When the amount of
submissions to commercial publishers became so large that 99% of those
submissions were not being read unless you knew someone in the industry to send
your work to, vanity presses were born. These vanity presses are known under
various names, which I will not list here for obvious reasons. They did not
start out as publishers, but as entrepreneurs who saw a need in the industry
and tried to fill it. They, in most cases, do not edit the content of
construction of your work.
A vanity press is exactly
what this division of publishing implies; its total existence is predicated on
stroking the author’s ego. They do not care if the content will sell or if the
cost of their services are bloated to the author who pursues their offered
avenue of either publishing or marketing. One vanity press offered getting your
book reviewed by the New York Times for a mere $2500. If you didn’t bite on
that, a few weeks later they offered a sale on the service for $1900. I know,
because it happened to me. They kept it up until I told the representative that
I knew I could send my book to the Times for nothing and I also knew that they
did not waste their time reviewing books without sales or ones from a vanity
press.
Another portion of their
marketing scam is to offer a publicity kit and schedule book signings for you.
When I took them up on the offer, I received a list of the bookstores in my
city (that I could have compiled from my phone book), 100 invitations, and two
posters to put up at the signing. They also let me know that they no longer set
up book signings for the author. For all this, it only cost me $750.
·
No selection criteria
o
If you send a vanity press the telephone
book on a disc, they will print it into a book for you and list it on their
site for sale. They do not care about the content or construction of the book
you send them.
o
I have a friend that sent her submission in
to them like we are told we are supposed to submit, in a double spaced
document. They printed her 250 page book on 500 pages with all the double
spaces so it cost her twice as much to purchase her book.
· While a commercial publisher's intended
market is the general public, a vanity publisher's intended market is the
author.
o
A vanity press will list your finished book
on their website with a thousand other books. If the reader looking for a book
happens onto their site, the reader is lost unless they know your name or title
to enter into the search. A vanity press is out to sell your book to only one
person – YOU.
So, you can see that vanity
presses are out to take the desperate author who wants to see their work in
print to the proverbial cleaners. Although
self-publishing has its place in niche areas, this type of self-publishing is
what it hampering the publishing industry. Their only aim is to make a profit
off frustrated authors.
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