Self-Publishing Companies??

frankly self publishing is a blackhole down which you will pour a lot of time and effort, and possibly money. If you want to write, make money, and possibly 'make it' then you need to go to a traditional publisher. It's a tough old game....seems like everyone is writing a book these days, however, that said, you sound young and that's a HUGE advantage over us older writers. The publishing biz loves bright young talent...they tend to look better on the publicity material, and on TV....so they tend to get more marketing spend because of that. Plus....being young you'll know the cool things like the language, attitude, what's hip music, high school lingo etc etc, and the publishing biz loves that too.

So, if you've got a book that's aimed at YA market, preferably high school/teenage saga from a girl's perspective full of teen issues, funky language, a bit of romance, a little fooling around, an IT issue like drugs or teenage pregnancy....and your writing style is minimally articulate, you've got it made.

Hmm...do I sound a bit too cynical here?

"Self-publishing company" is all too often a euphemism for "vanity press."

Whose ISBN would be on the book?

Self-publishing in general is a very poor idea for the novelist. Those who want readers (and the money that comes with readers) should look to publishing with a major house. The way to do that is well known -- first, write a good book. Then, submit it.

If you're writing fiction, don't self-publish.

Is anyone else noticing a suspicious flood of these threads at the moment? Moreso than usual, I mean...

Richard said:

Is anyone else noticing a suspicious flood of these threads at the moment? Moreso than usual, I mean...

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Yes.

Fortunately, these are questions with clear and well-known answers.

Unfortunately, people will keep asking these questions.

And every time we give the same answers:

Bad idea. Those lists of famous authors who self-published are exceedingly misleading. Publishers who have their hands in the authors' pockets are there because they can't sell books to the public.

So it goes. Answer the question a hundred times this week, and next week someone will pop up to say, "Yes, but what about my book?"

Everyone wants to be the exception.

To follow up on what Jim said, I blawgged on this about a year ago:

Autobibliophilia

Is this vanity publishing or not?

In our small country, where it seems everyone claims to be a writer, there are lots of novels looking for homes. We have very few fiction publishers.

We have a so called reputable publisher who runs a popular fiction novel competition each year. The winner is published by said publisher with a straight forward publishing deal. Authors of novels on the short list are often offered a publishing deal too. One where they are asked to pay half or more of the publishing costs to see their book in print. Is this vanity publishing?

The publisher does use normal channels to sell the books and claims that the writers must share the cost as the company can't afford to publish the books otherwise.

It's causing big problems as one of the best ways to sustain yourself as a fiction writer in NZ is to get on to the gravy train of annual Arts grants, residences and prizes. To do so you have to have a published body of work, usually a novel. So there are quite a few squawks going up about why X has a grant when she paid for her novel to be published!

I have been offered one of these publishing deals. Help me out. Is it vanity publishing or not?

I can't really speak to the publishing situation in New Zealand. I'm familiar with the United States, but not everywhere in the world is the same.

Do you have well-known commercial writers? Have you asked their advice? World wide, I think, you'll find that writers are very helpful to other writers.

Difficult isn't it?

I've tried that UJ. The popular/commercial fiction writers I know publish their work with overseas publishers. Privately to me they say things like: 'it sounds like vanity publishing.' For obvious financial and market advantages they all recommend publishing with an international publisher.

Problem was my novel was very NZ in content, idiom and philosophy so that the international publishers I tried were very friendly but said it was too specifically New Zealand for them but: 'Do try a local publisher.'

The national writers' organisations won't commit to saying anything publically although one committee member I've spoken to calls it 'a publishing disgrace'. I'm told the organisations won't speak on the topic because many of their members are amateur and hobby writers who self publish everything they write and the organisations don't want to upset these members!

The only clue I've got is that our one national magazine which has a regular section discussing books and reviewing the new ones puts a notice in about this publisher when printing reviews of their books. Above the very brief reviews goes something like: 'the following books were paid to be published by their authors in part or in full.' And the reviews are not the usual long detailed ones.

My gut feeling is that it is vanity publishing but it's difficult. We do have a history of govt and/or organisational funding for the publishing of non-fiction books that might have only a small market appeal but are held to be of cultural importance to New Zealand. But this publisher deals in popular fiction which does not have a history of being subsidised.

Thank you for your input.

pdr said:

Is it vanity publishing or not?

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In the US, the model is called "cooperative publishing," and it's considered vanity.

Aconite said:

In the US, the model is called "cooperative publishing," and it's considered vanity.

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...because the publisher's assurances that it's contributing cash and/or services are usually false. The author's fees cover not just the full cost of publishing, but overhead and profit too.

I think there may still be a few genuine subsidy/cooperative publishers in specialized markets, such as poetry and academic books, but apart from this they really don't exist any longer in the US or UK. A claim to be a subsidy publisher is nearly always a marketing ploy designed to make writers feel better about paying to publish, and a sneaky way to dodge the v-word.

- Victoria

Thanks for that information

Thank you, Aconite and Victoria Strauss.

It's a really tricky one and whilst I agree with UJ that money flows to the writer and you don't pay publishers it's been hard to explain to any beginner writers why this is Vanity publishing. Especially as the publisher runs this annual comp where the winner of the competiton gets a genuine contract, a money prize and pays nothing to have their book published. It makes the publisher look respectable.

I am now finding that there are always one or two students in my writing classes who think forking out anything from $6000-$12000 to see their novel published by this publisher is not Vanity publishing because the winners don't pay. I'll be sending them to your website for a quick lesson, Victoria!

pdr said:

I have been offered one of these publishing deals. Help me out. Is it vanity publishing or not?

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I would class it as vanity and so would most of the people who sit on those grant committees. There are a fair number of NZ presses and I would be inclined to look at smaller presses rather than this deal. Also consider university presses and those in Australia -- a much larger market but one open to Kiwi dialect and setting.

Are you a literary writer? Have you taken part in a creative writing graduate program like the one at VUW. That seems to be how most NZ literary writers are doing it these days. Genre writing is trickier and tends to work via overseas presses but a NZ tone might not worry genre publishers so much?

Interesting question.

Now that you've mentioned a figure, pdr - $6,000-$12,000 - it certainly sounds more like vanity publishing than cooperative. Of course, it depends on the number of copies you get for that kind of money.

In the particular circumstances of the New Zealand market, it doesn't surprise me that this scenario exists. A population of only 4 million makes fiction publishing a difficult and risky proposition. Even here in Australia, with a population of 20 million, many of our publishers are marginal operations, especially in the current environment where worldwide a relatively small number of (mainly overseas) blockbuster novelists are claiming the lion's share of book sales. As a result, the number of new fiction titles published here each year is depressingly small. This is despite the fact that per capita, Australia and New Zealand are the biggest book readers/buyers in the world, trumped only by Iceland. (Something to do with living on an island?) Another factor is the long-term distribution stranglehold that for historical reasons British publishers had on Commonwealth countries, followed by more recent trends towards global aggregation in the publishing industry.

For that kind of money, one could self-publish and be in complete control, in fact for rather less dough than that. Perhaps more important than the definition of vanity vs coop in this case, however, is the likelihood of commercial success by publishing in either manner, and that all comes down to distribution. If the publisher in question is a bona-fide publisher with a sales/marketing force and established, effective distribution channels, going with them, even with (gulp) that kind of outlay, could still be a better proposition for one-who-is-determined-to-be-published-locally than trying to go it alone.

It's quite possible in this case that up-front payment by authors to secure publication of their work is a reflection of market circumstances rather than a manifestation of the dreaded 'V' word. And it should be easy enough to check the pub house's credentials and distribution arrangements.

HollieKastel said:

I'm confident about my marketing techniques so I'm not worried about my success as an author.

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Drop back by in a year and tell us how it all worked out for you, okay?

Now I'm curious about the state of publishing in New Zealand. Are the bookstores there stocked with books from these so-called subsidy presses, or are most of the books on their shelves from foreign companies?

Small markets!

(I've been trying to leave a response here for a couple of days but every time the wretched message disappears into the ether and I'm told I'm not logged on. I'm surprised the message board hasn't burnt up as a result of my rude remarks because I have logged on every time and have even managed to leave a couple of messages elsewhere.)

Sorry not to get back to you, Pianoman and Veinglory for your helpful comments.
MS Matt, no, NZ bookshops are like yours and don't usually sell self published books. They do however have a special shelf or rack to display NZ fiction. The NZ non-fiction holds its own among the international non-fiction very well and is most profitable. NZ fiction is treated with suspicion by NZ readers and regarded as 'inferior' to international fiction. Mind you NZ fiction marketing often isn't up to scratch, and the covers are often so dull!

Veinglory, don't start me off on Bill Manhire's Creative Writing lot at Vic Uni. I'm a bit old for the course even if I were accepted, but I'd be thrown out within an hour for my 'heresies'. I don't like the much revered Owen Marshall's short stories and am apt to call a lot of what the students produce as arty-farty pretentious crap. It has become a bit of a clone factory too but is, so it seems, a sure fire way to get a writer's grant! I stick to selling my stuff overseas because I get paid for it overseas and am holding out for a a publishing company like Penguin who can give me an NZ, Oz and UK book launch and a print run of 10,000!

For NZ writers it's that small markets base of 4 million. I understand from what my friends tell me that their NZ published fiction gets a print run of between 1500 and 2000. One writer friend won the national and most prestigious Katherine Mansfield short story award. She had lots of good publicity, her story was well liked and she sold her novel based on the story's characters to a local publisher. Published to good reviews and tons of publicity her novel did well by NZ standards and sold around 800 copies. But you can't eat for long on that income. Her publisher is a small NZ one with no real contacts to international publishing and has not been able to sell her novel overseas and she's tied to them for 10 years!

Yes, Pianoman, the pub house's credentials and distribution arrangements seem respectable but I'd be a lot happier about them if they were open about what they do and said they offered co-operative publishing deals for fiction. Also I don't likethe way they get their customers through the popular fiction novel competition.