Vanity publishers

Em_J · Vanity publishers

Maybe we should offer a warning against vanity pubishers? If you know of any, post them here, to warn others. Vanity publishers will tell authors that their work is brilliant then offer to publish it, they'll ask for a stupid amount of money and will do a shoddy job and will leave all the work for the poor author. Luckily I've never had any dealing with vanity publishers but I have heard of Minerva. They are a vanity press.

redwinegoblin

Cheers for that . I've come up against a couple of poetry ones. The usual trick is that you submit your work to a competition and you "win" - the prize being that your work is in an anthology being created by the publishing house.
They'll ask you for an "admin fee" or something similar, then sometimes ask you to pay for a copy of the anthology too.

April_Rose

Good thinking Em_J! Yeah, that's another reason I wouldn't buy the Writer's handbook - they list vanity publishers, whereas the Writers' and Artists yearbook doesn't. There are plenty of horror stories out there of people who paid a fortune and received nothing for it, in some cases not even their books as the company shut itself down and opened up again under a new name, but even if they do get their books they got no marketing assistance or anythign and even had to pay for their own copies as redwinegoblin says, anyone considering an organisation like this should back away and get in touch with lulu or trafford, which at least provide a reputable service. There's a website dedicated to stamping them out and providing information on them - http://www.vanitypublishing.info/ run by a guy called Jonathan Clifford. There's a free advice pack that can be downloaded from the site and he'll also respond to emails from anyone who needs his advice.