Publishing Children's Stories?

These are vanity presses. You pay to publish your book. Self-publishing. Do you want to self-publish or do you want to be paid by a publisher?

This isn't normal for legitimate publishers. It's normal for co-op/vanity publishers - self-publishers.

The 'costs' these publishers mentioned to you is the normal cost of doing business for legit publishers. The publishers handle all those things, and they hire an illustrator. Distribution is getting it into bookstores and retailers. Legit publishers do all this at their own costs - they have their own sales team that sells their books to bookstore managers. [Bookstore managers make the decision about which books to stock.] They handle the advertising if there is any. They handle the bulk of marketing (dont' confuse this with promotion). Authors handle promotion for their books. With smaller presses, you might have to take on a bigger part of the role in marketing and selling your book, but they still don't require you to pay them. Authors don't pay a publisher any money out of pocket. In fact, the publisher should be paying you...unless, of course, you're self-publishing. Remember, money flows to the author, not from the author.

Check out WRiter Beware on the Sci-fi & Fantasy writers of america website. They go into detail about the different types of publishers and what they are. It'll be helpful so that you don't find yourself scammed in the end.

Good luck with your book.

ADDING: Funny story. James Dasher recounts on his website about his first foray into publishing. He unknowingly hooked up with a co-op publisher. Co-op publisher are vanity publishers, except they charge you a portion of the cost to publish your book and they put up the other portion. Dasher says that he didn't know what they were at the time as was desperate to get published. Says it was his hard work that paid off because he went out to schools to promote his book and it ended up being a success (in co-op publishing standards). Even though it worked for him, he says he wouldn't recommend it to other writers because you don't need to pay to be published.

You're right, they were not normal. A legit publisher gives YOU money, you pay them nothing. The publisher edits the books, prints them, ships them, gets the ISBN number, etc. The author gets the royalty check and then waits for sales to catch up to it before receiving more royalty payments.

It sounds like you sent your books to vanity publishers, or outright scammers. Both those expect you to pay for having the book actually printed. If you INTENDED to self publish, then yes, vanity publishers or print on demand printers are ok. However if you're thinking that you want your book published by a publishing house, no-- you did not contact the right ones.

Small publishers usually do a print run of 800 - 1,500 books in a print run, so the royalty checks have shrunk to fit the new numbers. No longer are the print runs going 10,000 copies on a first printing.

Go to Amazon.com or your local library (reference section) and look for a book called "Childrens Writers And Illustrators Market" This lists the legit publishers of all the childrens' books, both large and small, and lays out what they're looking for and how much they pay.

What well-known company is that?

That sounds like a scam to me. They should publish your book first!

Silly, but true (the scabs!). But, you should get your money back and so much more if your books are a success! Good luck :)

Yes, the procedure is normal. Its not a scam.