Oh, looky, yet another vanity publisher cuts and runs toward bankruptcy, rather than 1) changing its ways or 2) paying its authors.
Australia’s JoJo Publishing was recently profiled in a television program detailing the company’s duplicitous practices. Here’s an article about their attempts at strategic liquidation. And here is the AbsoluteWrite.com thread about them (read the whole thing, really.)
So why am I listing it under Filigree’s Rule?
If you pay your publisher, no matter how the fees are levied or disguised, you are being vanity-published.
Your publisher will deny this to their last collective breath, while claiming any number of creative synonyms for how they work.
Not all vanity publishers are evil. A few verge closer to honest print/publishing services providers. But if you are being vanity-published, not only are you probably being financially ripped off and badly marketed, what happened to JoJo’s authors can happen to you: cheated of sales royalties, left to pay massive and unnecessary expenses, and possibly facing the loss of rights to your own book.
Being published badly is far worse than not being published at all. Most vanity publishers will publish you badly, because they have no financial incentive to do a good job and market your work. You’ve already paid them.
Research publishers before you approach them, and certainly before you decide to sign contracts with them.