Beware vanity publishers posing as something they’re not.

Now that “self publishing” is becoming a more acceptable (and often more lucrative) way for people to get their books in print, unscrupulous vanity publishers are changing their name to take advantage of unwitting authors.

In this exposé we’ll look at the differences between self publishing, vanity publishing and mainstream publishing and help you choose the right approach for you. Continue Reading

Self Publishing Vs Mainstream Publishing Vs Vanity Publishing

There are only really 3 publishing models but lots of different names for vanity publishing…

1. Paid For Publishing aka “Vanity Publishing”: If you pay someone else to publish your book it could be called collaborative publishing, cooperative publishing, subsidy publishing or (most misleadingly of all) self publishing but it’s really just vanity publishing with a more acceptable title.
2. Self Publishing: No matter what the vanity press says – it’s not self publishing unless you’re doing it all yourself. Obviously you may employ people to provide certain skills but you are still the publisher and the buck (or should that be book) stops with the author and only the author.
3. Mainstream Publishing: These people will be offering to pay you for your book. There’s a lot of competition here so fewer and fewer publishers are offering big (or any) advances anymore. However – they won’t expect you to pay them a penny for your book and they will expect to be sending you royalties.

Here’s a quick matrix so you can compare some of the main differences…

Click To Enlarge & Print

The Business Model

1. Make a best guess about what’s going to be popular this year (or just copy the crowd – Vampire or B-List Celeb Books anyone?)
2. Take a big up-front risk (with big overhead in the form of premises, people, parties, inventory – and author’s advances) in the hope that 20% of their titles make a profit.
3. Get the distribution as good as possible while keeping production costs as low as possible.
4. Focus relentlessly on getting everything they can out of their successful books and ignore the other 80%. They have to do this to stay in business but most of their authors take it personally.
5. Pay authors as little as possible in royalties. They have to do this to make ends meet too.
6. Rinse and repeat.

Photo by 'bits and bobs'

When Should You Get Published With A Mainstream Publisher?

If you want the acclaim of being published by a “proper publisher” but income isn’t quite so important then this route is Continue Reading

The Business Model

1. Realise most mainstream publishers pay a pittance (because they have no other choice).
2. Decide to take on all the up-front risk while getting all the eventual profit (there are ways to massively reduce this risk which we share inside).
3. Pay for skills as they’re needed but with a careful eye on costs and quality.
4. Keep control of all the important stuff like the ISBN and IPR.
5. Promote themselves and their book as aggressively as possible (well the successful self publishers do).
6. Often build a back-end product strategy into their business model to make a proper income (we’ll share tips on doing this inside too).

When Should You Decide To Self Publish?

If you know you have a great book and you want to keep the intellectual rights, creative control and profit from your publishing Continue Reading

The Business Model

1. Sell as many £1,000 to £12,000 projects to unwitting authors as possible by making inflated claims or preying on their egos.
2. Make as much profit on these projects (typically 90%) as possible by making obscene markups.
3. Sell books to authors (victims) for far more than they cost to produce.
4. Shamelessly knock the competition by accusing them of doing exactly what they’re doing!
5. Claim success as their own if an author’s book does well despite (not because of) being published by them.
6. Rinse and repeat.

When Should You Use A Vanity (or Paid For) Publisher?

Short answer? Never! Seriously though – there are always exceptions… If you see writing as more of a Continue Reading

Some people still don’t quite get that POD (Print On Demand) is simply a print and distribution model and not the description of a particular type of publisher. Again, vanity presses are responsible for the confusion, as many of them refer to themselves as POD too – but their definition Continue Reading