In my last entry, I compared “Mainstream” Publishing with Self-Publishing. In this entry, I’ll be comparing Vanity or Subsidy publishing with Self-Publishing. There is quite a bit of bad press out there regarding Vanity publishing. It’s not my place to criticize the Vanity press business model and therefore I will not be mentioning names in this article.

My understanding of a Vanity press is these companies sell themselves as a publishing company to authors. As a publishing company, they own the ISBN number which means they own the rights to the book. While this may not be the case with all Vanity Publishers, who owns the ISBN is a major red flag I think the self-publishing author needs to watch out for.

The second red flag is that when you are working with a Vanity press, you, the author, are still paying the bills as you will with a self-publishing company like ZDocs. So I guess my point here is, why would you pay all the up-front costs for a book you don’t own. Many authors choose this method because they believe the Vanity press will be able to sell their book. This is why Vanity presses get the bad press.

In my earlier entry, I produced a laundry list of what the author pays for and what the “Mainstream” Publisher pays for. Below is the same type of list if you choose to use a Vanity press.

1. The Author writes the book
2. The Vanity Publisher may own the ISBN number
3. The Author pays the Vanity Publisher to design the cover and the inside pages
4. The Author pays the Vanity Publisher to edit the book
5. The Author pays the Vanity Publisher to print the book
6. The Author builds his/her own website or pays for someone else to do so
7. The Author and the Vanity Publisher jointly promotes the book
8. The Vanity publisher takes a large portion of the profit

If you compare the laundry list above to the laundry list if you decided to self-publish (reprinted below) or to publish, then you can begin to see why using a Vanity Publisher may not be a good choice. Or if you do decide to go with a Vanity Publisher, at least you should do so with your eyes wide open.

(The self-publishing laundry list reprinted from earlier entry)

1. The Author writes the book
2. The Author gets his/her own ISBN number
3. The Author designs the cover and the inside pages - or pays someone to do so
4. The Author pays someone to edit the book
5. The Author pays someone to print the book
6. The Author builds his/her own website or pays for someone else to do so
7. The Author does his/her own promotions
8. The Author takes home most of the profit

To summarize the last two entries, you have three basic ways to publish your book.

Get accepted by a “Mainstream” Publisher like Random House

Use a Vanity or Subsidy Publisher

Use a Self-Publishing company (like zdocs)

There are pros and cons to each method and my intent with these two entries is to simply layout the different options. While I would love every author to print with ZDocs, more importantly I hope authors will find the right place to publish their works and find the success they are looking for.

PS I should mention that places like Kinko’s and Alphagraphics and just about any other print shop can help you print your books and these places are not a bad choice at all. You will get the books you pay for, which is half the battle and usually a better option than the Vanity press in my opinion. The downside of working with a Kinko’s-type place is the staff will have little knowledge about self-publishing or even the best way to print your books and as far as I know these places do not offer marketing services.