[SCA-Dance] to darius et al

Justin du coeur jducoeur at gmail.com
Tue Dec 18 11:46:52 EST 2012


On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 5:41 PM, Niki <janeeve2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 2. There is nothing wrong with self publishing or vanity press. I should
> know, I self published my novella. In addition,  I know many academics who
> have had to self publish their research in recent years.


On the one hand, this is true.  That said, it comes with some big caveats.
 The problem is that many companies like this like to pretend that they're
"real" publishers, and they aren't -- real publishers mostly focus on
things like editing, marketing, and stuff like that.  Vanity presses
generally provide little-to-no editing, zero marketing, and often little or
no distribution -- many of them are really just printers in disguise,
frequently less useful than, eg, CafePress.

That can work for someone like you, who has the drive to do all the hard
legwork.  But most folks who sign up with these companies are suckers who
think that all they have to do is *write*, and people will buy their books,
not understanding the enormous post-publication effort required for
marketing.  That's usually a recipe for failure.  So it isn't for most
folks, at least if they actually want any sales.

Also, some of these companies are really nasty scams; from what others have
mentioned, this sounds like it might be one of those.  The scam artists
take more or less all of the income derived from the book (even more than
usual) by setting impossibly high break-evens, and sometimes try to steal
the rights through contractual trickery, leaving the author with nothing.
 (As opposed to a reasonably legitimate vanity press, which is no-frills
but is at least decently honest and upfront.)


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