agents typically charge a reading fee, then refer authors to Commonwealth, Rau said.
The tradenames for both CLA and Commonwealth were registered with the Alberta government by a Lorraine Phelan, according to documents on file in a case against Commonwealth pending in provincial court in Edmonton. The documents also show that the CLA name was registered briefly to Donald Phelan as well, who is the founder and president of Commonwealth.
Bryan professed not to know where Commonwealth mines for authors, but did say the company "advertises aggressively for submissions."
Four writers called NWU's Oregon grievance officer Mike Venuto about Commonwealth since the beginning of the year. "I go over the contract with them and leave it up to them to decide. I don't know of one member who has gone with them," Venuto said.
Besides requiring a $3,800 fee, Venuto points out, Commonwealth's contract requires authors to give up movie and electronic rights. He considers Commonwealth a vanity press, and cautions writers about some of the holes in editorial and promotional support common to such operations.
"Commonwealth has distributed some books, but it doesn't have a strong relationship with distributors," he said.
"Our research indicates that Commonwealth does not have the confidence of booksellers and distributors in Canada," said TWUC's Victoria Ridout.
Independent news agencies handle most of Commonwealth's titles, said Mike Bryan. They go to retail chains, places like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and their Canadian equivalents. "Until recently we had little distribution in the U.S.-80 to 95 percent of our orders go to Canada," he said.
Bryan carefully differentiated Commonwealth from the subsidy press. "We ask about one-fifth of what [the typical vanity presses] ask," he said. "You want to invest in your title, let's take a shot together. It's a good new option for authors."
Helena Worthen, who has fielded writers' queries from all over the world about joint-venture publishers, including Commonwealth, urges caution. She advises writers interested in a subsidy press to ask the publisher for names of authors they have handled, then contact them, and review contracts with the union.
Even if everything checks out, Worthen said, "You're taking a big risk that your book will never get printed or there will be no promotion. And they usually are not well-capitalized, and run a high rate of bankruptcies. For example, Northwest in Midvale, Utah went under last year, leaving several NWU members without either their books or their money."
TWUC's Ridout also suggests checking the press' record with agents and bookstores. "The most important question to ask is, 'Do bookstores carry this publisher's books?,'" she said. "Subsidy publishing may seem like a good idea on the surface, but for the most part, subsidy presses are not making money from effective marketing and selling of books. They're making money from writers willing to pay for publication."
Thanks to the Periodical Writers Assn. of Canada for research assistance on this story.
Copyright © 1997 by Rick Friedman and Marcy Rein.
