Vanity Presses

A vanity press or vanity publisher is a book printer which, while claiming to be a publisher, charges writers a fee in return for publishing their books or otherwise makes most of its money from the author rather than from the public. Johnathon Clifford claims to have coined the term in 1959. In its very simplest terms, while a commercial publisher's intended market is the general public, a vanity publisher's intended market are the authors themselves. Many authorities consider an author mill to be a kind of vanity publisher. A vanity press is distinguished from a small press publisher in that the small press acts as its larger cousins do, performing the traditional roles of editorial selection, binding and review, and marketing at its own expense, rather than at the expense of the author.

The vanity companies often refer to themselves as joint-venture or subsidy publishers, because the author "subsidizes" (or finances) the publication. A vanity press will generally agree to print and bind any author's work if the author is willing to pay for the service; these fees typically form a vanity press's profits.

Commercial publishers, on the other hand, derive their profit from sales of the book, and must therefore be cautious and deliberate in choosing to publish works that will sell, particularly as they must recoup their investment in the book (such as an advance payment and royalties to the author, editorial guidance, promotion, marketing, or advertising). To better help sell their books, commercial publishers may also be selective in order to cultivate a reputation for high-quality work, or to specialize in a particular genre.

Because vanity presses are not as selective, publication by a vanity press is typically not seen as conferring the same recognition or prestige as commercial publication. Vanity presses do offer more independence for the author than does the mainstream publishing industry; however, their fees are often higher than the fees normally charged for similar printing services, and sometimes restrictive contracts are required.

Vanity Presses - Differences from commercial publishers

The term “vanity press” is generally derogatory, and is often used to imply that an author using such a service is only publishing out of vanity, and that his or her work could not be commercially successful. Some vanity presses are in fact scams, including those identified at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) website. In general, any publisher that expects the author to pay a large fee upfront (while promising or hinting at fame and fortune), is most likely dishonest, and certainly should be approached warily.

Some companies offer printing (and perhaps limited distribution) for a fee. If honest, such companies will explain their fees, what they do and do not offer, and how their service differs from that of a commercial publisher. Such services can be a viable way for an author to self-publish without owning printing equipment. This is particularly attractive to an author of a work with a limited, specialized appeal which may not interest mainstream publishers, or to the author who intends to promote his or her work personally. However, the true distinction between vanity publishing and self-publishing is simple: who owns the books when they come off the printing press? If the answer is the printer, who then pays royalties to the author on the basis of books sold, then the book has been vanity published. If the author owns the books outright, and can thus dispose of them as he or she likes, then that author has self-published.

Scholarly journals often ask authors to pay page charges but use peer review to keep a high scientific standard. This is to be distinguished from the true vanity publisher, who will publish anything within their general market that will be paid for.

Poets often self-publish, as their work is generally of extremely specialized appeal, and therefore risky to mainstream publishers. An inexperienced poet, whose manuscript has been repeatedly rejected by major edition companies, makes an easy target for vanity publishers.

A mainstream publisher traditionally assumes the risk of publication and production costs, selects the works to be published, edits the author's text, and provides for marketing and distribution, provides the ISBN and satisfies whatever legal deposit and copyright registration formalities are required. Such a publisher normally pays the author a fee, called an advance, for the right to publish the author's work; and further payments, called royalties, based on the sales of the work. This led to James D. Macdonald's famous dictum, "Money should always flow toward the author" (sometimes called Yog's Law).

A vanity publisher typically fails to provide any useful editing service, and is not selective, printing works by anyone willing to pay a fee. This lack of selectivity is the main reason for the low esteem in which most of the literary world holds vanity publishers. Many vanity publishers charge excessive fees, which are never likely to be recouped from sales of the books involved. Vanity publishers typically do little or no effective marketing. Formerly, they did little or no distribution. Now vanity publishers may offer web-based sales, or make a book available via online booksellers, but they generally do no marketing. Furthermore, many bookstores -- especially large chain stores -- avoid such books.

Among the many types of books that are unpublishable by major commercial presses, family histories often find their way onto vanity presses, since family histories have an extremely limited market--often fewer than ten copies.

Vanity Press Business Model

Vanity publishers typically offer contracts that strongly favor the publisher, charging high fees while providing low-quality books. They often sell worthless add-on services related to editing and marketing, and are frequently charged with outright scams.

A self-publisher is an author who also undertakes the functions of a publisher for his or her own book. The classic "self-publisher" writes, edits, markets and promotes the book themselves, relying on a printer only for actual printing and binding. More recently, companies have offered their services to act as a sort of agent between the writer and a small printing operation. In these cases, the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing is less obvious than it once was.

The most recent incarnations of vanity presses make use of print on demand technologies based on modern digital printing. These companies are often able to offer their services with little or no upfront cost to the author, but they are still considered vanity presses by many writers advocates. Vanity presses earn their money, not from sales of books to readers like other publishers, but from sales of books to the authors. The author receives the shipment of books and may attempt to resell them through whatever channels are available.

Alternatives to Vanity Publishing

Writers considering self-publishing often also consider directly hiring a printer. According to self-publisher and poet Peter Finch, vanity presses charge higher premiums and create a risk that an author who has published with a vanity press will have more difficulty working with a respectable publisher in the future.

Some vanity presses using print on demand technology act as printers as well as sellers of support services for authors interested in self-publishing. Reputable firms of this type are typically marked by clear contract terms, lack of excessive fees, retail prices comparable to those from commercial printers, lack of pressure to purchase "extra" services, contracts which do not claim exclusive rights to the work being published (though one would be hard pressed to find a legitimate publisher willing to put out a competing edition, making non-exclusivity meaningless), and honest indications of what services they will and won't provide, and what results the author may reasonably expect. However, the distinction between the worst of these firms and vanity presses is essentially trivial, though a source of great confusion as the low fees have attracted tens of thousands of authors who wish to avoid the stigma of vanity publishing while doing just that.

Libraries

The typical library avoids stocking self-published books, since most vanity publications have not gone through selection, revision, copyediting and other critical steps which are normal for commercial for-profit publishers. Most libraries will not accept such vanity publications, even when they are offered free of charge, since even then there are costs involved: all library books have to be described in a catalogue, and require classification stickers and other elements as well as valuable shelf space. In any case, it is usual for books to be chosen for a library by the application of a collection development policy designed to meet the needs of a particular user community, and vanity publications only rarely meet those needs.

On the rare occasions when libraries accept the product of a vanity press, they usually require the donor to sign a form giving to the library the right to do what it pleases with the item. The item is sometimes then disposed of in a yearly book sale or by some other process for the distribution of unwanted items. [citation needed]

Exceptions include local histories, which are of specialized interest enough to be uninteresting to commercial publishers but which are sought out by libraries.

Many libraries and reviewers do not clearly distinguish between vanity publications and self-publications, and are apt to decline or resist any book that does not come from a commercial press. Indeed in some cases any book produced using POD technology encounters such resistance, even if it is from a small commercial publisher.

History of Vanity Presses

It should be noted that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was common for legitimate authors, if they could afford to, to pay the costs of publishing their books. Such writers could expect more control of their work, greater profits, or both. Self-publishing was not judged negatively as it has been more recently. Among the authors taking this route to publication was Lewis Carroll, who paid the expenses of publishing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and most of his subsequent work. Such authors as Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Anais Nin also resorted to self-publication for some or all of their works. It is worth noting, however, that despite the well known names on this list, not all of them were successful in their publishing ventures. Mark Twain's, for example, led to bankruptcy.

Vanity Presses in Fiction

Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum discusses the inside workings of a vanity press operated as a side operation of a more orthodox publisher, to pump out otherwise unpublishable personal musings on the occult. The 'main' publisher is run by a Signor Garamond, named for a renowned sixteenth century printer, while the vanity press is called 'Manutius', the name of another famous sixteenth century printer. Elaine Viets's novel Murder Between the Covers involves a self-published author attempting to set up a bookstore signing. The hero of Jonathan Coe's novel What a Carve-Up is commissioned over a long period to write a book by an otherwise vanity publisher. The company is satirized at some length. One of the substories of David Mitchell's 2004 novel Cloud Atlas is about Timothy Cavendish, a vanity press publisher. In Martin Amis's The Infomation, unsuccessful novelist Richard Tull works part-time at a vanity press, work he finds soul-destroying but (relatively) lucrative.

Examples of Vanity Presses

The following businesses have been described as using a vanity press or similar business model by independent sources:

American Biographical Institute
AuthorHouse (formerly 1st Books Library)
Author Identity (a branch of PublishAmerica)
Dorrance
iUniverse

Ivy House

Marquis Who's Who
Minerva Press (UK)
Picture.com, aka The International Library of Photography
Poetry.com, aka The International Library of Poetry
PublishAmerica
SterlingHouse Publisher
Tate Publishing
Vantage Press
Watermark Press
Xlibris