Vanity Press How to Dodge Scams Self-Publishing Companies to Avoid

Vanity Press How to Dodge Scams Self-Publishing Companies to Avoid Vanity Press Scams and Self Publishing Companies to Avoid The awful news for authors out there today is that there are plenty vanity press scams and self-publishing companies to avoidunless you want your money stolen, that isIf you are a self-published author, publishing your book today has never been easier. With a quick Google search, you’ll come across dozens of self-publishing companies offering publishing services for authors.But, how do you know if the company isn’t just another vanity press scam?Before making any decisions, you want to check out all your options carefully. If not, you could find yourself the victim of a self-publishing scam, forking thousands of bucks over to a shady publishing company with nothing to show for it.In this post, you’ll learn how to recognize the self-publishing scams when they cold call youand the companies you can really trust to get your book published!Here’s what we’ll cover in this post on self-publishing scams:Why authors fall for vanity press scamsEarly warning signs of self-publishing scamsYour self-publishing optionsTaking down the scammersRed flag list: Self-publishing companies to avoidWriters beware and watchdog groupsEducate yourself in self-publishingAre you ready to self-publish your book?NOTE: If youre ready for a system and method to actually succeed in the self-publishing industry (not to mention keep ALL the money you earn), check out our VIP Self-Publishing Program. Learn more about it hereAs with any lucrative industry, there are a wide range of self-publishing scams in business for one reason: To take your money.A Vanity press publisher charges sky-high prices for author services that includes editing, formatting, cover design, and marketing.But, all of this is outsourced to the lowest bidder and in the end, the author is left with a poor quality book and no way to market it.â€Å"You get what you pay for† doesn’t equate when it comes to vanity press and the publishing scams they represent. You do pay top dolla r, often tens of thousands, and what you get back for your investment lacks anything of value.So, how can you avoid these self-publishing scams?Let’s take a look.Why Authors Fall for Vanity Press ScamsThere could be many reasons why someone would sign up with a scammy publishing company that wants you to pay big money up front.There is no shortage of scams out there when it comes to self-publishing. The biggest reason authors fall into these scams is becausewell, they dont know what they should know to avoid being scammed in the first place.The fact that you have to pay a publisher to get your book published is warning sign enough: The lies are on the wall. Most authors who fall into this trap are not published authors yet.You are either thinking of writing a book, youve started writing it, or you’re done and can’t wait to get it out there.So, when a publisher comes along offering to get their â€Å"just finished† manuscript into the hands of thousands of readers and sell millions of books worldwide, I would grab at it, too. Who wouldn’t want that?As a first time author, you are most likely not going to write a book that sells thousands of copies. And if you do, it will not be through a company that you just paid $5,000-$10 to for this to happen.Most soon-to-be-published self-publishers fall into the lap of predatory publishers because they need help.For someone who wants to become a successful author, your passion to publish is so strong that it overrides the sudden impulse to take the first offer on the table.Here are several reasons why you might fall for the vanity press trap:You are desperate for the know-how of book publishing.The publishing process is too complex.You are scared of â€Å"not publishing† and want it done right now.You are not tech-savvy and would rather pay someone to overcome the hurdles.Your friends keep asking you â€Å"When is your book coming out?†You know nothing about book marketing and need to hire the experts. Guess what: Vanity publishers don’t know much about it either and youll have to market no matter the avenue of publishing you choose.You watched a video of a self-published author who just signed a 6-figure deal with a large publisherand you think that is what usually happens.Before you make any hasty decisions, stop and breathe. If you need help with publishing your book [and everyone does] there is a right way and†¦The other way that steals all your hard-earned dollars.My hope is that you read this post before signing anything. If you can know the danger signs to watch for, you’ll pull yourself back from making a decision that costs you thousands of dollars, not to mention the heavy burden of regret later.Early Warning Signs: The Lies of Vanity PressVanity presses are generally a bad idea all around, but well cover some specific ways they can scam you and why theyre often on the list of self-publishing companies to avoid.How Vanity Press Publishers Scam YouIt is actually easy to spot a predatory publisher. I only hope you get to this post before they get to you. Here are the 5 big signs you are at risk of being scammed.#1 - The company asks for publishing fees. This should be enough right here. Although Hybrid Publishers require authors to pay for all the publishing services upfront, they usually split the fees later.A vanity press publisher will charge thousands for a publishing package. You are told that the book sales will be recouped later through book saleswhich almost never happen. Don’t listen to the so-called â€Å"reviews and testimonials† on the websites. These are rigged, of course.#2 - â€Å"We will publish your book for you on Amazon.† Let me be clear about this: Publishing on Amazon is super easy, even if you have limited tech skills. Not to mention Amazon has an excellent support system in place. The response time to inquiries is less than 24 hours and they are very detail ed when it comes to responses.A vanity publisher will make this sound more complicated than it really is. They will â€Å"take care of everything† and upload the book for you. What this also means is you lose control over making any future changes to the book. The only person that should be uploading the book to Amazon is YOU under your own account.#3 - Charges for A Reading Fee. Never. This just isn’t done. A traditional publishing house never asks for this. If you are told by the sales rep they will read your book for a certain fee, red flag this. The â€Å"reading fee† scam is less common today, but just in case you do run up against a company that tries this old scam.With a real publisher, nobody makes money until the book is selling. Actually, this practice has fallen the wayside these days and it would be rare to come across. But there is always someone willing to try†¦#4 - The publisher will buy you an ISBN [because they are so hard to get]. You ca n buy an ISBN through Bowker.com if you reside within the USA. The cost is $125.00. In the U.K. you go through Nielson. In Canada ISBNs are free through ISBN Canada. If you buy this through IngramSpark they offer a slight discount. Again, this is just another ploy to make you think it is a difficult process that is better off left to the â€Å"professionals.†#5 - â€Å"We will take care of all the marketing, because we know how difficult it is.† Yes, marketing is difficult, especially for authors. But a vanity press company won’t market the book to sell, they will do the bare minimum required so it appears as if the book is being placed in the proper channels.My advice: Grab a book on marketing for authors or enroll in a course. Learn it. You can even outsource it out so that you do Sell More Books. But in the end nobody is better at marketing their own book than the author.#6 - Excessive use of flattery. The first time I spoke to a vanity press sales rep I re member the praise she gave me for my book. I felt as if I had written a book that was going to sell thousands of copies in the first week.The rep was quoting passages from the book and referencing everything from the first page. Mind you, I later realized, everything she was quoting was from the first few pages. So did she read it? Of course not.#7- A sales rep calls you several hours after you sign up to their newsletter with a sales pitch. I tested one of these sites by enquiring about their services, and I downloaded a freebie. The next day I received a call from my â€Å"Publishing consultant† ready to help me fulfill my dreams as an author. Wow. The sales pitch was impressive, but if you already knew the situation, it was a total scam. You can smell it.But, for a new author excited to be part of the publishing journey, listening to someone else tell you how excited they are to publish your boom is a very tempting catch. In the end, they don’t care about your book or you. Whether it is Author Solutions or another of the dozens of publishing scammers out there, they get your money and keep milking it with constant upsells.#8 - Make â€Å"over the mountain promises† to get you endorsed by Hollywood. It is not unusual for these companies to tell you that your book has a shot of being featured in Oprah’s book club, or that they will send your manuscript to one of their agents in Hollywood for review.I can promise you one thing- Your book will never see the inside of a movie studio. Not unless you are a well-established author who has already proven themselves, and even then, it will not be through a vanity press company that you get there.#9 - Promises to get your book into barnes and noble and other bookstores. In this case what happens is, they put your book into a large catalogue where bookstores and libraries can order it. But realistically, you’ll be hard pressed to sell a single book in any bookstore if you publish t hrough a vanity press company. Libraries and bookstores won’t even consider it in most cases.#10 - Insists you sign a contract handing over exclusivity. If this final dose doesn’t make you run the other way, I don’t know what will. By any and all means, as a self-published author, you do not sign over your material rights to anyone. This gives the vanity publisher the right to further exploit your work and profit from all sales. The author, in this case, gets a lower end percentage.Now that you’ve seen the red flags, you are well-informed to make a decision if you come across what appears to be a shady publisher. You don’t need to sign anything or pay huge amounts of money for the publisher to â€Å"publish you to Amazon† or set you up with a movie deal.Now, let’s take a look atYour Self-Publishing OptionsWe are not living in the 1990s anymore. Back then, choices to self-publish were limited. You either paid a company- like a vanity press- a lot of money. Or, you went on your own and hired a printing company to run off tons of copies that were not cheap.Today, you will see that you have many good choices these days that make it easier for you to get your book published.#1 - Self-Publishing CoursesThere are quite a few reputable self-publishing courses out there. You buy the course, and work through the modules to write and ultimately publish your own book.There are costs to publish your book, including creating it, cover design, editing, and launching your book. You still have to pay for these services, but at least you get to choose who is working on your book.It is up to each individual author to outsource his or her own book. Publishing courses provide the content you need to get it all done, but you do all the work and take on additional costs outside the cost of the course.You have to pay for the basics that any author pays for: A good cover design, hiring an editor and formatting, and maybe a budget for marketing services such as book promo sites or a media package.But many new authors are weary about self-publishing and think uploading to Amazon- or other publishing companies- is a complex ordeal. It isn’t. I have been coaching authors for years and, nowadays, the system is built in that all you have to do is plug your book info into the Kindle Direct Publishing Bookshelf and away you go. The cost for actually self-publishing your book is O.The production cost for the average book is about $1500. If you pay $1000-3000 for a course + $1500 for the book production, you are still under $5,000. If you continue to write more books, you’ve already paid for the course that usually gives you access for a lifetime.Taking a self-publishing course is the best option we think. You learn how to do so much of the process yourself, and can rinse and repeat for future books. You still pay for everything but, who you decide to hire is up to you and the creative decisions are all you rs.#2 - KDP [Kindle Direct Publishing]The KDP platform is Amazons book publishing platform. Publishing a book is so much easier now than it ever used to be, especially with Amazon self-publishing.You no longer need to go through painstaking efforts to land a book deal which locks you into unrealistic deadlines and cuts you out of most of the earnings. You don’T have to sign up and fork over thousands to a vanity press company.You can now have complete control of your book – and its revenues – by publishing directly through Amazon self-publishing.Setting up your KDP account is easy, and should be the first step you complete.Here’s how to set up your Kindle Direct Publishing account:Go to https://kdp.amazon.com and register with either your Amazon account or with your email address.Next, click â€Å"Update† in your account information and fill in your tax information. It’s important to note that you need to complete your tax information BEFOR E you can publish your first book. So don’t skip this step!Once your tax information is complete, click â€Å"Finished† and return to the main page.Your profile is complete!#3 - Print On DemandIf you are a new author reading this, with the print on demand services offered by Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingramspark, you can order your own author copies and pay print costs plus shipping to your location. Buy your own ISBN, copyright your book, and own what you create.To start printing your own books with IngramSpark, visit their website and set up an account. Do the same with Amazons’ Kindle Direct Publishing platform. Do it yourself. It’s not the difficult process many would have you believe, and there is lots of support on these sites ready to help you right away.How much is the cost to print a book?It depends on the book size but, for a book that is 30k in length with little to no photos or graphs and text only, expect to pay less than $4 per copy. The average scammy publisher will charge new authors $15-20 dollars per copy.But for them, they print the books at the same cost as an author who sets this up through KDP or IngramSpark.In fact, many vanity press publishers use IngramSpark for the print-on-demand service only just to sell the books back to the author at 5x the print cost.#4 - Vanity Press PublisherVanity press publishing, also called subsidy publishing, differs from selfpublishing in that the author assumes all the risk and pays the publisher for everything.The editing, formatting, cover design, and even marketing the book are paid for by the author through the various packages offered when an author signs up.But, there is a trap here: The costs are more than you initially pay for, and they don’t tell you this until later when you’re mired deeper into the project. Once invested, most authors are compelled to publish the book no matter the costs.The emotional investment is what these companies prey on. Kn owing how you feel about your book, they are ready to help you do anything to get it to marketand that means offering more expensive services.By the time you are done and the book is published, potentially you have just spent $10k. With close to 0 book sales.Vanity publishers make money, not from selling books for you, but from the author buying their own books back from the publisher. It is a scam where the author always loses.#5 - Traditional PublishersThis is not a self-publishing route but, if you want to take the traditional path, you can begin by querying your manuscript with agents. Keep in mind, you may not see your book in print for a couple of year due to the lengthy process of first finding an agent, and then having them submit it to publishers to buy.What is a traditional publisher?â€Å"A traditional book publishing company buys the rights to an authors manuscript. Buying rights from the author is how book publishers have traditionally acquired books. The advance is d educted by the book publisher from any royalties the author receives from the sale of the book.†That’s right, they pay you an advance for the book. You don’t pay them anything. It depends on the publisher’s contract but they will pay for [some] marketing.The editing, cover design and formatting is taken care of by the publisher [in most cases].There are a lot of nightmare stories of authors signing on with traditional publishers, but that usually equates to the publisher not trying hard enough to sell any books. In this case the author may end the contract and, after that, many authors take up with self-publishing and find better success. After all, why not be in charge of building your own book business?#6 - Hybrid PublishersA hybrid publisher is what you will find between a traditional publisher [pay nothing upfront but get paid an advance] or a vanity press publisher [pay for everything upfront and keep all royalties.The hybrid publishers model is simp le: An author pays for everything upfront but gets a bigger cut of the royalties after book sales, upwards of 50%. The initial cost means that the author assumes all the financial risk in order to get the book to market.One other difference between traditional and hybrid publishing is, the hybrid has to pay the author a higher percentage of royalties than a traditional publishing house.In order for a company to be called a hybrid publisher, there are 9 criteria set out by the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) that must be adhered to:In order to not be classified as a vanity press, ALL book submissions must be reviewed. This means if your book does not meet the criteria, it should be rejected. A vanity press doesn’t care. Anything and anybody will do.Hybrid publishers must clearly define a vision to follow for their company.Must report reputable sales on all titles they publish.Authors who sign with hybrid publishers must be paid a higher royalty than that of stan dard traditional publisher rates.The quality of the production- cover design, editing and formatting- must meet industry standards.The publisher must publish as its own defined imprint and request its own ISBNs.Manage all distribution services for the works.Hybrid publisher must manage the rights of the works they publish as well as any subsequent rights acquired.Hybrid publishers must meet the standards and best practices set out by the publishing industry.Butthe vanity press publishers are bad seeds. Lately they are disguising their services as â€Å"hybrid publishers† but still operate with the same scammy tactics.Take caution here that, while a hybrid publisher might look legit on the surface, there is a possibility you could get ripped off if you are not 100% sure.Taking Down the ScammersAs a coach and self-publishing authority, I have worked with at least a dozen authors who’ve come away from a vanity press publisher broke, not just financially, but emotionally a s well.Like most authors, they just wanted to fulfill a dream and publish a book. But as soon as you sign up with a self-publishing scam company, your dreams are ripped apart and so is your bank account. By the time the not-yet-published author realizes it, they are invested by thousands of dollars and bound by a contract.Over the years several class-action suits have been launched against scammy publishers for bad business practice. The worst of these publishers is Author Solutions, a company with a bad rap and a long history of complaints targeted against it by authors who have been exploited.This company boasts on its website â€Å"300,000 authors published.† I would be hard-pressed to believe this and to go a step further, the percentage of those authors who would use Author Solution service again?Chances are if you have been down this road, you realized before you were half way there that you’d taken a bad path.Author Solutions is at the top of the chain of seedy publishing houses promising to get your book to market because the world needs to hear your story. And for a publishing package upwards of $5999 it could all be done for you. Well, initially you are led to believe.Author Solutions is the parent company of several subsidiaries that operate, not only in the US but now have an International reach as they have set up in countries worldwide.How do they make their money?It isn’t from helping authors to sell books.The authors usually end up selling nothing. Instead, they are made to buy the books they want from the publishers at a high cost just so they can have their own copies to sell or giveaway.Recently, several companies have been shut down in class action lawsuits, and this is still continuing today, with authors taking a stand and fighting back against the book publishing thieves.Fortunately, authors are better educated these days on the publishing options available. Vanity publishers are disappearing. But do return â€Å"we aring different clothing†, disguised as the next best company to get you that bestselling book.Red Flag List: Self-Publishing Companies to AvoidI have compiled a list of publishing companies you should avoid at all costs. This is not a complete list but includes names of the major companies flagged by Writer Beware and Alliance of Independent Authors.For a very thorough listing, I would recommend you check with the Alliance of Independent Authors. ALLi stays up-to-date on the scammy reports, warnings and lawsuits taken against bad publishers.Here are some self-publishing companies that have made the list of those to watch out for:Author SolutionsAuthorHouse UKArchway Publishing [Simon and Schuster]LifeRich Publishing [Reader’s Digest]iUniversePalibrio [for the Spanish-speaking community]Dorrance publishingChristian faith publishingWestbow pressBalboa press [a Division of Hay House]Newman Springs PublishingPartridge PublishingTate PublishingTrafford PublishingXlibris [UK , AU, and NZ]Outskirts PressDog ear publishingWriters Beware and Watchdog GroupsRemember: Always do your homework. To make sure if you are buying into a legit business you should check in with these sites listed below.Writer Bewareâ€Å"Shining a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news, and commentary. Writer Beware is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.†Preditors and EditorsProviding up-to-date action against possible publishing scammers.ALLi [Alliance of Independent Authors] / Watchdog Postsâ€Å"Each month on the ALLi blog, the excellent Watchdog John Doppler explores key issues regarding the provision of self-publishing services around the world.†The Independent Publishing Magazine / Publishing Service IndexA detailed breakdown of self-publishing companies and their ranking based on service and reliability.Educate Yourself in S elf-PublishingPublishing scams will always be around as long as authors are paying for their services.How do you, as an author, avoid falling into this trap?The self-publishing arena is like a vast oasis of information and a never-ending learning process. Vanity press publishers are banking on you having no idea what to do, which is why you might consider turning to a publishing company in the first place.Our advice at Self Publishing School is this: Educate yourself on how to publish a book. You’d be surprised the things you actually don’t have to pay for.Take control of your self-publishing career today.Are you ready to self-publish your book?Enroll in an online self-publishing courseYou can check out this list of best self-publishing courses. I highly recommend joining an online self-publishing course for achieving all your publishing goals.You will learn how to write and market your book your way and all of it within your control. You won’t have to give up a nything or sign your book rights over to a publisher that will exploit your creativity.

ACT Scorers How to Perfect Your Score

Guide for Top SAT / ACT Scorers How to Perfect Your Score SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you already scoring well on the SAT and getting a 1400 or above (2100 in the 2400 scale)? This puts you in a special class, and your strategy for improving your SAT score will be very different from the average students'. Having made the improvement myself, I’ll show you how you can aim for a perfect SAT score too. Why Strategies for Top Scorers and Average Scorers Are Different Where you are on the learning curve absolutely affects what you’ll learn next. Learning to walk as a baby is very different from learning to run in middle school, which is again very different from learning to run in pro marathons. Strategies that are central when you’re doing poorly suddenly stop working when you’re doing well. The main reason for this is that gaining points when you’re an average scorer is more about increasing your skill, whereas gaining points as a top scorer means adapting to the exact shape and format of the test. Completely new strategies are needed, and I’ll show you those SAT strategies right here! My Own Experience as a Top Scorer When I first started studying for the SAT, I was already scoring a 1400 (equivalent to a 2100 on the 2400 scale). As defined above, this definitely qualifies me as a top scorer, and no doubt I was thankful to score even that much. I wanted to score higher though, so I picked up the most popular books: Kaplan, Princeton Review, you name it. I noticed one thing very quickly: All the books are aimed, in a fuzzy way, at average SAT scorers. If you were scoring 400-600 on each section, the material they presented could help you. Kaplan went over basic content like the general idea of geometry areas, but they never spent time talking about how to ace the hardest math questions. In fact, I noticed that many of Kaplan’s hardest math questions had errors, revealing that the book writer wasn’t the best at math. Likewise, Princeton Review was full of test-taking tactics, but they revolved around eliminating just one or two answers or skipping questions. If I’m aiming for a high score, I can’t afford to skip questions or just guess after eliminating a single answer. It dawned on me that the reason most sources were completely unhelpful to my situation was that as a top scorer, my path to improvement was much different than that of the average scorer. Upon realizing this, I began to sit down and spend dozens of hours thinking about the unique situation that we top scorers are in. Not very many resources target us. We suffer from a unique set of issues compared to the average scorer. And most books are written by people who are barely better test takers than us. After really thinking through the issues for many hours, I came up with a set of strategies. These strategies have worked well for me, my classmates, and my tutoring students. Today, we have proof through tens of thousands of our students at PrepScholar that these strategies universally work for top scorers. Let me show you how this strategy works for you! The results of applying my top-scoring strategies: a perfect score. Strategies That Work for Average Scorers But Won’t Work for You First, we will go over strategies that work for average students but will likely stop working once you cross that magical 1400 threshold (30 out of 36 on the ACT or 2100 on a 2400 SAT scale). I’ve picked the most common and helpful strategies for average students that totally stop working for top students. These strategies are alsogood first steps at illustrating how strategies in general can change as your skills change. Learning General Content When you’re scoring 500 in each section, it’s a pretty good idea to do a general review of all your skills. Review circles, rectangles, algebra, and so forth. Average scorers likely have general deficits in their subject knowledge of subjects. However, if you’re a top scorer, learning general content doesn’t work well for you. This is because, as a top scorer, there will likely only bea few areaswhereyou have deficits, and, even in these areas, your deficit will be slight. Unlike average scorers, you won’t be missing serious knowledge across a vast set of skills. This means that learning general content will be a lot less effective than focused study. If you’re a top scorer, you’ll want to hone in on weaknesses rather than gloss over broad topics. The key to thisis identifying exactly which areas are missing and doing a strong push to eliminate those few specific weaknesses. To use another analogy, an average scorer is like a lawn filled with lots of weeds. The best way to remove all the weeds is to spray herbicide everywhere. But as a top scorer, you only have a one or two clumps of weeds in your lawn. The best strategyfor you is just to see where the weed clumps are and target only those areas topull the weeds out. Question Skipping In Jekyll and Hyde, the same man transforms between a good Dr Jekyll and an evil Mr Hyde. In the same way, question skipping is the most powerful of strategies for a low scorer, but it can be harmful to a high scorer. If you’re scoring low, knowing how to skip makes a world of difference. Suppose you have 30 minutes to do 30 math problems. Tenof those problems are really easy, tenare medium difficulty, and tenare hard. If you’re not great at math, trying all 30 is crazy. You probably won’t get the medium and hard questions, and you’re spread thin for the easy questions if you try to answer one question per minute. You might get five problems correct. Instead, question skipping will save your day. If you focus all 30 minutes on the ten easy problems, you’ll spend a careful three minutes on each and probably get all the easy ones. This means you’ll get ten problems correct instead of five, doubling your score. However, if you’re scoring high, you are afforded no such luxury to skip. You have to do all the problems. Once your section score gets above 600, skipping questions starts becoming harmful. A 600 (say in Math) means that you are only allowed to get about ten questions wrong out of 50. If you skip even two or three questions in the entire section, you will already have used upa good part of your quota of tenquestions. With a low margin for error, you need to squeeze every problem for all the points it’ll give you by at least trying it and eliminating some answers. Thus, even at 600, there is no room for skipping. Note: when I say skipping here, I don’t mean leaving the question blank! The New SAT and ACT have a guessing reward, so you never leave the question blank. Skipping here only refers to not spending time on a question. These are the two biggest strategies that work for average scorers but not top scorers. Hopefully, now you have a bit of understanding for why the strategies are different. Just like a 3rd grader needs to learn different math than an th grader, you now need to learn new strategies. Skipping: works for average scorers and hopscotch, but not high scorers Strategies That Stay the Same Before we get into top-scorer specific strategies, I want to emphasize a few strategies that will stay the same. Not everything changes between a toddler learning to walk and a pro marathoner trying to break the time limit. Some things are the same for both of them: like being healthy and exercising. Likewise, top scorers have a few strategies in common with average scorers. In fact, we have alist of strategies that work for all test-takers, regardless of where you are scoring. There are many strategies that are still useful for top scorers like doing realistic practice, understanding your mistakes, not getting in your own head, and so forth. Some of these strategies are worth repeating: Putting in the Time You absolutely still have to put in the time to improve. Just like the old saying in sports goes, no pain, no gain. High scorers come in two camps. The first camp has already put in dozens of hours of SAT study by the time they read this, and they have no fear of putting in even hundreds of hours naturally. If you’re in the first camp, good for you. Work comes easy to you; you should target at least a hundred hours more of studying, and you can skip to the next section. The second camp is students who typically find studying hard. At this point, they may have put less than five hours into studying. They might have scored high because they’re â€Å"naturally smart†, but they haven’t studied a lot. I’ve been in this camp too, so I understand, but I have some advice for you. First, you absolutely can’t think of the SAT as a test of how smart you are. While you may feel good that your initial score was high, if you don't study you'll quickly get discouraged when your score doesn't improve. You might become prone to thinking that you’re just not that smart, and there’s nothing you can do about it the opposite of the truth! It’s much more effective to think of the SAT as not testing how smart you are right now, but how much you work. Thinking of the SAT as a test that reflects hard work isn’t just a useful mindset, it’s also true. After training thousands of students, I consistently find that those who put in more time score higher, even students who were already starting out with high scores. As motivation, you have to realize that, as a high scorer, it is even more important to put time into studying. First, you have less room to improve, so improvements will come harder. You can’t just learn some skipping strategy and raiseyour section score 50 points. Those 50 points will come from your sweat and tears. You need to work extra hard. As additional motivation, you have to really want it from inside. Not your mom, not your teacher, but you need to really want it. Choose a goal, either a school or a score, and convince yourself that it’s important. Then, set a specific amount of time that you want to study and goals for how much to study each week. Every week, see how you’re doing against the goals. Doing Realistic Practice Realistic practice has always been important, but as a top scorer, having real tests is even more critical. Like I said before, improving as a top scorer is all about understanding every contour, flaw and detail of the test. This process is incredibly test specific. Molding yourself into a perfect SAT test taker is way different than molding yourself into the perfect ACT taker. At the high score extremes of the test, all the flaws and quirks become magnified. The ACT always has more time pressure, but when you’re aiming for a perfect 36 on the Math section, you suddenly find yourself under immense time pressure to solve Math Olympiad-level problems. The SAT is known for being tricky, but when you’re aiming for an 800 on Math, you can suddenly end up losing substantial points for missing just a couple of very subtle definitions. When you’re a top scorer, improvement becomes very format-specific. The layout, timing, andfeel of the test all start mattering much more than general math or reading skills. Thus, it’s absolutely critical that you practice on actual SAT or ACT tests given the past. It’s OK to or drill on imperfect problems, but when you actually take a practice SAT or ACT for evaluation and learning, make sure you use a real test you haven’t seen before and make your setting as realistic as possible. Ideally, you’d usethe same exact timings for sections and breaks, and you’d do the entire practice test all in one sitting. At this point, everything matters. Power Strategies for Top Scorers Up to this point, we’ve been talking only about strategies for average scorers. First, we talked about strategies that won’t work for you anymore, and then we went over strategies that you can still use. In this section, we show the jewels, the unique power strategies for top scorers that will get you substantial further improvements. To reiterate, this section is for top scorers whom we define as students who score 700 or more in each section already. To understand top scorer strategies, I will explain the standard pattern of weaknesses that I see in top scorers. The standard pattern for top scorers is that they’re missing points for exactly three reasons: Content Gaps These are small, isolated areas of knowledge that the top scorer hasn’t mastered yet. A top scorer by definition can’t have minor gaps in all areas, and they can’t have major gaps in any area. Therefore, a top scorer may only have minor gaps in a small set of areas. Identifying these gaps, and whether they even exist, will itself take work. Carelessness Top scorers tend to be content masters, but carelessness doesn’t respect knowledge or intelligence. Carelessness can afflict anyone. No matter how good your math is, you’ll never get a question right if you miswrite a 2 as a 3. Time Trouble Top scorers need to answer all questions, and they need to not be careless. On top of that, the SAT and ACT are timed tests. Add this together, and all top scorers suffer from time trouble. That is to say, all top scorers run out of time, and mastering these tests is all about running out of time just as you get everything correct. Folks, take a look at the list above. For the vast majority of top scorers, this list covers all the reasons they score less than they’d like to. Attack Strategies The method that I will show you, the method that works, will go in tactically, surgically, and eliminate each one of the weaknesses above. The method doesn’t optimize for a fast bump in score at the start instead, it'sa surefire, robust way to completely eliminate all sources of error that a top scorer will have. My method is based on the concept of isolate and eliminate. The idea is that we will attack each of the reasons above, one-by-one, until you’re free of errors. Attacking Content Gaps First, we want to eliminate content gaps. To isolate content gaps, we will purposefully not focus on time issues for the moment, Thus, during this phase, you will give yourself double the usual amount of time to do problems. For example, give yourself 60 minutes to do a 30-minute section. We will also purposefully focus away from carelessness. For all questions where you can identify carelessness as the reason you answered a question incorrectly, you can ignore it. This only includes questions where you understand everything but literally misread a number or bubbled in the wrong letter. Carelessness does NOT include misinterpreting a confusing word or making a wrong judgmentcall. These cases are bothreal content issues and not carelessness. With these allowances, take your first practice test. That is, go through one full practice test, and give yourself double the time allowed (split into multiple test sessions if need be). Then, go through every single question you got wrong. The ones that were due to carelessness ignore for now. For all other questions, write down the reasons you didn’t get it. List all possible contributing reasons. For example, if you didn’t apply a sphere surface area formula correctly you should write: Did not understand surface area Did not remember surface area formula 3D geometry Since you’re a top scorer, you shouldn’t get many questions wrong, and you should only have a very short list of reasons at the end. Tally up the reasons, and look at the top 2-4 reasons. These are your content gaps that you need to solve. For each of the top content gaps, come up with a couple of training methods you can use to solve the gaps. Each training method should take at least an hour so you’re not looking for quick fixes. To continue the example above you would write: Did not understand surface areas (4 problems) Training: Review difference between surface and volume (1 hour) Training: Read calculus section on surface areas (2 hours) Training: Google â€Å"Surface area questions† and try a number of them (1 hour) Did not remember surface area formula Training: Create flashcards for 20 most popular surface areas and memorize (2 hours) Training: Open calculus textbook and use calculus to re-derive all above surface areas (3 hours) 3D Geometry Weaknesses Training: Read 3D Geometry Section (1 hour) Training: Do math textbook 3D geometry exercises, complete the three most difficult questions you find (1 hour) Training: Hunt for five 3D Geometry Problems on the SAT and solve each at least two different ways (1 hour) Then, implement your plan. Do all the steps you promised yourself in the time you promised, and then try again with another practice test. Keep on doing this until the number of content mistakes you make has decreased substantially. A good rule of thumb is that you want to eliminate 75% of your content mistakes by repeating the process above or spend 40 hours studying, whichever comes first. Note about PrepScholar: You can do the above method yourself. In fact, I just told you how to identify your errors, come up with the right training, and eliminate your mistakes. However, you might want a program to do it for you. In that case, it’s exactly what PrepScholar Online Prep is for. Our software automatically detects the questions you get wrong, how often you get them wrong, and why you get them wrong, so you don’t have to do the hard work yourself. As you go through practice tests, ask yourself: Are you seeing a reduction in content gap mistakes due to your training? If so, what parts of your training were most effective? How can you do more of this in the future? If not, why did you continue to make the same content mistakes despite training? Why was the training not effective? Improving your standardized testscores is hard work, both in terms of effort and intelligence. You have to put real time and thought into reflecting why you got questions wrong to improve. This deep thinking is a part of testprep that can’t be bypassed by any tricks. You need to spend effort and creativity to find why your training is working or not. Note about PrepScholar: While no one can do all the hard thinking for you, sometimes you can enlist the help of vetted professionals. PrepScholar Online Tutoring tutors are trained in the exact method above. They will help you think of training strategies and reflect on why certain strategies are working or not. Attacking Carelessness Now that you’ve finished attacking content mistakes, the second stage is to attack carelessness. You can blend this in with attacking content, but it’s best not to combine attacking carelessness with attacking time trouble. The method for attacking carelessness is the same as above. Give yourself more time than usual, and notice which problems you’re making careless mistakes on and what caused you to be careless. Somequestions you may want to ask yourself when you answer a question wrong include: Did you not read the question properly? Did you misread a number you calculated because your work was too messy? Did you know the correct answer but filled in the wrong bubble by mistake? When I started training for the SAT, I thought carelessness was an unchanging personality trait. I thought I was doomed to make a certain number of careless mistakes. It turns out that carelessness is something you can controlandcombat by having better habits.If you apply the right methods and safety checks, you’ll rarely be careless. For example, if you make it ahabit tobrush your teeth nightly or buckle your seat belt, you’ll find that very rarely do you forget to do these things. Since you have the luxury of extra time, you should try to adopt two habits. The first habit is double-reading each question and underlining keywords before you even begin working on the problem. A lot of carelessness comes from not reading the question correctly. For example, if you see the question: How many even integers are between -3 and 14 inclusive? I would read it twice, and then underline the question as follows: How many even integers are between -3 and 14 inclusive? Each of the underlined words, if misread, could lead to a disastrous misinterpretation of the problem. â€Å"Even† can be easily misread to meanodd or all integers. â€Å"Inclusive† is underlined to remind you that you should include the number 14 in your calculations. The second habit is to re-read the question one last time before filling in the answer. I learned this trick from a top scorer in my test competition days, and it has worked wonders for me and students I’ve taught it to. The idea is that, if you misinterpreted a problem, that misinterpretation will be obvious on your final reading of the problem. To recap:In order to reduce careless mistakes, read the question twice before you start working on it, and underline the keywords. Then, once you've figured out the answer, read the question through one last time to make sure you've understood it perfectly. You can develop your own habits based on introspection of what causes your careless mistakes. For example, if you make arithmetic mistakes, double-check each line, or show more of your work. If you keep in mind that the solution to carelessness can be method-based, you can use these methods to solve all your careless mistakes. However, what if some careless mistakes persist even if you use a lot of methods designed to catch carelessness? What if you’re careless in choosing which line to look at when looking at author intention? Or you’re careless in remembering which idiom is correct? You should understand that these are not careless mistakes, but mistakes of content. Remember, if a mistake persists even after a slow, careful reading of the problem, you canassumethat it’s not really carelessness, but rather a content problem. In the case of persistent problems, I would re-read the section here on carelessness as well as try to identify underlying content issues. Time Trouble Now that you have gotten rid of sufficient content and carelessness problems, it’s time to tackle that final problem all top scorers have time trouble. Generally, this refers to the feeling that you can do better if you had more time. The SAT and ACT are designed with strong time constraints. In fact, you're doing something wrong if you ever find yourself ending a section even a minute early. Up until now, you’ve been giving yourself double time (or more) so you can hone in on your content or carelessness issues. Now you can practice reducing your time. A good way to do this is to reduce your time by 20% each practice test and make sure your mistakes aren’t shooting up. Every time you repeat a 20% reduction, if your mistakes stay the same, then you’re good. For example, for a 50-minute section, start by giving yourself extra time: 100 minutes. If you’re doing well at 100 minutes, reduce this to 80, then 64, and then finally 50 minutes. Inevitably, you’ll need to start developing your own timing strategies to deal with the lower time. Many of these strategies will be ad-hoc. You’ll think of them, try them, and they’ll work. The best students are good at introspection, coming up with strategies, and evaluating whether those strategies work. Here are the two most common and helpful strategies for improving your time management: Rush Through the Easy Questions If a question is clear, go through it fast, but still apply your carelessness prevention habits (diligence) to ensure you get it right. When you’re at the top it’s a fight between diligence and time, and you want to do a bit of both. A common strategy is to reduce your time by 50% on easy questions, spend the standard amount of time on normal questions, and increase your time by 50% on hard questions. For example, suppose you have a 60-minute math section with 60 questions. Each question should take 60 seconds to do this is the standard time. For easy questions, you should target 30 seconds, for medium questions, you should target 60 seconds, and for truly hard questions, target 90 seconds. It makes sense to play with the cutoffs for difficulty and timing to see what works best for you. Skip and Come Back Everyone gets stuck on questions. I’ve scored 99.9th percentile on my SAT and ACT, and I routinely get stuck once or twice per section. If you allow getting stuck to cost you five minutes, you’ll be hosed. If you find that, after spending 90 seconds on a problem, you aren’t getting an answer, try your best guess and mark the question with a â€Å"G† (for guess). This means at the end of your first pass-through of the test, you’ll need to have some extra time. Use this extra time to come back to the guesses. Guesses aren’t the only problems you should come back to. There are certain hard questions that will take a while to double-check, which is not worth doing on your first pass-through the test. For these questions, you can mark them with a â€Å"C† and come back to them later as well. The general reason to skip and come back is because not finishing a single pass-through of every question is highly damaging. Not looking at two or three questions guarantees you won’t get those questions right. Thus, you want to at least touch all problems, and leave a few minutes at the end to come back. You should play around with the strategies above. Look at how double-checking reduces carelessness but increases time. Look at what sorts of markings you should make and how many passes you should make through your test (hint: it’s probably more than one). As you decrease your time, you’ll find these strategies continue to work well and allow you to maintain the same score at 1x standard time. Wrap Up The strategy guide above will carry you far, and likely all the way, if you follow it fully. To recap, I’ll touch upon a few points again. The first is that, for top scorers, losses come mainly from three sources: content gaps, carelessness, and time issues. By isolating each item, you’ll be able to solve each of them with much higher consistency. While you’re doing this, you should still maintain a few strategies that work for all scorers. Two strategies worth repeating are using real practice questions and putting in the time needed to really improve your score. Next Steps Now that you know which strategies a top scorer should use, there is no reason not to get started as soon as you can. If you’re self-studying, you should immediately try to apply the strategies above and also useour blog for further advice. You may also be interested in checking out PrepScholar Online Prep as it does all of the above for you, in optimal ways. For example, we know that you’re a top scorer, and we won’t give you strategies that only work for average students. We’ll emphasize strategies that work especially well for top scorersand give you tips for timing and diligence. Best of all, we’ll identify your exact content gaps which is the hardest and most important information for top scorers like you to know. Click below and you can try us out risk-free for 5 days! Further Reading Since you're already a top scorer, you're probably aiming for a perfectstandardized testscore. Check out our guides to getting a perfect score on the SAT and a perfect score on the ACT,written by our resident full-scorer on both tests. Want to know what it takes to get into the most competitive colleges? Learn how to get admitted to Harvard and other Ivy League schools from a Harvard alum. Need some practice tests to help with your test preparation?We have free and official practice tests for the SAT and the ACT.