The whole Harlequin Horizons kerfuffle has been rampaging around the blogosphere for the past two weeks. I haven’t said anything about it because I haven’t had anything new to say in regards to it that others haven’t said better. Here’s a list from Making Light of write-ups from the pro organizations. Read these links and then come back.
Now, I’ve said before I don’t look down on self-publishing as long as you know what you’re getting into. That no one will market your book. That you won’t be in book stores. And that it is extremely unlikely you will be a star. You’ll get a book with your name on the cover and your story inside. Whether anyone buys, reads, and enjoys it is up to your marketing and writing abilities.
But vanity publishing is a nastier subject.** Like I said, many people have written about this, and I won’t go over other arguments. I’ve been thinking about how to approach this and I finally came up with what’s bugging me about vanity publishers.
Your goal is to write books and get them into people’s hands. You want people to buy your books. A publisher puts out books. They work hard to acquire, edit, market, and distribute the books. (Yes, many authors think that the publishers don’t market enough, but you gotta admit they do more for your book than PoDs and vanity presses do.) The key – KEY – thing here is that both authors and publishers expect people to buy the books. They are on the same side. It’s author and publisher on one side, readers on the other. Not against each other, but one side gives money, the other accepts.
| —–> Author | |
| | | |
| | | |
| Publisher <– | —- Readers’ $$ |
(Yeah. I suck at ASCII. And this theme apparently ignores “border=0.”) So when you look at vanity publishers, they have a different business plan.
| ————> (maybe) | <——Authors’ $$ |
| | | / |
| Publisher <———– | |
| \ | |
| <—- Readers’ $$ (maybe) |
See the difference?
A lot of people ask how they can tell if a publisher is vanity or legit. I think the website litmus test is quite good: the group they point their message at is who gives them their largest revenue stream. Legitimate publishers point their websites toward readers. Vanity presses point their websites toward authors.
This makes sense. The website is a big marketing tool, and you use it to make money. The websites that say they are THERE TO HELP YOU COMPLETE YOUR DREAM are really saying YOU WILL GIVE US MONEY. When they say LOOK AT OUR AWESOME BOOKS, they are saying READERS WILL GIVE US MONEY AND THEN WE’LL GIVE SOME TO YOU.
Yog’s Law is a basic, basic premise that you should keep in mind whenever you’re getting ready to pull out that checkbook or credit card. Learn it. When you say you want to be a writer, are you saying that you want to publish a book, or make money publishing a book? There’s a difference.
- ** Print on Demand publishing is usually free to the author. Vanity publishing is when the author puts money up front to buy their books.
- *** Yog’s Law: money should flow toward the author. James D. MacDonald
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Interesting distinction between PoD and vanity presses – I hadn’t thought of it like that, but it’s a good distinction to make. Jason Calacanis made a similar distinction on the tech venture capital circuit, where some companies were charging startups thousands to have a small slot of time to present to “angel investors”. The reality is that these companies didn’t make money off the investors, they made it off the unlucky startups, who found themselves presenting to people who were largely just looking to take more of their money (patent lawyers, marketing reps, etc.). Meanwhile, as Calacanis states, real VCs like him are more than happy to hear people’s ideas for no charge, because they want to invest, they want to find the next google or youtube before it is big. Similarly, real publishers won’t charge you to print your story – they want the next King, Pratchett, Brown, Rowling to be published by them. They are not always as accessible as writers would like, but turning to merchants who want to charge you is not going to be the best alternative. Calacanis fought back against the tech scams by starting his own free show (with Michael Arrington I think) to compete, and stomped them largely out of business quickly. I don’t see publishers doing the same, since manuscripts take a lot longer to protest than a 15 minute concept pitch and there is such a huge glut of wannabe writers. But there are alternatives to the vanity presses, and any of those is likely to be a cheaper and better way to try to get out there (competitions, DIY podcast, podcast submissions, online zines, e-publishing, PoD, I’m sure there are more).
[...] Joanna Penn on January 13, 2010 I first heard of Yog’s Law from author and podcaster Mur Lafferty, and thought it would be good to share an explanation here. Originally from author James D. [...]