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A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where anyone can pay to have a book published.. The term "vanity press" is often used pejoratively, implying that an author who uses such a service is publishing out of vanity.


Vanity publishing vs Mainstream publishing

Mainstream publishers never charge authors to publish their books. The publisher bears all the risks of publication and pays all the costs. Because of that financial risk, mainstream publishers are extremely selective in what they will publish, and reject most manuscripts submitted to them. The high level of rejection is why some authors turn to vanity presses to get their work published. James D. Macdonald says, "Money should always flow towards the author" (sometimes called
Yog's Law James Douglas Ignatius Macdonald (born 1954) is an American author and critic who lives in New Hampshire. He frequently collaborated with his late wife Dr. Debra Doyle. He works in several genres, concentrating on fantasy, but also writing sci ...
).


Vanity publishing vs hybrid publishing

Hybrid publishing A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books (and other related materials) that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid p ...
is the source of lively debate in the publishing industry, with many viewing hybrid publishers as vanity presses in disguise. However a true hybrid publisher is selective in what they publish and will share the costs (and therefore the risks) with the author, whereas with a vanity press, the author pays the full cost of production and therefore carries all the risk. The vanityy press then has absolutely no interest in whether the book is suitable for publication or good enough to sell. Given the bad reputation of vanity publishing, many vanity presses are rebranding themselves as hybrids, leading to exploitation of writers. The Society of Authors (SoA) and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) have called for reform of the ‘hybrid’ / paid-for publishing sector. The trade unions, who together represent 14,800 authors, have jointly published "Is it a steal? An investigation into ‘hybrid’ / paid-for publishing services" to expose widespread bad practice among companies that charge writers to publish their work while taking their rights.


Vanity publishing vs Assisted self-publishing

It is often stated that many famous authors have used vanity publishers in the past, such as Mark Twain or Jane Austen. This is incorrect and confuses self-publishing with vanity publishing. In a variant of Yog's law for self-publishing, author John Scalzi has proposed this alternate, to distinguish self-publishing from vanity publishing, "While in the process of self-publishing, money and rights are controlled by the writer." Self-publishing is distinguished from vanity publishing by the writer maintaining control of copyright as well as the editorial and publishing process, including marketing and distribution.


Vanity publishing scams

Vanity presses often engage in deceptive practices or offer costly, poor-quality services with limited recourse available to the writer. In the US, these practices have been cited by the
Better Business Bureau Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a private, 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization founded in 1912. BBB's self-described mission is to focus on advancing marketplace trust, consisting of 97 independently incorporated local BBB organizations in the Unite ...
as unfavorable reports by consumers. One common (scam) model of a vanity press is described by Umberto Eco in ''
Foucault's Pendulum ''Foucault's Pendulum'' (original title: ''Il pendolo di Foucault'' ) is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988, and an English translation by William Weaver appeared a year later. ''Foucault's ...
''. The company pretends to operate a traditional publishing arm, (where the publishing house bears all the cost). However, when an author submits their work, they are always told it does not quite meet the standards required for traditional publishing. However, the company will publish it if the author pays for something, e.g. engages their professional editor, or commits to buying a large number of printed copies of the book, or some other excuse. The exorbitant fee charged for these services will, in fact, cover the entirety of the vanity publisher's costs in producing the book.


Vanity publishing in other media

The vanity press model exists for other media such as videos, music and photography. A notable example is
ARK Music Factory Ark Music Factory (formerly Ark Music Production) was a musical composition and production company based in Los Angeles, California. The company was co-founded in 2010 by Patrice Wilson, who partnered with producer/composer and multi-instrumenta ...
, which, for a fee, produced and released Rebecca Black's 2011
viral video A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhong Lan, Alexander H ...
" Friday".. Vanity academic journals also exist, often called bogus journals, which will publish with little or no editorial oversight (although they may claim to be peer reviewed). One such bogus journal ('' International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology'') accepted for publication a paper called ''Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List'' consisting of the sentence "Get me off your fucking mailing list." repeated many times. Vanity photography magazines often have little or no physical circulation, relying instead on the submitting photographers buying the magazine after publication. Some also charge a submission fee. Magazines such as ''Lucy's'', ''Jute'', and ''Pump'' – all managed by parent publisher Kavyar – often accept photograph submissions for free, or for a minimal fee to be featured on a magazine cover.


History

The term ''vanity press'' appeared in mainstream U.S. publications as early as 1941. That was the year that C. M. Flumiani was sentenced to 18 months in a US prison for mail fraud, arising from his scheme that promised book promotion (a line in a catalog), expert editing (they accepted all books), and acting as agent bringing books to his own publishing houses. By 1956, the three leading American vanity presses (Vantage Press, Exposition Press, and Pageant Press) were each publishing more than 100 titles per year. Ernest Vincent Wright, author of the 1939 novel '' Gadsby'', written entirely in lipogram, was unable to find a publisher for his work and ultimately chose to publish it through a vanity press.


Examples

*
American Biographical Institute The American Biographical Institute (ABI) was a paid-inclusion vanity biographical reference directory publisher based in Raleigh, North Carolina which had been publishing biographies since 1967. It generated revenue from sales of fraudulent certif ...
*
Austin Macauley Publishers Austin Macauley Publishers Limited is a British publishing company, with offices in London, New York and Sharjah. The company was founded in 2006 and publishes fiction and non-fiction books. It publishes new and established authors. The company ...
(previously Austin & Macauley) * Dorrance Publishing *
Famous Poets Society The Famous Poets Society (also known as the Christian Poets Guild) was a vanity press that organized a poetry contest and offered self-publishing services. Despite the company's claims to have awarded over $425,000 in cash prizes to selected poets ...
Bad Art – A verse-case scenario (Boston Phoenix)
/ref> * iUniverse * Poetry.com, The International Library of PoetryMargo Stever, ''The Contester: Poetry.com Struggles for Legitimacy''. Poets and Writers Magazine * Tate Publishing & Enterprises (there are at least three companies called Tate Publishing; the others include a reputable art publisher and a defunct software book publisher) *
Tellwell Talent Tellwell Talent (also known as "Tellwell Publishing" or simply "Tellwell") is a Canadian-based vanity press located in Victoria, British Columbia. Founded in 2015 by Tim Lindsay, the company is best-known for its publication and marketing of A ...
, a
Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source o ...
-based vanity press best-known for releasing the book '' Newbia'' by Chelee Cromwell. *
Vantage Press Vantage Press was a self-publishing company based in the United States. The company was founded in 1949 and ceased operations in late 2012. Vantage was the largest vanity press in the United States. By 1956, they were publishing hundreds of title ...
* Xlibris *


See also

*
Accessible publishing Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace the reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visu ...
*
Alternative media Alternative media are media sources that differ from established or dominant types of media (such as mainstream media or mass media) in terms of their content, production, or distribution.Downing, John (2001). ''Radical Media''. Thousand Oaks, CA ...
*
Article processing charge An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making a work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. ...
* '' Atlanta Nights'' *
Author mill An author mill is a publisher that relies on producing large numbers of small-run books by different authors, as opposed to a smaller number of works published in larger numbers. The term was coined by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, as a paral ...
*
Custom media Custom, customary, or consuetudinary may refer to: Traditions, laws, and religion * Convention (norm), a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted rules, norms, standards or criteria, often taking the form of a custom * Norm (social), a r ...
* Dōjin * Dynamic publishing * Independent music *
List of self-publishing companies Self-publishing is the publication of media (e.g. books, music, art) by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. However, the author may engage professionals or companies to assist with various aspects of publication, ...
*
Offset printing Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on t ...
*
Online shopping Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the ...
* Predatory open access publishing * Print on demand *
Samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documen ...
* Self Publish, Be Happy *
Self publishing Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using POD (pri ...
:* :Self-publishing * Small press * Vanity award *
Vanity gallery A vanity gallery is an art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a ...
* Vanity label * Variable data printing * Web-to-print


Notes


External links


Writer Beware on Vanity Presses




{{DEFAULTSORT:Vanity Press Publishing