Vanity Publishing: Difference between revisions
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* The writing quality is often terrible. For every competent author out there, [[Sturgeon's Law|there are dozens of ''terrible'' authors]] convinced [[Giftedly Bad|they're God's gift]] to the literary world, and vanity presses are how a lot of them get published. It also provides [[Protection From Editors]], seeing as there are few if any.
* There is often little or no editorial control or oversight. Think [[Cop Rock]], but for literature.
* The print quality is often lower as they're "print on demand" or generated in small quantities
* There is little or no promotion of the finished work. Distribution is also often badly limited, as a small handful of large conventional publishers dominate the industry.
* Most stores won't carry them. Bookstores prefer to deal with legitimate publishers, as vanity presses have a ''terrible'' reputation for stiffing bookstores. Bricks-and-mortar stores have limited space, so often stick to the mainstream content most likely to sell quickly.
* Most libraries won't carry them, as they're of lower quality.
Occasionally (''very'' occasionally) a vanity published book can break out and end up being published by a legitimate publishing company. This happened with the children's book series ''[[The Fairy Chronicles]]''. It originally cost a lot and had only 32 pages (due to its small [[Useful Notes/Fonts|typeface]]), with no color and no illustrations. Once moved to a new publisher, it had vibrant color, many illustrations, and more pages (with a larger, more appropriately sized font).
The introduction of computers and Internet has also changed a few things; companies like CreateSpace and iUniverse are in many ways vanity publishing, but they're owned by major online bookstores and can print books on demand only when an order arrives for that book from their mail-order websites. There's still often a penalty in both content and print quality, but at least distribution is no longer an obstacle. E-books are another means to circumvent the mass-market model of each print run generating thousands of hard or soft-cover books, which must be warehoused and distributed - with the leftover "remainders" sold at a discount when the book goes out of print. These are legit and useful tools for certain purposes, such as reviving an out-of-print work after its mainstream life is over or distributing niche content which otherwise might never get published.
Conversely, it's also building a slushpile of widely-variable prose
Interestingly, many vanity presses support Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book" feature and other book searching sites. While this can help readers find the rare gem in the rough, it also allows them to easily see [[Sturgeon's Law|why so many vanity published books]] just plain suck.
It's worth noting that there are differences between a vanity press and a self-publisher. In self-publishing, the writer takes on the duties of editor and formatter himself, simply contracting with a printing firm to produce the physical book. Naturally, for similar reasons, many (but not all) self-published books also suck
And yes, the whole problem remains of how to get a book noticed if it's not in mainstream bricks-and-mortar stores or part of the printed repertoire of a mainstream publishing house.
At some point, this becomes the literary equivalent of a "Tin Pan Alley".
Before the Edison phonograph, Tin Pan Alley was a one-block district which was the home of New York City's sheet music publishers. Every day, hundreds of musicians vied to demonstrate the value of their respective compositions by banging away on hundreds of pianos until the entire block became a cacophony of music of varying quality. The same concept of creators "just trying to be heard" exists in other forms, in other media today.
More than a few independent authors, artists and cartoonists, in an attempt to attract traffic, make a tiny portion of their work available for free on a website – then link from there to platforms such as Smashwords, Amazon or even Etsy (which deals in handicrafts, although some art may qualify) to offer the remaining content for retail sale. With so much competing content already there, it's an uphill battle at times.
Nonetheless, there are specialised works which may be adapted to self-publishing. A "companion book" to a TV show can be sold by mail-order by promoting it on the original programme. Similar opportunities exist for self-published books which are merely supplemental to the content of an established museum, new media site or other property. Purely technical documentation, like "Your Freezer And You", can be distributed with the appliance or equipment which it documents. Textbooks and lawyerly documents are published through their own separate distribution channels, although even there one may find obstacles to new entrants.
Even public libraries invariably provide rare exceptions, mostly topic-based, to the usual pattern of routine acquisitions from a small handful of suppliers. A properly-documented local history or genealogy from the county historical society will be eagerly archived by the library in that county, even in a self-published or print-on-demand format, because it's microtargetted to that specific audience. Similarly, local independent bookstores and tourist venues may accept narrowly-targeted books of local photography, history or geography – if they're professionally made and of good quality – going outside standard distribution channels if that's the only way to get that specific content.
It may also be used for master's and doctoral dissertations, if the university expects them to be bound, and for writers whose texts are not in the dominant language of the country they're publishing in. Self-publishing is also very common in the developing world, where in some countries (India, most notably) more books are self-published than are published by commercial publishers. Online self-publishing has also been taking off as well, with sites such as [http://www.lulu.com Lulu] letting any aspiring author submit his manuscript, choose the printing and binding options, and printing and delivering them on demand to anyone who buys the book.
In general, if the creator of the work owns and distributes the entire run of finished print books, it's likely self-publishing. If the creator pays someone else to print the book, and that company ends up owning the finished volumes, that's likely vanity publishing... and a raw deal for the author. If the author worked to create that content, a conventional publisher should be paying them - not demanding they pay to see their name in print.
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