You used to know right where you were with vanity publishers. They charged an extortionate amount to print a few copies of your unedited book and left you to do all the selling. That upfront charge was the way to spot them: no reputable publisher charges its authors anything. Eventually, most writers got wise to…
Tag Archive: reverse vanity publishing
Vanity Publishing or Self-Publishing?
How can vanity publishers and self-publishers be distinguished from one another? And why is it important that we make this distinction? When an author self-publishes then the copyright page of his book bears the name of his imprint; his publishing company—even if it publishes just one title—owns his ISBN and the publication rights to that…
PublishAmerica Twitters!
The infamous vanity publisher PublishAmerica has joined Twitter! This delights me because while PublishAmerica can (and apparently does) delete all critical comments or difficult questions from its own message board, it doesn’t have the same power on Twitter; and while it can block people from following it there (and yes, it’s already blocked me: I…
Guest Post: Your Search For A Publisher, by Jonathon Clifford
Every wary writer will have heard of vanity publishing. It occupies the shadier side of the publishing business, and involves less-than-scrupulous publishers charging writers for publication. In vanity publication, the quality of the work is never considered, just the willingness and ability of the writers concerned to hand over large chunks of their cash. The…
Guest Post: Avoiding Scams
When I began this blog I hoped it would help writers avoid losing their work to vanity publishers and fee-charging agents. Preditors & Editors has always been a useful resource for wary writers and here its editor, David L. Kuzminski, discusses how we can all take steps to avoid scams and protect our work. Many…
Self-Publishing vs Vanity Publishing
Self-publishing and vanity publishing can be very difficult to tell apart. There are marked similarities between them: both often involve little or no editorial selection or input; both usually produce books which are difficult to market or sell effectively; and very few books from either sector make a decent number of sales. But there are…
Why Do Vanity Publishers Sell To Writers, Not Readers?
It’s widely accepted in the publishing industry that the difference between a vanity publisher and a mainstream, commercial publisher is that the former makes most of its money selling books back to its writers, while the latter makes its money selling books on to new readers: but why is this the case and why is…
Where Books Are Sold
Most books are still sold in real, physical bookshops and not online, despite claims to the contrary by many of the vanity presses and self-publishing services. There are exceptions: few textbooks ever make it into bookshops and are instead sold direct from the publisher to the end-user, sometimes through the university or school. Few self-published…
When Mainstream Publishers Link With Self-Publishing Services
For years I’ve been advising writers that while self-publishing can sometimes be a route to success, only the very lucky, capable few manage to achieve it: and that unless there are exceptional circumstances surrounding their books, such as an easily-accessible niche market or their own brilliant marketing skills, they’d be better off pursuing mainstream publication…
The Big Question About Self Publishing Successes
If self-publishing is such a brilliant thing for a writer to do, why is it that most of the writers who are said to have achieved true success through self-publishing have only done so after their books have been republished by a mainstream publisher?
Reverse-End Vanity Publishing
There are vanity publishers out there which insist that they are not vanity publishers because they don’t charge their writers anything for publication. PublishAmerica, a notorious reverse vanity publisher, even pays its authors a token advance of one dollar in an attempt to signify its good intent. As is so often the case, all is…