Vanity Presses

For writers, one of the most universal pieces of advice you’ll receive is to avoid vanity presses.

What Are They?

Historically, a vanity press was a scammy company that pretended to be a publisher, “accepted” an author’s book, then sold them copies of their own book. Whereas legitimate publishers would pay authors royalties, vanity presses entire business was just charging the author for a print run and leaving them with a garage full of their unsellable book.

Vanity press have such a universally horrible reputation that the first thing a vanity press will say is “we’re not a vanity press”.

IN THEORY, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with printing a book and charging the author. You could literally do the same thing at a printing company: hire them to print your book and buy copies off of them. The biggest problem with vanity presses is they charge exorbitant prices and they fool wannabe authors that what they’re doing is standard in the publishing industry (it’s not).

How Writers Used To Protect Themselves

Historically, the way to protect yourself from vanity presses is to remember that money flows *TO* the author, not away from them. Twenty years ago, any time someone asked an author for money, it was a scam.

Roger Williams once wrote that his writing mentor had told him it’s a deeply shameful thing for any writer to pay to publish their own works. He was reluctant to self publish his book “Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect” because of this.

Hybrid Publishers

Hybrid publishers are services that function like many traditional presses used to, but instead of paying writers an advance and sharing royalties with them, they sell services to them. In the abstract, this could be done ethically, like printing books in the past. In practice, most hybrid publishers take advantage of unsophisticated people to overcharge them for things the author could do themselves or hire someone to do for far less money.

Like vanity presses, many hybrid publishers pretend to be traditional publishers and play on the ego of authors to extract money from them.

Hybrid publishing can be confusing because some people misuse the term. I’ve seen people use hybrid publishing to refer to publishing ebooks and print. A small press I was talking about referred to themselves as a hybrid publisher. This turned me off until I realized they were misusing the term and really they were just being upfront about being a small press.

How Can Indie Writer Protect Themselves

One way would be to only publish with legitimate, traditional publishers. I think this is a dying model (and industry), so while this would protect you it’s not worth the cost.

Instead, indie authors should only hire people when the author initiates the transaction. If anyone contacts you, trying to sell something, decline. Only hire people (cover artists, editors, proofreaders, formatters, etc.) that you go looking for. Additionally, don’t hire companies that sell you “book publishing deals” that bundle these services.

Obviously, don’t just hire the first person who presents themselves. Make sure that they’re competent and the right person to be providing services to you.

This is good advice in life beyond publishing too.