Writers are confused and it’s not their fault. In searching for the best way to break into print, they come across self-described “self-publishing companies”. I get emails asking if I can self publish for writers. That is impossible—by definition.

The problem is that many POD vanity publishers are calling themselves “self-publishing companies.” They are trading on self-publishing’s good name to make their companies appear familiar and legitimate.

Self-publishing has early American roots and today there are more than 85,000 self-publishers in the U.S. Naturally, these dot-com, digital publishers want to use the name.

How to tell the difference. Some definitions.

Publisher: The person who puts up the money and make the book happen.

Vanity publishers are organized to sell books (and other services) to the author. They charge the author to publish the book. This is why they are also known as “subsidy publishers.”

Conventional publishers sell books to the public, usually through wholesalers and bookstores. They pay the author an advance and royalties for the right to produce and sell the book.

Would you write a book knowing that you would be the only purchaser?

How to spot scam vanity publishers. A literary attorney advises other lawyers.

According to Wikipedia, Self-Publishing is the publishing of books and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers.The only “self-publishing company” is you—by definition. If you pay a publisher, your book is not SELF-published.

Self-publishers, write, publish and promote their own books. We have been building name recognition for self-publishing for more than 35 years.

Self-publishing garners respect. Traditionally, when a book publishing CEO wrote a memoir, he or she would seek another publisher to release it so that the book would not appear to be a vanity work.

Times have changed. Self-publishing has become so recognized and legitimate that the vanity stigma from publishing your own Work has nearly disappeared.

Now that people know what self-publishing is, we find we have to reeducate the public to the fact that we are the real self-publishers and the other DotCom POD digital publishers are really just vanity publishers masquerading as us. They are trading on the good reputation we have built.

On the other hand, there are many digital printing companies. Most provide excellent prices, service and quality. They should refer to themselves as “book printers.”

For information on the choices for breaking into print, get the free Information Kit #2 on Publishing at http://parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/infokit.cfm

Many of the DotCom vanity publishers help people to produce their books for a few hundred dollars. The low cost of entry attracts literary talent from the bottom of the barrel. With so little to invest, most of these authors don’t verify their research and don’t invest in editors, typesetters, book designers or cover artists. Both authors and publishers of these poor-quality vanity-published books give all book publishing a bad name.

These POD vanity publishers are leaving a trial of unhappy customers. See the list of unresolved complaints to the Better Business Bureau.

Due diligence. Writing a book is a creative act; publishing a book is a business. Before trying anything new, people should get educated.

Anyone who’s been in publishing for a while can share a number of stories of people who stumbled and blundered into the book game without getting sufficient information first. These pioneers have made just about every mistake imaginable. Profit from their (temporary) failures: don’t repeat their painful lessons.

Remember that in any new field, especially book writing and publishing, others have blazed the trail for you.

The book industry is full of helpful and supportive people. It may be unexpected because this kind of camaraderie does not exist in other industries. The reason that book people are so helpful, friendly and supportive is that every book is unique. There is little to no competition in book publishing. When it comes to marketing books, we are conspirators not competitors.

Let’s respect historical and common definitions. We can protect the newcomers to book publishing by helping them to understand the difference between conventional publishers, self-publishers, book printers and the vanity/subsidy publishers.

Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual, is the “Godfather” to thousands of books. He has written more than 100 books since 1969. Dan is a past vice-president of the Publishers Marketing Association. For more information on book publishing and promoting, see http://ParaPub.com.

IMPORTANT AUTHOR’S NOTE: a lot has happened since this book was published. Please order my new Independent Self Publishing: The Complete Guide. It’s more up-to-date, has 88 more pages, and the price is the same as the older book. It’s better-looking, too.There is lots of confusion about “self-publishing.” This book will help you sort out the misstatements and misunderstandings. It will guide you from your first word to your first sale. It can help a frustrated writer make a quick and painless transition to become a less frustrated writer and publisher.Independence from England in the 18th century led to the establishment of a vibrant and strong democracy in the United States, where “anyone can be president.”In the 21st century, independent self-publishing, made possible by new technology, has led to a democratization of publishing where any writer can be published. Anyone with a few months and about $600 can publish a book that looks just as good as books published by the companies

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I am a published author. Many of my poems and essays have been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies. But by traditional standards my books have been vanity/subsidy/self published. I have no illusion that those facts give me the street-cred or status of a John Grisham or Elizabeth Gilbert. However, in addition to my writing, I have worked in the wholesale and retail end of the publishing business at street and executive levels for more than twenty years.

Here is my perspective:

The traditional publishing process: Writer to Agent to Publisher to Printer to Distributor to Retailer to Consumer

Traditional vanity/self/subsidy publishing: You pay a company to print your books.

Today there may be nothing vain about Vanity Publishing. In the past it was a dismissive term justifiably used by the publishing community to describe small print run books that circumvented the traditional publishing process. In fact, Vanity Publishing is only half of the designation. The word vanity is by implication contrasted to the word merit; when vanity publishing is used, a lack of merit publishing is suggested. The inference is that vanity published books have no merit; while not required, a degree of snobbery was often attached to the valuation equation.

In the past, vanity publishers charged a significant fee and handed you a box of books which you gave to your mother or sold to your friends. They also served specialty markets for trade publications or in-house books. One of my uncles pioneered the business of fund raising cookbooks. It might be more accurate to describe them as book manufacturers; they did little or nothing to get a book to the public. Today what are often called vanity publishers list your book at international distributors like Ingram or Baker and Taylor who make it available to online and brick and mortar sellers around the globe. That does not mean anyone is going to buy your book, but you have extended the limits on possibilities. Do something that gets you on the national news and you will be an overnight success. Your book may also have an ISBN number and possibly even be included in the Library of Congress, which were previously the benchmarks of so called real books.

With POD (print on demand) options, no one is required to layout huge printing and distribution costs, all of that is subtracted from the retail price. Nothing happens until the consumer forks over the cash; the entire process is prepaid. There are no guarantees of success, but there also are few risks. As mentioned above, I worked more than twenty years in the wholesale/distribution end of the business; we shredded 50% to 70% of mass market books sent to stores and then returned from retail as unsold. Hardcover books are often pulled from sale and remainders are sold on bargain book tables for pennies on the dollar of the cover price. How’s that for the final resting place of your dream?

The emerging model is fiscally responsible and saves a lot of trees. There are still many vanity publishers that extract large sums of money from naive authors, but there is also a new breed that doesn’t. Depending on your skill level at writing, proofreading, editing, formatting and graphic design, and/or the talent of friends, you are able to publish a high quality book in print and/or electronic formats with no upfront expense.

In the old world paradigm the publisher bankrolled and therefore controlled the process. The publishing community set the standards and also fought the first amendment battles that shaped the book world we have today. We must all be eternally grateful for those accomplishments. However in a change that parallels digital music, online news feeds and social networking the access point for the writer to reach a retailer and/or consumer has shifted and been simplified. At Amazon.com or the Apple Store there is nothing that distinguishes a self/vanity/Indy published book from a mainline publisher one. Sadly that means a lot of crap gets ink. We truly do need to establish an independent rating standard for self published books before we will gain the respect of the traditional publishing community. On the upside, free speech has never been more accessible.

Most of the best and largest selling books are still and for the foreseeable future will be done by major publishing houses. Let’s be real here, there is nothing that says a self/vanity published book is equal in sales or impact on society… for now. Though, the average consumer does not care about the publishing, printing or distribution of a book. Where, how and for what price they consume are their highest priorities; all of which are affected by the medium and social acceptance and peer pressure.

The combined effect of millions of small authors may dwarf the influence of the few major ones in the very near future. If an ebook or POD book can find a market it has merit. If it has merit, perhaps it is no longer fair to call it vanity.

Chrystine Julian is workshop leader, business consultant, performer and poet based in the Inland Empire of Southern California. She blends creative talents and professional experience to offer a unique and memorable blend of excitement in her Mystic’s Guide to Dragon Riding, Team-Tribe team building with percussion, Talking Your Power public speaking sessions and other programs. More information about Chrystine is at http://www.ChrystineJulian.com or http://www.facebook.com/Chrystine.Julian. She can be reached by e-mail at ChrystineJulian@aol.com

Not all of you reading this have necessarily heard the warnings about the vanity publishing companies who lure potential writers in with the promise of publishing glory; those companies who may even go so far as to advertise ‘no fees’ or even allude to payment for acceptable manuscripts. Legitimate publishers need not even mention such things as they are synonymous with legitimate publishing avenues. With the vanity publishing firms, these promises almost always fall under very strict criteria that can never be met for first-time writers and are quickly replaced with alternative offers so that publishing dreams can come to fruition. Over the years, I have slowly, and painfully, become much more aware of the tell-tale signs that would indicate whether a vanity press is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or if a legitimate publisher is actually going to be involved. Where a publisher is advertising itself, its submission guidelines and the actual contract being offered often hold the key criteria for safe publishing endeavors; and yet there is something about getting published that may blind some to the obvious pitfalls that almost always come with vanity publishing. I was once blind, but now I see.

Those of you writers who are rich and have no problem paying for your work to be professionally published, you can stop reading now. The product that you pay for will look beautiful and it will be placed on Amazon and potentially other book-selling sites; although one soon discovers that this does not guarantee even meager sales. In many cases, however, your work, through vanity publishing, does not receive the proper editing that should come with the rigid process being offered by real publishing houses. As a direct result, sales will never become a reality based on the quality of the unedited work itself. Vanity publishers make their money on the sheer volume of people paying to get their work into print. Whether your book sells or not is often of no concern to the vanity publisher since they have already made their money on the front end. That said, marketing will then become the sole-responsibility of the author since the vanity publisher has fulfilled its contractual obligations once the book is in print and listed on Amazon. Offers to help market may follow, in some cases, but there are always fees attached to these offers. Although self-marketing can produce results, and some do find success and eventually get their initial investment back, many can not really afford to reach into their own pocket or dedicate too much time for marketing. If you fall into this category, please keep reading. The following may help you avoid being put into a position in which vanity clouds your budget-sense or your judgment regarding your ability to truly market your book.

Where a publisher advertises is the first most obvious indicator of its legitimacy. We have all googled publishing and were pleasantly surprised by how many publishers were actually being advertised. This may also have fallen under the category of ‘contest’ with promises of your work being published should your entry reach a certain level of success in the contest. Advertisements asking for submissions on the spot, as well as those disguising themselves with a query form that is later followed up with an enthusiastic call for your manuscript, should be avoided since they will end up costing you, the writer, in the long-run. Well, we have all heard the saying: “If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true!” This is what should come to mind if you are asked to e-mail your manuscript to a publisher through an advertising page. Most legitimate publishers do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, and even queries are often not a possibility. Legitimate publishers will also not advertise and will have home pages where one may be able to send queries. Therefore, when presented with the opportunity to send publishing ideas or even manuscripts via an online advertisement, realize that this is in all likelihood a vanity press and they will accept your work regardless of its quality or marketability. If you are rich and do not mind paying through your teeth, you should have stopped reading by now anyway. However, if you are not rich and do not have the means to pay a lot of money to get your work out there, it means staying on the hard path of sending queries through difficult channels that often produce rejection. You may never become a published author, but at least you can also tell yourself that you were never taken advantage of, like me, by the lure of an advertisement in the process of following your dream.

Submission guidelines are a big part of the process of getting a publisher to eventually have you send a finished manuscript. The legitimate publishing opportunities will require a lot of information about your project such as:

i) a brief synopsis
ii) similarities between your work and other published works
iii) its marketability
iv) information about yourself
v) and some samples are usually requested.

As shown above, in the very brief and incomplete list of possible submission requirements, if you are asked to send a manuscript without having gone through some sort of procedure before hand, then it is probably not a legitimate publisher with a specific publishing mandate. Again, if you have to work for it, and in this case ‘it’ refers to being given the opportunity to send a manuscript, then you can perhaps feel more assured that it is a legitimate publishing opportunity. If it is too easy, then you will most likely be facing hidden fees and an ill-advised method by which your book is going to be sold or even marketed.

No advice offered, thus far, is foolproof of course since the vanity publishers are getting smarter and know what writers are looking for. Sites like “Editors & Preditors” list the known vanity publishers out there, but these companies are changing their names all the time and suffice it to say my rant may not be equated to what some of the craftier vanity presses out there are presenting. Maybe you have gone through a rigorous process before being offered a contract, but you may still need to be wary of certain red flags. A legitimate contract will not have a writer pay to see a work become published. Sometimes these fees are in the form of a minimum requirement of books being purchased by the writers themselves. These companies usually price the book at a much higher price than what would be deemed normal market-value based on printing costs. Sure the writer gets the books and can get the money back if they are sold, but believe me when I say that this is no easy task. Royalties often come into play when deciding if a contract is attractive or not, and vanity publishers can be tricky here too. Often royalties are not paid on the books sold to the author. Often, royalties will be very high as a hook to get writers to sign a contract, but without good marketing your sales will not be significant anyway. Royalties, through legitimate publishing channels, will be modest and very rarely be in the double digits. Marketing strategies will be specified in the contract clauses and this process should include much more than just listing the book on book-selling sites. Again, there will be no fees for marketing with a good publishing contract.

Unfortunately, these fees may not be a consideration weighed by a writer since they are more interested in the perfection that is their book and how it should become the publishers main focus based on its genius. This was my perspective anyway, and perhaps I should not project this on to you. I guess that I am saying that a first-time publishing writer may assume certain things that are not present in a contract. Fees may come to the surface with vanity publishing contracts since the writer didn’t really think about all that goes into marketing a book. Listing a book on Amazon will not guarantee even the sale of one book. Also, there may not be mention in the contract that Amazon takes 50% of the retail value of the book, therefore cutting into the profit from each sale. This, in turn, may affect the ability to reach an agreed-upon profit whereby the vanity publisher will contractually be forced to reimburse the writer with the fees paid. Keep on the lookout for that clause. Promises of free publishing for following works may fall under this profit margin clause as well and Amazon doesn’t really help with optimum profits. Other marketing strategies, in getting a book reach certain heights in sales, is where a legitimate publisher really comes into play. The vanity publisher with either do ‘zero’ marketing outside of listing it on their site or on book-selling sites, or they will present marketing opportunities with fees for the writer. If a contract has some of these red flags, or if the free marketing plan is not specified, then you are probably working with a vanity publisher. I have only scratched the surface of some potential issues that may arise, but perhaps these are some of the key factors to keep in mind.

Writers beware the lure of seeing your work in print at the cost of your financial comfort-zone and time management issues. Upfront fees, when there is zero-risk to the publisher taking your money, is simply unacceptable unless of course you can not live without seeing your book in print. Still, there are other options! Self-publishing is a viable option to those who really dream of getting their work in print. The work really lies in getting the published work out to as many readers as possible. This will still mean self-marketing, but at least you haven’t paid too much up front to get things moving in your favor. Self-publishing or “print-on-demand” publishing will cost money, but it will be a very small fraction of what a vanity publisher might require with almost the same result in the scenario as I’ve described. I wish all of you writers the best of luck in getting your work in the hands of as many readers as possible, but do so on terms that fit your true self and your true agenda. The best way to do this is to get an agent that doesn’t charge fees and, admittedly, this is often just as hard as getting a publisher at times. That is another short essay altogether. Happy writing!

Peter Cassidy

The novice author looking to publish his or her book often finds that producing a book requires learning an entire new terminology, particularly in relation to what is or is not a self-publisher. Subsidy, vanity, self-publishing, and POD are terms often used interchangeably to mean the same or similar things, but these terms do have definitions that separate them.

Most authors dream of being published by a traditional publisher—one who pays to print the author’s book and then pays the author royalties. However, after months or years of mailing out manuscripts to publishers and literary agents, and piles of rejection letters later—if even lucky enough to get a response—many authors ultimately turn to self-publishing.

When self-publishing is first considered, the author finds that homework is required to understand the self-publishing industry. Various blogs and Internet forums about self-publishing will offer advice or commentary about staying away from POD publishers or subsidy publishers, or about the stigmas or pitfalls of self-publishing. These terms are used widely and interchangeably and can be confusing to new authors. Here are a few basic definitions to help authors understand just what these terms mean and a breakdown of what is really required to self-publish a book.

Traditional Publishing: As stated above, a traditional publisher will handle all the publishing and printing costs of the book. Authors will receive royalties for their book’s sales. Throughout the twentieth century, traditional publishing was viewed as the ideal situation for authors because traditional publishers have been viewed as the gatekeepers or judges of whether a book is worthy of publication. Also, traditional publishers would market the books and authors had no risk involved in the publishing costs.

Changes in the marketplace, however, have made it more difficult for traditional publishers to compete, and by extension, it is more difficult for authors to be selected for publication. While traditional publishing still provides a certain sense of legitimacy, self-publishing is a more viable option for most authors, and in many cases, it can also be more lucrative.

Self-Publishing: Self-publishing means, in a general way, that the author publishes the book himself, and he absorbs the cost of publishing the book. The advantage is that the author receives all the profit, but the disadvantage is that self-publishing has a stigma, largely because many authors have self-published poor quality books that could not compete with traditionally published books for a number of reasons from cheap paper and low quality printing to multiple typos.

Self-publishing itself has its degrees of what many consider legitimate self-publishing. A true self-published book, in many people’s opinions, is a book where the author oversaw the entire production from layout to printing and where the author owns the ISBN number, printing the book under his or his own publishing company’s name. While “vanity,” “subsidy,” and “POD” are terms often used in relation to self-publishing, they are more like half-sisters of self-publishing because another publisher besides the author is involved even though the author fronts the costs.

It should be noted, that traditional publishing has only been the dominant form of publishing in the twentieth century, and it is becoming increasingly less dominant in the twenty-first century. In the nineteenth century, most traditional publishers were smaller, some simply being linked to bookstores. Many authors, such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson self-published their books.

Vanity Press: A vanity press is a publisher whom the author pays to publish his book. In the late twentieth century, horror stories were often told about authors who lost their life-savings by paying a vanity press $50,000 or some other outlandish amount to publish a book, only to have the book sell only a few copies. Deciding to self-publish by paying a vanity press was a serious risk because of the cost of publishing and a primary reason why most authors sought traditional publishers. Furthermore, the name suggests that the author was vain—believing his work was deserving of publication—even when the traditional publishers rejected his book. The term is rarely used any longer, largely because other terms have come into usage that better reflect the changes in publishing technology, which have resulted in self-publishing costs decreasing significantly.

Subsidy Press: A vanity press and subsidy press may be interchangeable terms. The difference is that the term subsidy is more commonly used now because it has less stigma. The author still pays the press to publish his book, but in the twenty-first century, the cost of publishing a book has dropped significantly due to digital or POD printing.

POD (Print-On-Demand): The self-publishing world frequently refers to POD publishers or companies, and it uses the term to mean “self-publishing companies” but POD actually means “print-on-demand.” Due to new printing technology—digital printing—it is faster and more cost-effective to print a book. Until recently, books were laid out with moveable type and the process was laborious, time-consuming, and expensive, and consequently, only large print runs were made because it would have been ridiculous to spend the hours or days required to prepare the moveable type to print only one book. Modern computers in the digital age, however, now allow for “print-on-demand” which basically means if someone wants one book, it can be printed almost instantaneously. The result is that printing is faster and cheaper. Many of the smaller traditional publishers use POD.

POD Publishers or Companies: Most references to POD Publishers, besides meaning that these companies use Print-On-Demand or digital printing technology, mean that these are larger self-publishing companies that an author can pay to handle all aspects of book production. These companies are relatively cost-effective. Packages to publish a book can run under $1,000, which includes all aspects of design and layout and usually a small number of printed copies such as 10-50. The author then purchases copies of his books from the POD company, and the more copies he orders, the less he pays. The difference is that these POD companies still mark up the cost of printing the books to make a profit. They make their money selling books to authors, not in selling the author’s books to the public. They still often function somewhat like traditional publishers, however, because they will sell copies directly to bookstores or book distributors, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or Ingram’s; these book sales result in royalty checks to the author. POD companies will also provide their own ISBN numbers and publish the book under their name rather than the author’s own publishing company’s name. Such companies, as stated above, are like half-sisters to both traditional publishing and self-publishing because they mix a little of both worlds.

Co-Publishing Companies: Because of the high costs of publishing, some smaller traditional publishers offer co-publishing.  As usual, the traditional publisher will handle all the publishing and printing costs of the book and authors will receive royalties for their book’s sales. However, the author is asked to purchase, for e.g., 500 copies of the book.

True Self-Publishing: Finally, for those splitting hairs about true self-publishing, the author who truly self-publishes will individually contract with (hopefully) an editor, someone to do layout, interior and cover design, and a separate printer. In this case, the author publishes the book with his own publishing company name he has created for himself, and he separately pays each individual entity—printer, cover design person, interior designer, editor. The author also purchases his own ISBN number and therefore has the book registered as being published by his own company. While this form of self-publishing is a bit more work, and it will probably cost an author more money upfront than using a POD company, the author will be able to print a larger number of books for less per unit (individual book), and the author will also be able to have more control over the ultimate look of the book rather than relying on a POD company, which may use more of a basic template approach to how the book looks.

Which to Choose?

Ultimately, each author must choose which type of self-publishing is best for him or her. To go the easy route, a POD Company might be good to get your feet wet, and then as you become more knowledgeable, you can experiment with true self-publishing by overseeing all aspects of the publication. A POD Company may be ideal for a small print run such as 100 copies for a book you don’t plan to sell or don’t think will sell well, such as publishing Grandpa’s memoirs or a family genealogy that only a small group of people will want, or a book for a specific company or organization. For a novel or non-fiction book with a wider audience, a true self-publishing process might be a better choice. Authors simply must weigh the advantages of both types of self-publishing to determine which is best for his or her special book.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

I admit that in the fall of 2007 I was resistant to the entreaties of a colleague that I consider self-publishing my long-gestating novel MRS. LIEUTENANT.

But in December of that year I had an epiphany.  I was about to reach a “significant” birthday and I couldn’t wait any longer for someone to say yes to me.  And at that moment I was finally open to hearing what my colleague had been saying for months:

Self-publishing today takes many forms but it is definitely not restricted to the old vanity press model where you paid for thousands of books that you then stacked in your garage.

Today one of the easiest options is a print-on-demand (POD) publisher – only the books ordered are printed.  That’s right – even one book at a time I learned.

I signed up with BookSurge, the POD unit of Amazon, and away I went.

Now in fairness to the people reading this guest post, I’ve taught copyediting at the college level.  So I was pretty confident in my proofreading abilities.  But earlier I had hired a book consultant to find the missing element in my book.  (People read the manuscript and liked it but kept saying something was “missing.”)

He was expensive and worth every penny even though the basic problem was the confusion of the timeline of events.  I worked on fixing that, then rewrote once again, and proofread again.

The other advantage I had is that I’d studied advertising design a long time ago.  Thus I knew how important the cover would be.  And while I paid to have a cover designed by BookSurge, I had very strong opinions which were honored.  I wanted the faces of four very different women on the cover representing the four protagonists of the novel.

If you don’t have the background for your own proofreading and cover design, I strongly urge you to get professional help in both these areas.  I’ve read self-published books that haven’t had professional editing – and you can really tell!

Next then comes perhaps the hardest part – marketing your book.  I was lucky in this arena because, while my book was going through the BookSurge stages, MRS. LIEUTENANT was named a semi-finalist in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  We were each given a page on Amazon, and I spotted that another semi-finalist had a blog on her page.  I wanted one too!

That started my intensive quest to learn everything I could about internet marketing.  And the result of that intensive quest led me to becoming an internet marketer and sharing what I’ve learned with others.

And FYI – while some book reviewers still treat self-published books as a stepchild, other reviewers have embraced the wider diversity now available.  Plus the proliferation of blogs that review books means that there’s so much more opportunity to get your book reviewed than there was when print media controlled which books got reviewed and which didn’t.

If you’re a book author and you truly want to see your book published, do consider self-publishing – as long as you have your book professionally edited, get a good cover design, and are prepared to learn how to do the marketing yourself.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://budurl.com/internetbusiness as well as a book author, and her company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com provides internet marketing information with easy-to-implement solutions to promote your brand, book or business. On July 1st her company launched the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program.