How to Spot (and Avoid) a Vanity Press
Nancy Barnes
It used to be easy to recognize a vanity press. An author who could not find a traditional publisher for his book took it to a company, paid a high fee to have it published, and was required to purchase a substantial number of books from the company. We’ve all heard the horror stories of authors who published with a vanity press and wound up with a couple of hundred books in their garage. Things have changed a lot as the publishing world has evolved and digital publishing has made print-on-demand possible. Self-publishing has become a viable option for authors. But, vanity presses have evolved along with the rest of the publishing world. Let’s look at how to spot (and avoid) a vanity press.
First, vanity presses present themselves as an easy solution for authors seeking a publisher. They offer all-inclusive packages to help you self-publish. They promise to become your publisher, suggesting that they will act as a traditional publisher might, to help you publish and market your book. For an author new to the world of publishing, it sounds attractive.
Beware. Their flashy websites and ubiquitous online advertising make them appear to be solid companies. But an author who takes time to find out a little more about companies like Author Solutions (and its imprints including Author House, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Tafford Publishing), Outskirts Press, and America Star Books (formerly Publish America) will find out that they are not what they seem. Indeed they are rebranded vanity presses.
The all-inclusive packages these companies offer often include services the author does not want or need, but pays for because they are part of the publishing package.
While saying they are helping you to self-publish, they take control of your rights to your book. When an author publishes with iUniverse the author owns the copyright to the book, but the ISBN assigned to the book shows iUniverse as its publisher. (The International ISBN Agency explains that the 3rd component of an ISBN is the Registrant Element is up to seven digits which designate the publisher.) If you want to take your book to another publisher, you will find that although you paid to create the digital files from which your book was produced, you don’t own them. As Mark Levine, the author of The Fine Print of Self-Publishing now in its 6th edition, explains, “If you terminate your contract with the publisher, you will have ‘the right to purchase’ your digital filers in press-ready PDF format with the ISBN and iUniverse logo removed.” The price can be quite high.
The company, not the author, sets the book’s cover price. This is a crucial decision because if it is not priced appropriately in relation to comparable books it won’t sell. Company’s like Author House routinely set the price too high, hamstringing the books in the marketplace. Finally, as Levine says, iUniverse retains a royalty, often greater than the author’s, on every book it sells “…you should wonder why you pay them to publish your book and they end up making more on each sale than you do.”
John Scalzi, the Hugo Award-Winning science fiction writer and past president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, who kicked off his career by self-publishing his first book, gives a good one-sentence rule for making sure you are self-publishing and not dealing with a vanity publisher. “While in the process of self-publishing, money, and rights are controlled by the writer.”
If that’s not true, it’s not self-publishing, it’s vanity publishing.
To take a see what real self-publishing looks like visit the How We’re Different page on our website.