Amusing email

So I take a look at our help@spirepublishing.com account this morning and this is one of the mails that arrived overnight:

The final pdf of my book is attached, it already has an isbn but I need someone to distribute it and submit it to the bookstores. It is already available on amazon and the online book stores as I self published it with lulu.com (I am the publisher) but I want someone to distribute it to bookstores, while still retaining all rights and be able to back out of our agreement at any time. I don’t want to pay the initial 400 or whatever dollar fee you have as my book is good enough that you should want to take it on without that.
 
Please consider
 
-          Name removed to protect the innocent

Truth be told, we haven't had one of these for a while. "We'd like to use your services, but you should be working for free" - we get all sorts of mails, but these are remarkably rare. Anyway, here's my reply to him:

Hi XXXX

Thanks for sending us your book. Three things:

1. If you have already self published with lulu.com, and you have an ISBN number, then your book should be available to bookstores already. If not, then please consider upgrading your lulu.com account - I know that lulu offers the distribution services you require for a fee.

2. We are a self publishing company. That means that the author pays for the publishing services he or she needs. If you're unwilling to make this contribution then I suggest trying to find a traditional publisher who might be willing to publish your book for you. The first step in that direction would be to secure an agent who starts representing you to potential publishers - there is little reward in sending manuscripts unsolicited to publishers these days.

3. We are a publisher. That means that legally we can't just take a book you've published and pretend it is one of ours. If you wish to take advantage of our services then you need to re-publish your book with us.

4. Your book does not meet our formatting standards. Your book is justified left only, paragraphs are running together, the legal page is incomplete. The document formatting is incorrect for our books and there are potential problems with the fonts you've embedded. So even if point one to three would not apply we could not publish the book in it's current state.

Best regards, and best of luck,