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Is vanity/subsidy publishing really a scam or just another publishing method?

Is vanity/subsidy publishing really a scam
or just another publishing method?

Is vanity/subsidy publishing really a scam or just another publishing method?

Posted on Saturday, December 15, 2012 | Comments Off

My Answer:

 I don’t see it as a scam, so much as being scam-like in their methods. By that I mean, most of the vanity press companies are not honest up front with the authors. They often put on a big show of “Publish with us and become famous!”

Vanity press is fine for those who understand how it works and can see past the hype, but the unfortunate truth is that most authors come into it, thinking they are dealing with a publisher and have no idea they are actually dealing with nothing more than a small time copy shop with a big website. You could easily walk down the street to your local copy shop and order your book printed there, because it’s exactly the same thing.

Vanity press is you paying money for a print shop to print up your book. Nothing more. Nothing less. Authors have been doing it this way since the 1600’s. Shakespeare did it. Ben Franklin did it. Mark Twain did it. Hundreds of authors have used it and been successful. Many still do. But the one’s that use it successfully, also know ahead of time that THEY are responsible for advertising, marketing, buying an ISBN, making their own press kit, sending out review copies, contacting mom&pop bookstores, sending out waiting room copies, sending copies to libraries, contacting interviewers on their own, etc, etc, etc.

Why I feel it is often scam-like, is when you deal with shady companies like Tate or IUniverse, who tells you this story of “signing a contract” with them, and how if you pay extra they’ll “market your book”. New authors read the hype and think they are actually getting something special, when in fact, all they are getting is an ISBN (which they could have bought on their own for $33 directly from the gov) and a listing on Amazon (which they could have done on their own for FREE).

That’s it.

That’s all they get for their extra $300.

New authors get the letter from Tate and than the phone calls, and the emails, and more letters, and more phone calls, and think “I must be a really good writer, look how desperate they are to publish my book!” Fact is, Tate is desperate for the book, because it’s their source of income, and an author with more experience would know that no legitimate publisher is going to hound you night and day begging you to publish with them.

Why I feel it is scam-like, comes into play when the author dishes out $1,000 to $30,000 thinking they’ll get a good income from the investment. Than they are stunned when truck load after truck load of books show up on their door step. Suddenly they realize what vanity press actually is. Suddenly it hits them, they have to spend another $200 a month for many, many years, for a storage unit to keep all these thousands of books in. Suddenly they realize, there is no marketer advertising their book, no sales rep taking the book out to shops, no distributor sending their books to Amazon’s warehouse, zip, nadda, nothing. Than it hits them, all the many more thousands of dollars they have to pay to do those things themselves.

How do I know this? Two ways.

#1) I did a lot of research before I started self-publishing, and I knew what I was getting into when I started out. So from 1978 – 1997 I used vanity press, because I only needed a hundred or so copies of each of my books. I wasn’t looking to mass market. I knew there wasn’t a large following for my genre. For me, at that time in my career, vanity press worked fine. Today I prefer POD and eBook publishing. My fan following has grown from a few dozen to 7,000 so it’s no longer feasible for me to be printing up hard copies via vanity press. It was a good thing for me, but now I have outgrown it and the disadvantages now outweigh the advantages for me, but for many years it was a good thing.

#2) I have an uncle who wrote 5 books, and used vanity press for each one. He printed up 2,000 copies of each book. He had no idea how much space 10,000 books take up. He took out a $200,000 loan to cover the cost of printing and storage.

He lost his house and now lives in a much smaller place, made even smaller by being stacked floor to ceiling, room to room with 9,000+ unsold books. He spent so much on cost of printing and storage that he can not afford advertising or marketing. He has weird phobias of book stores and Amazon and believes the only way to sell his book is on a free hosted website that is difficult to find at best, and only has a cryptic message telling people to contact him for info on his book and how to buy it.

He did all this near on 20 years ago and has sold fewer than 1000 copies in that time.

He is a perfect example of what is wrong with vanity press.

He believed the hype and did not do his research, he dished out too much money and get deep in debt, and he is far from being alone in this.

In conclusion, I think vanity press is good if you know what you are getting into, and do your planning and researching, but I also think it is more often than not, a very bad thing, because few who do it, know what they are actually getting into, and it’s too easy for people to get themselves in a lot of financial trouble with it.

Good morning Starshine! Liked this post? Looking to connect with me online? I love social networks and am on most of them. You can find me on: Blogger, Etsy, FaceBook, Google+, Keen, MySpace, NaNoWriMo, ProBoards, Script Frenzy, Spoonflower, Squidoo, Twitter, ULC Ministers Network, WordPress,and Zazzle Feel free to give me a shout any  time. Many blessings to you, may all your silver clouds be lined with rhinestones and sparkle of golden sunshine. Have yourself a great and wonderful glorious day!

~Rev. Wendy C. Allen

Comments Offon FQAs: Is vanity/subsidy publishing really a scam or just another publishing method?

Posted in advice for fiction writers, Advice for Self Publishers, Ask a Writer, Ask EelKat, POD Publishing, self publishing, Subsidy Publishing, vanity press

Vanity Publishing