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

You’ll notice this matrix contains two self-publishing models. We recommend using Print on Demand for the easiest and lowest risk approach to this undertaking – but there are certainly times when you’d want to go for a traditional print run.

Next let’s drill down to look at how the various publishing models work for the publishers and the authors…

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 for you. Don’t expect them to do much in the way of promotion though – that’s still your job!

6 Advantages of Mainstream Publishing

• They’ll almost certainly achieve a higher standard of design, packaging and production than you’ll get by self-publishing.
• Distribution is likely to be better than you’ll achieve alone (or with a vanity press) so your book will be on more bookshelves (if that’s really so important) although the internet is taking over and you can get featured at Amazon very easily.
• There is still a certain kudos to being chosen by a “proper publisher” – this is sometimes worth more than the actual income created by book sales depending on your other business activities.
• They’ll turn your original manuscript into a highly polished finished product. Though some companies are better than others their reputation is built on providing high quality books.
• They take almost all of the financial risk – so you can be sure they want to sell copies of your book – at least until they make their initial investment back.
• They can afford to pick and choose so it’s not always easy to land a good deal – even if you know your book will sell!

6 Disadvantages of Mainstream Publishing

• They pay measly royalties. If you’re getting 10% then you’re doing very well but expect typical royalties to peak at 5% and start at 3% and less. After all costs are taken into account you’ll be very lucky to get paid £1 per book so you’re going to need to sell a lot to make it lucrative.
• They’re slow – expect 1-3 years for a typical book project – your hot idea may not be so big when the book hits the bookstores!
• Unless you’re a celebrity or you have a runaway success they’ll do almost nothing in the way of promotion and may even slow your own promotion down by responding too slowly to requests.
• They don’t pay authors often enough. Maybe once or twice per year. They don’t do this to be mean – they have returns, rubbish terms from bookshops and cashflow to invest in new books to worry about.
• Buying author’s copies is often expensive unless you buy in bulk. Most publishers will give you 5 free copies at publication.
• They like to take control of stuff like the title. Often this improves things but it’s not uncommon to fall victim to the subjective leanings of a know-it-all who’s never written a book of their own.

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 venture then this is the way to go. It’s not for the faint hearted though – you’ll have a steep learning curve and publishing is a front-loaded model – meaning you have to invest a lot up front with no guarantee of getting the big pay off.

Photo by ‘bits and bobs’

7 Advantages of Self Publishing

• The author keeps all the profit – though if your book is a flop this may end up being less than your investment.
• The author is entitled to 100% of the profit from foreign rights, film rights and different formats (like ebooks) etc.
• The author keeps complete creative control of the project – not always an advantage if you don’t know what you’re doing!
• You’ll be able to get your hot idea to market far more quickly than a traditional publisher (as long as you don’t drag your heels).
• You still get the acclaim of being a published author – as long as you get the packaging and production right!
• If you do it using the right model (which is definitely not traditional offset printing) – then distribution through Amazon and B&N is easy and hands-free.
• If a mainstream publisher wants to take you later you won’t have any contracts you need to buy your way out of.

8 Disadvantages of Self Publishing

• You take all the risk! Although lots of the financial risk can be minimised using the right approaches which I’ll explain inside.
• You need to sort everything out from ISBNs to distribution, book production to publication, editing to typesetting. Almost all of these things are easy once you know how – but it’s often hard to find good information.
• Unless (in fact – even if!) you’re from a print/publishing background you probably won’t possess all the skills necessary to turn your rough manuscript into a finished product – let alone all the suff that needs to happen next.
• Book wholesalers and distributors (you need these guys for really big reach) will treat you with contempt unless you’ve got contacts or you’ve published at least 50 titles. There is a way around this which I’ll share in another article.
• Finding a good and cheap freelance book designer or typesetter is difficult – but getting the cover and packaging wrong will almost always kill sales.
• If you manage to get a bookshop to take you seriously then they’ll ask for ridiculous terms – that will almost certainly kill your cashflow and they’ll be able to send your unsold books back in any condition for a full refund at any time.
• If you choose to go for a traditional offset print run (which I really don’t recommend for your first project) you’ll have to handle inventory, insurance, storage, fulfillment etc. – plus you’ll need deep pockets to pay for it – which probably won’t be recouped until you’ve sold a thousand or more books.
• You get complete creative control. Unfortunately – this benefit is over-rated by most authors – creativity isn’t what sells books! I tell you what does in the members area!

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 hobby (or you’re writing personal poetry, amateur fiction or your own interesting but hardly spectacular life story) and you’re happy to spend money that you’re very unlikely to make back in actual book sales – then by all means do it! It’s a great feeling to have a book in print and it may spur you on to greater things. But do see it as a hobby (where you spend money) and not as a means to make money!

7 Advantages of Paying To Get Published

• The author keeps exclusive rights. But you had those anyway so you haven’t gained anything!
• The author gets to set their own discount and royalty rate (within reason) for the stores – though anything less than 35% will make it difficult to even get your book taken by Amazon resulting in few if any sales!
• The author is often (unless they pay extra) given 100% creative control of the project – but in almost all cases of vanity publishing – they really shouldn’t have been given it!
• They’ll offer to design your cover for you for a “small fee” – the result – it usually looks marginally better than if you’d got your 10 year old kid to do it for you.
• You’ll be able to get your hot idea to market far more quickly than you would with a traditional publisher – just don’t expect to make a big splash!
• You don’t have to sort out the ISBN or distribution to online retailers yourself – but when you educate yourself you’ll realise that it’s really not so tough to sort out.
• A book is almost always a better sales and marketing tool than a brochure – even one published by a vanity press!

Disadvantages of Paying To Get Published

• You do NOT get the acclaim of being a published author – in fact you’ll probably get the exact opposite – the stigma of paying to be published.
• If you use a well known vanity press then almost everyone you deal with will know they only took your book because you paid them to – which kills any authority you might have built in an instant.
• You take all the risk and you pay them for the privilege! If you’ve paid them to publish your book upfront – which is all they really wanted – they really couldn’t care less if you sold another copy in your life!
• The ISBN assigned to your book almost always belongs to the vanity publisher – even though you paid for it! This means when you take your book elsewhere you’ll need a new one and your old book will still come up to compete with yours in online stores.
• You’ll still need to sort out editing, typesetting and cover design yourself if you want your book to have a half decent chance of selling and getting decent reviews.
• Even if your book starts to sell being published by a vanity press will cause problems! Book wholesalers and distributors (you need these guys to sell books) will run a mile from a vanity press because they know the quality of these books is almost always embarrassingly awful!
• You’ll be starting your career as an author with lots of negative cash flow – in fact most authors (95% or more) published through a vanity press never even recoup their costs.

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 is (Publish On Demand) – and almost all of them actually outsource their printing to LightingSource.

It doesn’t help when some of the companies on the following list – who are essentially printers – also try to sell services more suited to vanity presses – Lulu for instance charges a high margin on copies of books and many authors would lump them in with vanity publishers for this reason.

However, for the purpose of this comparison we’re assuming you’re using their basic printing service and are not paying for all the extras. If you do pay for the extras you may as well go straight back to the list of vanity presses and choose one of those because your job will be easier and just as unprofitable.

Please note: the following comparison is independent and has been compiled based on the best available data. If you feel we’ve misrepresented one of these providers then please comment and we’ll update this matrix immediately and post an addendum.

Click To Enlarge & Print

There is a big benefit in using LightingSource over CreateSpace and BookSurge and that’s the fact that you can set your discount to less than 55%. As CreateSpace and BookSurge are affiliated to Amazon their minimum charges and royalty levels makes it difficult for you to take more than 65%. CreateSpace advertise that they take just 40% but you also have to pay their fixed price which will push this much higher for a typical book. When you consider that bricks and mortar stores (who have overaheads that online store doesn’t) only expect 55% then giving 65% (or more) of your profit to Amazon doesn’t seem like such a great deal for the author!

In fact, you can discount as low as 35% without really affecting your Amazon availability using LightningSource and the extra 30% you keep will make a big difference to your overall profit – especially on titles that sell well.

So, if it’s just a speculative book you’re doing as an experiment then I think CreateSpace, BookSurge or Lulu are a great place to start. Just be prepared to move your book to LightningSource if you find you’re getting lots of sales (enough to offset their setup cost within 3 months) though!

But, if you’re already serious then I’m going to make a firm recommendation here and say, ignore the rest and go straight to LightningSource. I don’t make this recommendation lightly as I’d much rather keep them to myself (and they’re busy enough as it is). Although they’re not the most “beginner friendly” printer you’ll get the best overall distribution and flexibility by going with them.

You can visit them at www.LightningSource.com or www.LightningSource.co.uk – you can even tell them we sent you.