Good morning, friends and fans!
In this five-part series of short articles aimed at fellow writers – but also at anyone who might be interested in the process of writing and publishing, I will dispense some pearls of wisdom garnered from my years of personal experience, about publishing (and self-publishing) in order to give you some insight into the game! Since I’m in South Africa, this will naturally have a uniquely South African perspective, so if this is what you’re looking for, grab a seat – and welcome!
We pick up from the previous article, “A Brief Introduction To Self-Publishing – Part 2“…
For many years, the advance of technologies and social media notwithstanding, this method of “vetting” manuscripts and dealing with authors was the way the industry worked, until the so-called “vanity press” was born. “Vanity press” is not a new thing, it’s been around formally for the better part of a century and a half, if not far longer in concept. It was called such, because people who had written something that “traditional” publishers were not interested in publishing (and paying the author for – i.e. didn’t consider commercially viable) could contract with a “vanity press” (and pay them) to print a set number of copies of their book (often a hundred, or sometimes a thousand), which they would then have to peddle themselves door-to-door, at markets, to bookshops, or to give away to friends etc. to brag that they had published a book and were to be considered “authors”. Typically they were not, and were encouraged to be frowned upon by the industry at large.
In an ironic and particularly surreal twist of fate, many so-called “traditional” publishers today also have special departments that do “vanity press” publication – that is, they don’t think the author’s works warrant paying them for it, but they sure could use the R100,000 per title (roughly $10,000) that the author would have to pay them to get their works edited, covered and printed… and don’t expect any discount just because you happen to have written a series containing ten or more titles! Some big publishing names today feature such “vanity press” departments, including Penguin, purported to be one of the cornerstones of the modern publishing field!
Perhaps it’s just me who feels this way, but I think any writer would have to be either stinking filthy rich to start with, or very, very desperate to publish via this route. I’ve never met an unpublished writer who had that kind of money lying around just gathering interest – and I’m sure most writers aren’t “stupid” either – so it would have to be the third option at work here – desperation! People are desperate to get their books published!
There was always the hope that a book published this way might be recognized for the genius of the writer, sell really well, or get the attention of “real” publishers… who would ostensibly approach the writer with an impressive offer to take on the title or any subsequent works – but I would have to say it would be one chance in a hundred – and today one in a million – if that ever really happened at all.
“Vanity press” authors always used to be looked down upon by the “traditional” market, as were those who made use of them – in fact, I find they mostly still are. They were often ridiculed by readers and publishers (and bookstore owners/managers) – and even other authors alike for not being “really published” and “not good enough”.
This has resulted in a climate where even today, many booksellers, buyers and readers still tend to display confusion between what is “self-published” and what is “vanity press”, thinking they are one and the same thing, when they are absolutely not!
Book stores generally didn’t accept “vanity press” wares at all because they didn’t appear in the industry’s sales catalogs (run by “traditional” publishers, naturally) and thus couldn’t be ordered by conventional means (these days online) – and because they weren’t published or backed up by big names in the industry. You see, right from the start, the whole book-publishing/book-selling industry was already a monopolized closed-market to begin with – a deck stacked against not just vanity press, but against anyone who dared to publish independently!
To be clear then, the term “vanity press” these days applies to companies (or side “imprints” of “traditional” publishers) who offer to “publish” an author’s book, but to do so at a set rate or fee. They might (and usually do) charge extra for services such as editing, formatting, cover design and so on. Their business appears to be invested in the process of actually printing the books more than anything else. Also, in my research and personal experience, very few of these ‘imprints’ will feature any marketing services for these books, leaving these authors cold once their printing contract is fulfilled – unless of course, the poor sap author is billed extra for that as well.
As a South African, I can tell you, a quote of “only $3000” just for a single entry level module towards a basic marketing package is enough to make my blood chill!
It’s an ideal set-up, and one that favors these vanity-press companies, because authors desperate to get a their book published, bombard every “traditional” publishing company they can find with submissions – and if the company has a department that specializes in “vanity press”, it’s easy for them to divert most of the traffic in that direction, from where all they need to do is dangle a hook, use some fancy language and pretty marketing images as bait, which they hope the author will find enticing enough to bite down hard on!
This article is an excerpt from “A Guide To Self-Publishing In South Africa” by Christina Engela. If you like it, consider buying the book.
I’ve experienced that several times myself – when I sent Penguin a submission for one of my series years ago, they diverted my submission to a subsidiary called “Partridge Africa”, and I suddenly found myself being offered a publishing “deal” – but not the sort of deal I had in mind! No, no – it was a “deal” where I would have to pay them a staggering amount of money in near-worthless South African Ronts. Excuse me, but aren’t publishers supposed to pay authors, not the other way round? Apparently not. What the hell was I thinking?
To make matters even more confusing, many vanity press “publishers” present themselves as “traditional” publishers, at least in imagery, advertising and exaggeration! In 2005 or 2006, Dorrance had me going for nearly a year via a lengthy string of emails about getting just one of my books published – at which point I was struggling to raise funds for a life-changing surgical procedure, and being faced with a choice between that and spending nearly double that amount to pay them to print a couple of hard copies of “Blachart” – which I would’ve had to peddle door-to-door myself! And that was just for one of my seven completed books I had in the queue at the time! I wonder how those reptiles people actually sleep at night! Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed – and neither am I that bloody gullible!
“Vanity press” as far as I’m concerned, seems to be no more than a clever set-up to convince desperate authors to order a box of their own books – which the press will print for payment. Editing and formatting, cover design and the like are included – along with a set number of printed copies, naturally – and there it ends, with an expensive set of books in a box and the writer’s dreams in a heap of ashes.
Nauseating, isn’t it?
Typically, these companies do not offer marketing services at all (unless also paid extra for – and that doesn’t come cheap, let me tell you) and the poor desperate author – regardless of how good their manuscript and original story really is, is left standing holding a box of books nobody can buy anywhere else, trying to market this dead duck all by themselves – and if the original stock is ever disposed of, has to pay upfront to order more. It’s downright criminal!
Incidentally, just by asking a local printing shop on a street corner near where I live – one that prints flyers, business cards and booklets etcetera – for a quote to print and bind a run of a hundred or a thousand copies of a book, I found out that this option still worked out more-or-less at the same price per copy, if not cheaper (depending on the quantity ordered)… plus there was no waiting period for delivery or customs clearance since it was around the corner in walking distance! If you want to do that instead, that’s one alternative – without all the red tape, sales pitches, shattered dreams, lies and tall stories to deal with. Plus, you probably won’t have to pay extortion – er, cough – “handling fees” at the Post Office! You could just pick them up on the way to your second job from your first job.
The “traditional” publishers who offer these services (almost to a rule under other names, labels or “imprints” – probably so as not to cheapen or taint their mainstream “traditional” image) may have started doing so because they began to struggle more than usual in the modern publishing market place – most likely due to competition from other quarters – such as indie publishing, small presses, and the advent of eBooks.
Of course, it’s always possible that they were just greedy for more opportunities to make money – and realized that they were losing their steely grip on a market they had held sway over for centuries! Why would they struggle, if they literally own the industry? I mean, if they get to pick and choose what gets published, and what we see on the book shelves, surely the “gate-keepers” and “king-makers” are doing well financially?
While I’m sure most of the bigger names are doing well enough to survive, the industry – and the world – have changed so dramatically in the last thirty years with the introduction and availability of the personal computer and access to the internet, the evolution of the internet and internet commerce – meaning that virtually ANYONE can gain access to the market and participate in it with a chance of success in spite of the former “gate keepers”! The “gate keepers” no longer have the only keys to all the gates! In fact, in some cases, the gates have been left standing wide open! As a consequence, their takings from the global market appears to have dwindled quite a lot!
More about that next time, in part 4 of this series, when we explore the real differences between vanity press publishers, traditional publishers and indie or self-publishing!
Read more:
- A Brief Introduction To Self-Publishing: A 5 part series of articles introducing the reader to the concept of self-publishing.
- Forewords, Prologues, Prefaces & Introductions Explained: this explains the differences and similarities and when it is appropriate to use them and for what.
- The Interrobang – What Is It?!: What is the interrobang, where and when should it be used? Should it be used at all?
- Asterism Or Dinkus – What’s In A Name?: Do you still write in actual chapters? For god’s sake – why?
- Afterwords & Epilogs Explained: this explains what afterwords and epilogs are for and when it is appropriate to use them.
- Word Length – When Is A Novel, A Novel?: This explains the word lengths for different categories of book or story.
- Which Self-Publishing Platform – Or All Of Them?: An article about experimenting with which self-publishing distribution platforms to use concurrently. Also read the follow-up article: More Isn’t Always Better – My Self-publishing Platform Strategy Revisited.
- A Guide To Self-Publishing In South Africa – a guide to being an indie author in spite of being stuck in South Africa by Christina Engela.
- Some Great Resources For Writers: A collection of useful tools and articles giving advice to new writers trying to make their way in a minefield of obstacles.
Until next time, keep reading – and writing!
Cheers!
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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.