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Pay to Publish? Good, Bad or Both?You'll hear it and read it everywhere you turn. Oooh - don't use vanity publishing. It's bad! Haven't heard that yet? You will. A lot of writers and publishing people say "money should flow to the author, not from the author."But, if that's true, how do we explain James Redfield? He used a vanity press to publish The Celestine Prophecy himself and sold over 100,000 out of the trunk of his Honda. (He later sold the rights to Warner Books) Was vanity publishing bad for him? Did you notice that I said vanity press, not vanity publisher? Many vanity presses call themselves publishers, but they're not regarded as publishers within the industry because they are not selective. A true vanity press will publish anything, as long as the author can pay. The criteria is not quality or marketability - it's ability to pay. It is because vanity presses have no third party screening that there is stigma to these books. There are hybrids, too. For example, a subsidy press is like a traditional publisher in that they reject most submissions. They do, however, require the author to pay part of the cost, thus "subsidizing" part of the cost. Co-op publishing, too, is another hybrid in which publisher and author share the cost of publishing, and the profit. However, wolf in sheeps clothing style, many vanity presses call themselves subsidy publishers or co-op publishers to avoid the "vanity" stigma. More than a few authors have signed, believing that they're getting subsidy or co-op publishing -- only to find that reviewers and professionals in the industry won't touch their book because their publisher will publish anyone that can pay. So, is there anything really, really wrong with paying to publish your book? No. Let's say you're having a family reunion and you just want someone to publish your memoirs and crank out enough copies for the family. No big deal. Take the case of James Redfield, for example. He knew he was promoting his own book. He knew the hurdles. He was fully prepared to sell them out of his car -- and he did. The problem occurs when a vanity press tried to hide what it is. Tries not to let you know about the stigma, and wants you to think your book is going to be as easy to promote as a book that went through a "selection" process. And, the blunt honest truth is that the reason vanity published books earned a stigma in the first place is that people eagerly paid to publish low quality books. Without third party screening, books were being printed just as the writers submitted them. Filled with spelling and grammar errors. Writing that screamed for an editor's help. The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield, which was self published using a vanity press, sold 100,000 copies and attracted the attention of Warner Books, who paid $800,000 for the rights to the book. The book became the number-one bestseller of 1996 and spent 165 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list. Most vanity published books are not even close to that quality, and that is where the stigma came from. Today, almost ten years after Redfield used a vanity press to publish his own book, reviewers have seen so many poor quality "pay to publish" books that they won't even give them a second glance unless you've sold thousands through your own efforts. So... when you hear that vanity publishing is bad -- keep in mind that it's lack of third party screening (not whether it cost you money or not) that makes book reviewers and book sellers turn their nose up at books.
Article by Linda Caroll. Please feel welcome to reprint this article (in full) |
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