Self-Publishing Or Vanity Publishing?
It's not black and white
Last year, in an article called
Self-Publishing
Overview, I said "The simplest definition of subsidy or
vanity publishing is that the intent is to make money from the author
rather than from selling books as traditional publishers do."
That definition is okay, as far as it goes.
But it dawned on me today, it's not enough. The thought was sparked when
I read that Borders Bookstore has formed a partnership with
Lulu.com
to help people publish their books, get them distributed in Borders and
even have readings in Borders. As the Institute for the Future of the
Book says in their blog entry titled
borders self-publishing and the idea of vanity,
this may be the beginning of publishing as life-style.
I love that sort of smug comment, but it's
unworthy of any of us really. Particularly when I think about some of my
clients.
For example:
-
There's the highly
successful business man that wanted a book written and published to
tell his sons how he made his money because he realized they had
been brought up in the lap of luxury, giving them a skewed view of
life.
-
Then there was the 80+
year old woman who couldn't understand something that had happened in
her family when she was growing up. She decided to write it as if she
knew in a novel and she wasn't particularly concerned if anyone else
every read it, but she did want to see it "in print."
-
And the business woman who
wanted to put some of her philosophy, which was guiding the company, in
book form for new employees.
-
We all know of worthy
fund raising efforts that have been successful selling recipe books
full of the recipes of the members - a classic self-publishing
venture.
In each of these
examples, and many more, the goal hasn't been a wide, best selling
type of audience, but a very specific and tiny niche. If Borders and
the others would stick to this type of publishing, no one would
begrudge them a reasonable profit.
Unfortunately, some of
the biggest self-publishing companies seem to specialize in selling
gullible authors additional services, often disguised as marketing
packages, that do nothing but empty the author's bank accounts.
I have one client that
sucked into one of these deals ignoring my advice and the advice of
others. He got positively bamboozled by a sales pitch that required
him to spend additional thousands, totally rewriting the book all to
get what was represented as some sort of special promotion. Last I
heard he still didn't have a book.
The book he and I created was fine - not great, but not bad either,
and fit what he was originally trying to do. Had he stuck with his
original plan, he'd be off and running.
He didn't get stuck in
life-style publishing, but I suspect, with a dream that might be
called greed. That's what I fear for others who are far from clear
about what they want with and from their books. That clarity plus a
dose of realism is what's required for success in my not very humble
opinion on this topic.
Write well and often,
See also
Some Thoughts on
Self Publishing and
Self-Publishing, a Cautionary Tale
