Vanity press: or is it?

[markdeniz]

Following on from the cracking post by KV Taylor regarding the pricing of e-books, I was thinking about vanity press, being as that is seen as much worse than self-publishing. I remember getting my acceptance for my second novel a few years ago along with a £300 fee for god knows what, I can’t remember now, and asking a few in the know for advice.

Comments

[markdeniz]

Nope, yours was pretty well edited as I remember and was more a case of it not fitting into the Morrigan Books catalogue that lead to its rejection (we've rejected a lot over the last few months unfortunately).

I wasn't aware you'd printed for the literature course but that was a good move, I hope they all enjoyed it.

Who took the book? Glad to see it's in print!

[markdeniz]

Cool, keep me informed, as I'd be more than happy to forward some links and such at the time!

Very pleased you made the comment, totally fine. I like a good debate and it's very interesting to hear various sides of the arguments, rather than having a fixed mindset and sticking to that (which would be suicide for a publisher today).

So keep them coming! :)

[mylefteye]

While there are always exceptions (such as Rachel's), I'm in the 'against self-publishing' camp. I'm a little troubled by the current attitude of some self-pubbers of late. I'm hearing, "It's ok, it's only an e-book!" And "I'm only asking 99cents so it's not like the buyer is losing anything if they don't enjoy my book." Well, actually, I'd rather pay a tenner for a well-crafted novel than a similar amount for ten poorly written books, because the real investment when it comes to reading is time. Mine is precious.

[markdeniz]

Of course the buyer is losing things - like you said, time, and, like I keep saying, faith and respect in the author selling the book. I mean if you're not going to take the time and effort to make your book the best it can be then why should I want to take the time to read it and why on earth would I be inclined to buy further titles from you?

In fact this has become such a worry for me that I am even becoming a little prejudiced towards publishing self-published authors, especially if I know how they went about it. See, in general I am not as negative about self-publishing per se but I am worried about the way some authors are making the whole thing look to others.

I've been trying my best not to get angry at this but I am getting very, very angry!

[mylefteye]

"...I mean if you're not going to take the time and effort to make your book the best it can be..."

Ah, and there's the rub, y'see. I'm sure most self-pubbed authors work just as hard as those that actually sell their work. The difference is, self-pubbers are prepared to trust their abilities to edit and proof their own work. My advice to them would be to workshop extensively. They'd be amazed at how far from complete their 'finished' ms is.

[markdeniz]

I agree they work hard to sell it, I'm just not sure that trusting their own abilities to edit and proof is paramount in their minds.

I mean, you sub to a publisher and they reject it on the grounds that it needs a heavy edit. What would you do then? I'd definitely see what I thought needed doing to fix it, and then when I was sure, I'd make sure others saw before I sent it to the next publisher...

I think impatience would be my keyword here - impatience upon seeing the long road ahead.

[martyn44]

When I send something out it is as good as I can make it - at that moment - and I know my work benefits from editing (ask the Amandas!) This is because what makes sense to me sometimes doesn't make sense to anyone else. Which is why getting an acceptance will always be such a hell of a buzz, because communication has taken place. The object of the exercise

[markdeniz]

I fear the Amandas! ;)

On this point I understand self-publishing completely. I mean why have your novels sat around gathering virtual dust because they haven't found the right publisher or because they skirt too many genre limitations?

This comes back to my chat with Mike about the problem being rejected novels that are self-published, as that smacks of impatience and a reluctance to get the job done.

I was willing to take a risk on your genre-skating novel for Morrigan Books but I would never have done it without having an editor to work with you.

I'm wondering if the next [positive] phase could be that of writers self-publishing, with the help of an editor, prepared to put their name to it, whilst knowing it has not gone through a publisher and knowing that it might not get the distribution and marketing options that a publisher may offer.

As an editor, I would be more than prepared to buy into that venture!

[martyn44]

Everything you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence against you. Or not, as the case may be.

[angriest]

One thing that's always occured to me is that if you self-publish your own music album, there's a whole indie music crowd who will lap it up. If you write and direct your own independent play, there's a whole theatre crowd who will lap it up (I won Western Australia's top theatre writer's award doing just that). If you write, draw and self-publish your own comic, there's a whole indie scene who love that sort of thing.

And that situation simply doesn't exist in prose fiction. It's like the assumption is reversed: in other cases people are hopeful of quality and then are either pleased or disappointed. With self-published novels we (and I include myself) assume it will be dreadful and then are either pleasantly surprised or simply have our worst thoughts confirmed.

Why is this?

[markdeniz]

A very good question and I think it might be down to both a perception of literature in general but also because the amount of truly terrible self-published stuff out there is amazing.

I know a lot of music that doesn't make it through the channels for similar reasons but if you can create music then there is a always a chance that our judgments are based on taste.

Literature is hard and cold and unforgiving, I mean if you can't spell, use grammatical functions and still send your book to be published without having it edited then this sort of thing is surely going to happen:

http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html

[fixnwrtr]

While in general, I agree with your about self-publishing, I do know there are good books that have been self-published. Mine, for instance. Oh, you didn't know I just put out an e-book version of Among Women and am about to put out a print version? Imagine that.

Vanity publishing has always had plenty of fodder to feed to the printing presses because everyone thinks they can write a book. Most can't. I've seen and edited and refused to edit more than my share. Take my book, for instance. I know. It's all about me. Not really, but it does illustrate a difference and that is the point.

I wrote the first draft of Among Women here on LJ 2-1/2 years ago. It was 40,000 words and twelve chapters and it was a good beginning, which is what it was meant to be. I spent the next 2-1/2 years making it better, during which time I submitted it to my publisher and the editor sat on it for 18 months. I kept taking it apart and putting it together again until I was almost satisfied. She turned it down, saying nothing happened. What!? No problem, I

[markdeniz]

Ah, see, you come under that section I wrote about, probably in my comments over at my newer blog. In this I mentioned that I would be more than happy to edit a novel if it was someone I respected and I thought I could help them out (time permitting of course).

And I've subscribed for quite some time that vanity publishing is much worse than self-publishing, for reasons that I will go into in another post - I hope.

Keep me updated on the novel and its progress, as I'd love to have a look at it!

And good luck with it!

But unfortunately for those self-publishing, there always has to be a spanner in the works, and here's the latest: http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html

[fixnwrtr]

It never goes well when an author questions the reviewer or goes off on a tear, and it's very unprofessional. For instance: Anne Rice's public meltdown.

The book is out and already at all stores on Smashwords, except Apple. Don't know what the problem is there, but they should have it fixed soon.