"Should I pay to have my work published?"

Mr. Lukeman, A small but seemingly genuine publisher has accepted my mss with 100 poems which I have on a website with a large subscription list. The publisher wants the whole payment to commence. I thought payments were made in stages, proof reading, editing, printing etc. I feel the sum is reasonable 1K but now read that one should not pay all upfront. I wonder if you could kindly guide me on this. I am not really interested in making a lot of money but do want a book that is well advertised which is part of their package.
--Anonymous


Per my previous posts, I would never advise any author to pay to have their work published. Unfortunately, there are a lot of self-publishing services and vanity presses that take advantage of authors. Stay clear of them. If you are really set on self-publishing a physical edition of your work, you can use on-demand services, such as Lulu or CreateSpace, which charge only a low, basic setup fee, and which don't pretend to be bonafide publishers.