Should I Ask My Publisher When My Book Is Coming Out

Should you ever pay to publish a book?

Short answer: NO.Longer answer: You should never, full stop, pay someone to put your book out (unless you're vanity publishing a small number of copies for personal distribution, which is different). There are, however, occasions when you are going to need to put some money down before your book is ready. If you're going the traditional publishing route, you generally don't need to spend any money ahead of time unless you know you have serious problems with things like grammar or spelling and you can't or won't address them on your own. In that case, a copy editor is a good investment because it's hard to see past a very messy manuscript when you're screening dozens at a time. If you're planning to self-publish, you will almost certainly need to put some money down, but not to a publisher. You need three things done professionally to give your book the best chances: A cover by a real cover artist, not put together yourself unless you're a professional graphic artist. Editing by a professional editor; this is one of those things that lots of writers think they don't need, but as a professional editor myself I can tell you that 90% of the time they're dead wrong. Back cover copy is another thing writers think they can handle because, hey, they write! But cover copy isn't fiction, it's marketing, and unless you have experience with marketing, it's another area that should be handled professionally if you're serious about your self-published book. It's the area most self-published authors neglect, but it's the second point of contact (after the cover) that can make or break a sale. It's insane to have your back cover copy scream "I did this myself!"If you only want a few copies for yourself and friends, however, vanity publishing might be the way to go. Companies like Lulu can sell you professionally bound copies of your book at a reasonable rate. Stay away from vanity publishers like Publish America which make big promises and ask for a cash-up-front investment. They're dangerous and can cost you the rights to your own work.

Is there a book publisher that won't cost a new author anything?

As in money? Most established publishing houses do not charge you to publish them.  They pay you if they like your work enough to publish you. (Edited to add: Publishers typically pay for publishing rights in a region, in a language. In return, they give the author royalties, a share of the sale price of each book. Authors can can get an advance against royalties which is, essentially, the publisher making a bet that they will be able to sell a certain number of the book.) What you may wind up 'paying' is time: the time you invest working with their editors to improve your manuscript to bring it up to the level your publisher requires.There are, of course, legit businesses that offer publishing services in varying degrees, from just taking your manuscript and printing it, no questions asked, to assisting you with their editing, design, marketing and distribution services. They are sometimes known as 'vanity presses' and the act is 'self-publishing.' Even majors like Penguin offer paid publishing: their Partridge imprint does just that.Self-publishing isn't intrinsically a bad thing; many now-famous authors published their work themselves.The problem is that there are many shady operators who take advantage of the layperson's lack of knowledge of the publishing business to con aspiring writers into thinking that paying a publisher is the only way to go. What the poor aspirant winds up with is a very large stack of books and the realisation that printing a book is easy; what really kills you is distribution, getting your book out there.Another way of answering your question is: e-publishing. Thanks to today's technology, nothing stops an author from making her own ebook and putting it out there. All that she'll 'spend' is the time she takes to write and design her book.