"Publish your Book"

[Cleopatra]

I read about iUniverse in NYT.

This is from their official site:
http://www.iuniverse.com/

We help authors to prepare a manuscript, design and self-publish a book of professional quality, publicize and market their book, and print copies of their book for sale online and in bookstores around the world.

I think that it's a revolutioinary idea that on the long run will change the landscape in books' publshing. I certainly approve of it since I hate the dictatorship of the Publishers.

One might bring as a counter argument that the existence of a respectable publiisher is a guarantee of the quality of the book. I believe that this argument is valid only when we are talking about scientific or historical books, and not when we are talking about literature.

Think that even Jane Austen has been rejected repeatedly by publishers....

[geni]

The vanity press has been around for years. However I would be very very paranoid about using it considering the number of past conmen who have been involved with it.

[crimresearch]

The fact is, that there are just way too many people who can strum a guitar, or make a poem, or scribble a picture, or write a story...too many model skinny faces....and the available market for their work can barely support the truly great ones.

But there are plenty of people who stand ready to 'help' the 'ruck of the bob-tailed fiddlers, the let's-go-easies, the fair-to-middlers'**...


For a price.


** SVB

[Kiless]

Originally posted by geni
The vanity press has been around for years. However I would be very very paranoid about using it considering the number of past conmen who have been involved with it.

Vanity press has certainly worked for a lot of wackjobs out there. :(

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by crimresearch
The fact is, that there are just way too many people who can strum a guitar, or make a poem, or scribble a picture, or write a story...too many model skinny faces....and the available market for their work can barely support the truly great ones.

But there are plenty of people who stand ready to 'help' the 'ruck of the bob-tailed fiddlers, the let's-go-easies, the fair-to-middlers'**...


For a price.


** SVB

Oh boy! I didn't get a word of this. And I was just ready to send to iUniverse my first book written in English :p

Do you mean that services like iUniverse give the opportunity to mediocres to publish rubbish, an opportunity they wouldn't have with a publisher?

[Kiless]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
Oh boy! I didn't get a word of this. And I was just ready to send to iUniverse my first book written in English :p

Do you mean that services like iUniverse give the opportunity to mediocres to publish rubbish, an opportunity they wouldn't have with a publisher?

Oh, absolutely. For a small, tiny, tiny fee.... and if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.... :D Yes, in fact I recall the case of 'The Silent Twins', Jennifer and June Gibbons, who got a publisher who did vanity press prints, to publish their pulp novel. You may find that any loon out there can get themselves in print quite easily; just because it is in print doesn't mean it's an authority text (*cough, anything written by Uri Gellar, cough*).

Here you go: http://www.answers.com/topic/vanity-press

[Kiless]

Ah, this also reminded me:

A popular author in Australia, pulp fiction writer Matthew Reilly (a lawyer like yourself, Cleopatra) wrote a book called 'Contest' that was rejected by many publishing companies. As a last resort, he self published and went around with his thousand or so copies to every major bookstore in his town, asking if they'd put them in the stands for him. They did so. And they sold quite rapidly. He even registered an ISBN number and designed the cover himself - the whole lot.

More info on him and his first book:
http://www.answers.com/topic/matthew-reilly
http://www.matthewreilly.com/high/b_con_review.htm

They're not really my 'cup of tea' but I find him admirable for his tenacity. Told him this when he came to my city for a signing tour. Nice fellow. :)

[crimresearch]

And to be fair, there are some talented people who are going to be shut out by the very nature of the legitimate pusblishing industry...
And they may turn to a print on demand service, just as musicians do when they print off a hundred copies of their self produced CD.

And every once in a blue moon, one of those people makes it to the big time....which is the lure that keeps everyone else paying the fees.

[Phil]

Originally posted by crimresearch
And to be fair, there are some talented people who are going to be shut out by the very nature of the legitimate pusblishing industry...

Like Phil S. Philbert (aka me)

My stack of rejection notices have a distinct "I haven't even read your manuscript" feel to them.

[geni]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
Oh boy! I didn't get a word of this. And I was just ready to send to iUniverse my first book written in English :p

Do you mean that services like iUniverse give the opportunity to mediocres to publish rubbish, an opportunity they wouldn't have with a publisher?

If they are unusually honest yes.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
Think that even Jane Austen has been rejected repeatedly by publishers....

Every published author has been rejected repeatedly by publishers. That doesn't mean that the publishers don't know a good thing when they see it, though. Publishers turn down a book for several reasons, not all which are related to quality.

Anyway, the golden rule of author - publisher relationship is "Money always flows to the author." No serious publisher will ever demand fees or payment for their services from the author.

In general, if you really want to publish a book that you can't find a publisher for (but realise that the publishers probably have a much better understanding of what books will earn money than you do yourself, so if they don't want to try and make money out of your book, it's very unlikely you're going to be able to do it yourself,) you would be better off by having the book printed at a print-shop and then self distribute, or by publishing it through some kind of print-on-demand service, than by using a vanity publisher.

[kookbreaker]

My mother is actually publishing a book via a vanity press style service. There was a fee, but that was a fair one for set-up and pictures. After that, it seems to be a 'print-on-demand' deal. This is a subdivision of some bigger publishing company, and if 2000 copies of the book sell they will take a closer look at it.

Had she worked at it, she might have found a publisher, but I think she's gotten a little fed up with the long times taken just to get a rejection, or them asking for another 100 pages and not getting back to her when she submitted them.

A few expenses for self-publishing are no big deal, its when they make you buy 500 copies or somesuch that you've got a potential scam going.

[Cleopatra]

Originally posted by Leif Roar
No serious publisher will ever demand fees or payment for their services from the author.

In Greece this happens, I am afraid. That's why we have so few respectable publishers.


you would be better off by having the book printed at a print-shop and then self distribute, or by publishing it through some kind of print-on-demand service, than by using a vanity publisher. I don't understand that. What is the difference?

[Kiless]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
I don't understand that. What is the difference?

The same as Matthew Reilly did. He self-published.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
I don't understand that. What is the difference?

Distribution and cost, basically.

A serious publisher will take your manuscript, give it to an editor who will go through the text and send it back to you with a lot of red comments for your to fix, then when the manuscript is really finished they will typeset the book and print a reasonable number of books which they will then distribute through their distribution network of book grocers and connected book stores. They will also promote your book by sending out press releases, mentioning them to the right people, sending out review copies, doing advertisments, arranging book readings and signing tours. The publisher will bear all the costs and risk (and if the book makes money, they will take their share of the earnings.)

A vanity publisher will claim to do all of the above, but they will charge you exorbidant fees for the privlege, their services will be almost worthless, they'll print a tiny number of books which they will send out through a distribution "network" that's practically non-existant, and do practically no advertising of your book all.

If you print and distribute the book yourself, you have to do all the editing, typesetting, graphical layout, spell-checking, distribution and advertisement work yourself; and a person without a publisher to back them has practically no chance of getting into any of the major chains. While you have to pay for the printing, that's pretty much the only thing you have to pay for (although printing a small number of books will typically have a fairly large cost per book.)

Basically, a publisher earns their money from selling books. They will help you get your book published so they can make money from selling it. A vanity publisher pretends to do the same, but they really make their money from getting would-be authors to paying them fees for "publishing" their books. They don't make money from actually selling the books, and therefor they don't have any interest in actually promoting the book or getting it widely distributed.

[Chaos]

In short, by the point the book is printed, the vanity press has already made a profit, while a serious publisher hasn´t and is therefore extremely interested in getting the book to sell.

Which is why I have seen authors refer to vanity publishing as "giving your book a first-class burial".

[bigred]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
I read about iUniverse in NYT.

This is from their official site:
http://www.iuniverse.com/



I think that it's a revolutioinary idea that on the long run will change the landscape in books' publshing. I certainly approve of it since I hate the dictatorship of the Publishers.
Amen.

[Lemastre]

Three of my friends have recently published books via "vanity" presses and so far are quite pleased with the results. The presses are upfront regarding what services they provide and do not con anyone. My friends' books are typographically attractive, with nicely designed covers (designs the vanity press provided because the authors chose not to) and are well bound in paperback form.

It is well to realize that the computer has changed the way these books are produced (and other sorts of books as well). Conventional typesetting and printing are not necessarily used nowadays. Back when they were about the only way to get a book done, the authors had to buy a certain number of copies in order to cover typesetting and printing costs. Nowadays, authors provide word-processor files, which the publisher feeds into its own system, where typography is established, and then publishes a very small initial run, using some sort of facsimile system – not traditional letterpress – and thereafter runs off as many or as few copies as the author requests. Thus, the author doesn't end up with a garage full of unsold copies.

Relying on the author of the vanity book to do his own proofing and so forth is not the losing proposition it might once have seemed to an author. Nowadays I find plenty of goofs in books from the big, prestigious publishers who are supposed to ride herd on this sort of thing, and I'm able to help my vanity-author friends avoid a lot of this with relatively little expediture of my time, as could any fairly literate person.

[crimresearch]

Are you referring to print on demand, or vanity presses?

Because the vanity presses charge more than the going rate with implied promises of fame and fortune.

How do your friends rate their sales, distribution, promotion, book tours, and so forth compared to large publishing houses?

[epepke]

Originally posted by crimresearch
Are you referring to print on demand, or vanity presses?

I think that's the issue.

In this thread, people have been slamming iUniverse as a vanity press. I don't know that this is wrong, but there does seem to be a market for print-on-demand houses, and I think it's a bit of an excessive generalization to dichotomize the industry into big publishing versus vanity press.

The dichotomy may have made some sense when there were a lot of publishers of books, but now, basically, all the "serious" publishers are owned by a handful of people, and they all have access to the same homogonizers. Compare with Clear Channel radio.

So there is a niche opportunity for smaller but still legitimate publishers who aren't part of the system. Again, I don't know if iUniverse is one of them, but it seems to me counterproductive to tar all with the "vanity press" brush.

[H3LL]

Has anyone used CafePress.com?

Their FAQ on books here (http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/bookfaq.aspx).

There seems to be no cost, just publishing as and when a customer wants it.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by H3LL
Has anyone used CafePress.com?

Their FAQ on books here (http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/bookfaq.aspx).

There seems to be no cost, just publishing as and when a customer wants it.

I haven't used them for books, but I have used them to create personalised T-shirts and other items for friends. They're rather pricy if you want more than a few pieces of the item, but they're quick and easy to use, there's no up-front fees, and I haven't had any delays or problems with them even when I've ordered to shipping addresses on my side of the Atlantic.

I'm not sure if I'd use them for books though, as I'm not too thrilled with their binding options. It might be cheaper and just as good to print out the pages on a home printer and then take them to a print shop to get them bound; at least if you want more than a very small number of books.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Cleopatra
Oh boy! I didn't get a word of this. And I was just ready to send to iUniverse my first book written in English :p

Do you mean that services like iUniverse give the opportunity to mediocres to publish rubbish, an opportunity they wouldn't have with a publisher?

Well, since they'll accept pretty much all and every book, yes. It might be somewhat unfar to describe iUniverse as another vanity publisher, though. They don't seem to be an out and out scam, at least. Here are a few articles I found that might be of interest to you:

http://www.sfwa.org/Beware/printondemand.html
http://www.publishingtrends.com/copy/03/0305/0305vanity.html
http://www.fonerbooks.com/q_vanity.htm

[Lemastre]

Crimresearch distinguishes between "vanity presses" and "print on demand," a distinction I haven't made, I guess. If the former are prone to overstating their ability to sell books and otherwise engage in pumping up the authors' egos, then then they are engaged in more of a scam than a publishing venture. My friends are too shrewd to fall for this. They tend to balance their own pretty objective appraisal of their work against what it will cost them to get it into book form. They haven't the time or inclination to go chasing after literary agents, who are apparently about the only persons from whom major publishers will accept manuscripts by new authors these days. So they use the "print on demand" publishers.

Two of my three author friends are elderly persons whose books are travel memoirs covering 50 years of gadding about the world. They don't aspire to literary careers. The third is a much younger person in the head-hunting business who self-published his first novel and is currently putting together a book on how to write the best resumé.

[ranson]

I think iUniverse is actually a non-scam publisher. This novel (link to Amazon) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0595325114/qid=1115218102/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-9938894-8362441?v=glance&s=books) was promoted by the author through his website (a popular webcomic), convention tours, and word-of-mouth, and he's done fairly well with it, reaching the Amazon top-twenty for a brief period. This, after about two years of working with other editors and publishers for pretty much no return on investment. He's working on a second book, and I wouldn't be suprised to see him go through iUniverse again. In all, it's anecdotal evidence, but it is positive.

[DrMatt]

"Vanity" presses make their money up front from the author, rather than from long-term investments. They're the only part of publishing not hit quite so hard by Internet piracy.

The fact that something is published by author subsidy doesn't mean it's necessarily mediocre. And some presses will only accept stuff above a certain level of quality. Buyer beware, though.

[epepke]

Originally posted by DrMatt
The fact that something is published by author subsidy doesn't mean it's necessarily mediocre. And some presses will only accept stuff above a certain level of quality. Buyer beware, though.

There's a book by Edward Tufte called The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which is the finest book about graphing and other forms of visualization ever written. The first edition, at least, was published at the expense of the author, because no publisher would touch it. I'm not sure about subsequent editions.