October 16, 2003
Writing the Words of a Sermon That No one Will Hear
Self-Publishing Vs. Vanity Publishing

In the many barren stretches of empty time and boredom I experience in an otherwise excitement-packed and action-oriented superstar zining lifestyle, I sometimes turn to Google and do random web-searches on phrases like "Book marketing" or "Promote my book", just to see what's out there. I'm always on the lookout for ways to hawk a few more copies of my more-or-less unwanted novel Lifers, new and creative promotion strategies that involves no expense, no effort, and, if at all possible, liquor. The fact that there are precious few of these kinds of strategies just keeps me hungry for more.

When I was eleven, I started submitting a novel I'd written to publishers. The novel was bad. Really, really horrible. Fuck you—I was eleven

Recently, my little futile searches for no-work-AND-book-sales led me to this web site: http://wwforums.com. On the surface it's a group of writers discussing various aspects of promoting their books. You have to actually read some of the threads to figure out the one thing about all these people that truly binds them together. It isn't that they're authors, or that they firmly believe they've 'published' books the same way I believe that I can fly. It's the fact that almost all of them have 'published' their books through outfits like www.xlibris.com and www.iuniverse.com, which are high-tech Vanity Publishers.

A Vanity Publisher is a company which offers to 'publish' your book for a fee, which you pay. In return for paying them anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000, they agree to perform all of the tasks a traditional publishers offers: Copyediting, design, typesetting, printing, marketing, and distribution. They usually market themselves to frustrated writers as an end-run around the barriers of traditional publishing. This is not self-publishing. Self-publishing would be where you take that $20000 and actually produce, market, and distro your own book. Vanity publishing is for people who are too vain to admit that no one else would publish their book, so they want a company in the 'published by' field. They want to be able to say that iuniverse 'published' their books. The fact is, their merely paying for publishing services—they're actually just self-publishing and passing a lot of the work, and the money, to a second party. And getting ripped off in the process.

I had an early brush with a vanity publisher when I was eleven years old. No, really. I know you all think I was that fat pimply kid in glasses who swam into a deep lake of cheap blackberry brandy in a vain effort to escape his demons—and I was—but I've also been a writer since I was about ten. When I was eleven, I started submitting a novel I'd written to publishers. The novel was bad. Really, really horrible. Fuck you—I was eleven. Eleven, but pretty goddamned optimistic, so I submitted that book everywhere, and eventually a place called Vantage Press wrote me a letter saying they loved the book, wanted desperately to publish it, and all I had to do was pay them $15,000 to get the ball rolling. They sent along an impressive packet of promotional materials extolling all the promotional materials they were going to cook up for me. I asked my Mom if I could have $15,000, and she said no, which just drove me deeper into the warm, sweet world of blackberry brandy. So I wrote Vantage an elegiac letter back, explaining that I had just $5.65 left from my allowance and little ambition to take on extra chores to close the gap. A few weeks later, Vantage wrote back with a counter-proposal: How about just $11,000? They might be able to cut some corners and scrimp out a modest promotional campaign for me on such light funds. I wrote back that this was getting ridiculous and asked them to please burn my manuscript.

The point, pigs, is that even at the tender age of eleven, I knew that Vanity Publishing was a crock of shit.

Sadly, a lot of people obviously don't know this. Granted, iuniverse and xlibris are a better deal, in a sense, because they are Print On Demand publishers, and charge much less money—iuniverse charges $199 for its basic level of service, xlibris $500; not cheap, but certainly not $15,000, bubba—but it's still a ripoff. The simple fact is, companies like this make all their profit when you pay them the fee. They don't care if they sell any of your book. Oh, they're happy to sell you a trade paperback for $30 and they'll take their share, but if they don't sell one copy of your book, they've already made their money. There is absolutely no incentive on their part to put any effort whatsoever into selling your book. The only thing people get from a vanity publisher is the empty joy of having your words in a professionally printed format, and the empty status of having a 'publisher'.

Self-publishing, on the other hand, I believe to be a noble and worthy use of your time and money. All you're doing with a vanity publisher, after all, is paying for publishing services--typesetting, design, printing, etc. If you take your money and shop around for places to perform these functions—assuming you're not able or willing to do them yourself—you'll get the same level of quality, and probably at a cheaper price. Remember, almost all vanity operations make their money off the fees they charge you, so their pricing is going to be higher for, say, designing a cover than an actual Graphic Designer might be.

So the monetary output's the same. But at least you're being honest with everyone. You're not saying, hey, this bullshit company took my money and now I get to call them my 'publisher'. You're joining the ranks of the creative and defiant DIY publishers of this world. DIY publishing doesn't have the same stigma of vanity publishing—most reviewers won't review books put out by known vanity presses, most actual bookstores won't stock them (not counting Amazon, which will pretty much stock anything), and most people just plain don't respect vanity publishers and their lists. For god's sake, you paid to have your book published. It's like a baseball fantasy camp: It isn't nearly as cool to say you batted against Nolan Ryan when you had to pay five grand for the privilege.

I guess I wouldn't be as scandalized as I am if these chumps didn't always announce their 'publication' in such excited, smug terms. It makes me mad, because they're either too dumb to realize how ripped off they are, or they think we're that dumb.

Oh well. If you want to tell me how badly I suck, or possibly send me some money, please do so.

Jeff