Even if they include the photo whether or not your sister or niece buy, it’s still a scam / vanity press. They only market the book to people whose photo will be included.
You are in a difficult spot. I don’t know how you can get them to see the truth and let them down easy.
Is there a version of “The Poet’s Market” for photographers? If so, maybe you could give her a gift of that when you break the news.
I just submitted an awful photograph I had (low quality jpeg of the back of my head in the foreground and the backside of my dog in the background with bad shadows cast by the flash) to the circle of photographers.
I’ll see if they say I qualify for the big prize.
There is.
Just an update on the awful photograph I submitted.
I just received an e-mail from them that I was chosen to be published. It says I was chosen out of 8523 entrants.
It also says my work was appreciated for the assymetric composition and light mix used throughout.
(Let me remind you that this was taken with a 1.3 megapixel camera of the back of my head and the back of my dog with shadows cast by the flash).
Oh yeah, I can get the manuscipt for $59.
Good job, Hampshire.
And kittenblue, let your sister know about Yog’s Law: Money flows toward the writer.
It applies to photographers, too. People are supposed to pay you to publish your work, not the other way around. At the very least, you should be given a free copy of the published book.
Oh my, word for word what they told my niece. Thank you so much for for efforts. I will admit, I wimped out and didn’t bring up the subject when my sister called next, but because of your incredible follow-through, I am now honor-bound to talk to her about this.
Unless you’re writing for a scientific journal like JACS or JAMA. Then you expect to have to pay to publish and price quickly goes up for things like color printing. Plus you have to transfer copyright over to the organization. But I agree that if you’re getting published in something like F&SF or any other literary magazine, you should be getting paid.