Thomas Nelson Publishing / WestBow Press

Vanity presses really don't like Yog's Law. It cuts into their bottom line.

Thanks again everybody for the continued dialog! While I have been in traditional publishing for nearly 20 years, I have not explored non-traditional publishing until the last year or so—and I continue to learn.

Much of the frustration expressed here seems to stem from semantics. Some people feel very passionate that “self-publishing” is okay but “vanity” publishing is not. Others seem to feel either one is okay as long as the author is making an informed choice.

Our perspective is that there are a number of aspiring authors out there who want to see their book in print and do not have the ability (time, knowledge, perseverance, or some other factor) to publish the book themselves (self-publish). They have considered it (some to greater lengths than others), but would rather just pay a publishing company to do it for them.

Whether WestBow is called a vanity press or a publishing services provider or a self-publishing services provider or a non-traditional publisher or some other name does not really matter to us or to most of the authors we serve. We help them get their book in print, and we strive to make a profit doing so. We state our offers very clearly, and we deliver what we offer.

We are monitoring the books that we publish and will offer a traditional publishing contract to some authors. We try not to play up that angle too much, but we do hope that WestBow becomes a source for many new Nelson books and authors—we need all the good books we can find!

We also hope that discovering authors early will enhance our profitability. Paying authors rather large advances and then recouping those advances quite infrequently is not working out too well for traditional publishers. We would much rather have some way of testing books prior to making major investments in them, and WestBow seems to provide that opportunity to a degree.

While we would like to go the traditional route and pay modest advances to publish more new and mid-list authors, we just don’t have the capacity to do so. Our experience is that it takes just as much effort to publish a new or mid-list author as it does an established author with a platform—and we need the revenue produced by those established authors to pay the bills.

We have entered a new era in book publishing and in the entertainment and communication media realm. The social media have made it clear that people want to be heard as much as—if not more than—they want to listen to what others have to say. The explosion in the number of books being published seems to serve that same desire.

It will be very difficult for any book—whether published in the traditional way or some other way—to break out and attract attention. Traditional publishers like to think they understand what it takes and can make it happen, but the numbers tell a different story.

I am thankful for the passion being expressed here for publishing and for good books. I pray that each of you has a blessed and peaceful Thanksgiving—and I look forward to the continuing the debate in a day or two! Keep pushing back—your feedback is helping to guide us through uncharted waters…

Pete Nikolai
WestBow Press
www.WestBowPress.com

PFNikolai said:

Much of the frustration expressed here seems to stem from semantics. Some people feel very passionate that “self-publishing” is okay but “vanity” publishing is not. Others seem to feel either one is okay as long as the author is making an informed choice.

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My frustration stems from the fact that this setup is designed so that authors will almost certainly lose money on it. Would you be willing to post on the WestBow site that most books printed by ASI sell less than 100 copies? Do you think you'd continue to get as many customers if they knew that fact?

We also hope that discovering authors early will enhance our profitability. Paying authors rather large advances and then recouping those advances quite infrequently is not working out too well for traditional publishers.

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So why not pay modest advances and work to sell those books to readers?

Also, vanity publishing is traditional, too. You're referring to commercial or trade publishing.

We would much rather have some way of testing books prior to making major investments in them, and WestBow seems to provide that opportunity to a degree.

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Why not just go through the appropriate section of any of ASI's existing lines (XLibris, AuthorHouse, etc) and check out the sales on those books? Surely if you truly believe this, you'd find something there worth publishing.

No, it's more a case of disliking semantics when those are used for deception.

How many copies of a typical West Bow book are sold to someone other than the author?

Isn't it true that, with West Bow, Thomas Nelson is guaranteed a profit on every title?

What level of sales of a vanity-published book would you consider significant? How many such books has Thomas Nelson acquired over the past year? The past five years?

Isn't it true that author-financed books would continue to appear without Thomas Nelson's participation in the process? Is there any reason to believe that Thomas Nelson would be unable to find self-publishing successes, and offer contracts to them, if they were interested in doing so?

Does the appearance of impropriety (and the universal condemnation of authors' groups) bother you?

PFNikolai said:

We would much rather have some way of testing books prior to making major investments in them, and WestBow seems to provide that opportunity to a degree.

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That's why most publishers use acquisition editors.

PFNikolai said:

We have entered a new era in book publishing and in the entertainment and communication media realm. The social media have made it clear that people want to be heard as much as—if not more than—they want to listen to what others have to say. The explosion in the number of books being published seems to serve that same desire.

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This argument--from someone employed by Thomas Nelson--is specious in the extreme; your company's history in the 18th century included a large number of vanity published books. They lost money on the endeavor, and turned to subscription-based publishing, which, also, lost money.

Then, in the nineteenth century, they, like their peers, realized hiring professional editors who read submissions, picked the best mss., edited them, worked with authors to revise them, and contracted with independent bookshops and salespersons to sell them, worked much much better. They began to turn a profit.

There's an enormous and distressing amount of irony that someone employed by a venerable publisher--one that is studied in any history of publishing course--would be this ignorant of his own company's history, and this coy about the market for West Bow books.

West Bow is designed to sell to authors; not to readers, not to libraries, not to academic book stores, not to Christian bookstores, and, in fact, not to bookstores at all.

PFNikolai said:

Much of the frustration expressed here seems to stem from semantics. Some people feel very passionate that “self-publishing” is okay but “vanity” publishing is not. Others seem to feel either one is okay as long as the author is making an informed choice.

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Hardly semantics when there's a big difference between self-publishing and vanity publishing. If I were to publish a book with Lulu, I own the ISBN. If I publish through your WestBow, I don't own the ISBN and therefore don't fully control my book, do I?

PFNikolai said:

Our perspective is that there are a number of aspiring authors out there who want to see their book in print and do not have the ability (time, knowledge, perseverance, or some other factor) to publish the book themselves (self-publish). They have considered it (some to greater lengths than others), but would rather just pay a publishing company to do it for them.

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Only those who are a.)impatient or b.)misinformed. I happen to be an aspiring author, and I do not have the ability to go through self-publishing. However paying someone isn't on my list of options when there are publishers who will pay me for my stories.

PFNikolai said:

Whether WestBow is called a vanity press or a publishing services provider or a self-publishing services provider or a non-traditional publisher or some other name does not really matter to us or to most of the authors we serve.

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Well it should. You're failing to be honest whether out of willfulness or ignorance by not being completely clear on the definitions of such terms, and are therefore misleading new aspiring writers with your misinformation. So no, it actually matters a whole hell of a lot what WestBow is defined as. You don't call a hyena a dog just because it looks like one.

PFNikolai said:

We are monitoring the books that we publish and will offer a traditional publishing contract to some authors. We try not to play up that angle too much, but we do hope that WestBow becomes a source for many new Nelson books and authors—we need all the good books we can find!

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You know that slushpile Nelson (should) have? That is where you find good books. Not by wasting time with a vanity arm when numbers prove the average title doesn't sell very well. Especially as there likely is no quality threshold.

PFNikolai said:

We also hope that discovering authors early will enhance our profitability.

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Experienced staff would already be doing that. Because they'd know what to look for that would sell.

PFNikolai said:

Paying authors rather large advances and then recouping those advances quite infrequently is not working out too well for traditional publishers.

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Can you prove that? Because the only presses I've seen go out of business (with the exception of one) have been run by people who don't know what they're doing. Publishers who DO know what they're doing are still trucking along. So where exactly is the model not working?

PFNikolai said:

We would much rather have some way of testing books prior to making major investments in them, and WestBow seems to provide that opportunity to a degree.

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Not unless you have a quality threshold, which I doubt WestBow has. If you have an acquisitions editor at Nelson who knows what they're doing, you wouldn't need a vanity press to 'test books prior to making an investment'. You're riding on an author's dime because you obviously haven't got the personnel or experience to determine what sells and what doesn't - otherwise you wouldn't need WestBow to do it for you.

PFNikolai said:

While we would like to go the traditional route and pay modest advances to publish more new and mid-list authors, we just don’t have the capacity to do so.

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So that justifies a vanity publishing arm?

PFNikolai said:

Our experience is that it takes just as much effort to publish a new or mid-list author as it does an established author with a platform—and we need the revenue produced by those established authors to pay the bills.

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Okay, fair enough. But why do you need WestBow to determine this?

PFNikolai said:

It will be very difficult for any book—whether published in the traditional way or some other way—to break out and attract attention. Traditional publishers like to think they understand what it takes and can make it happen, but the numbers tell a different story.

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It's very easy to say something like 'the numbers tell a different story', but unless you provide said numbers, your words are just words. They don't mean anything. If you're going to make these claims, you need to back it up with data. Commercial publishers do all they can to get the word out about their books - that's how they make their money, by selling to readers. If they don't advertise, they don't make money. And a book doesn't have to be a Stephen King bestseller to make money. I find it kind of sad that you think making wannabe writers pay for services while holding out the dream that they might be picked up if their book sells well (which it likely won't) is such a fantastic idea.

M.R.J. Le Blanc said:

See, that's the big problem I have mostly with vanity publishers. They play on people's desires to be published, encouraging a sense of entitlement that they deserved to be published. And then the writers never stop to think that perhaps their writing needs to improve, or perhaps the idea doesn't work, or a whole plethora of reasons because they're thinking 'hey, I deserve to be published!' But not everyone IS meant to be published.

There are a whole list of reasons why ones manuscript got rejected. The publisher being a big meanie-head isn't on that list.

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Yes, yes and yes.

If the general public suddenly wanted to read unedited slush, the bookstores would have a whole Unedited Slush section right by the door.

Unimportant said:

....e.g., the bookstores would stock copies of each of the tens of thousands of PublishAmerica titles.

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Nah. PublishAmerica's discounts are so lousy that the bookstores would lose money on each copy even if the public did want to read them. But there would be a real opportunity for AuthorHouse.

Since AuthorHouse has been in business for years, and the bookstores don't have those sections, I'd say that the public demand just isn't there.

Just to note: an advance does not need to be recouped in order for a publisher to make a profit.

- Victoria

A fact that PFNikolai very carefully didn't mention.

Originally Posted by PFNikolai: Our experience is that it takes just as much effort to publish a new or mid-list author as it does an established author with a platform—and we need the revenue produced by those established authors to pay the bills.

Then why didn't TN go with the "no advance" model for newer or mid-list writers? Just curious -- wouldn't this have accomplished the same good for everybody without going the subsidy-press route via WestBow?

The advance issue is a red herring. Sure, books can tank on absurdly bloated advances, if they don't sell to expectations. But most writers don't get absurdly bloated advances. In fact, for new or midlist authors, the advance can be one of the smallest of the publisher's expenditures.

- Victoria

According to a publisher I was talking to this week it costs a minimum of £5,000 to get a novel to print, excluding the author's advance (more for high-spec books with foil covers, lots of editing, much design); a medium advance is a relatively small amount to add to this.

Since that £5,000 figure is true, or its equivalent in dollars, the advance doesn't constitute a "major investment". I don't think that's the actual reason for going for a subsidy press, as Mr. Nikolai hints it is.

Disingenuous at best.

Old Hack said:

According to a publisher I was talking to this week it costs a minimum of £5,000 to get a novel to print, excluding the author's advance (more for high-spec books with foil covers, lots of editing, much design); a medium advance is a relatively small amount to add to this.

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Yes.

Keep in mind that the publisher has to reserve a slot at the printers--and they, understandably want money up front.

Publishers also have to deal with bulk commodities -- inks and papers ,and yes, there's speculation involved and warehouse costs.

So those costs are all shared by non-trade publishers, too. Plus, with POD you've still got to stop and reset the press after a print run -- which might be for a single copy. POD costs more per copy. It just does.

Ugh. And they're so proud of themselves too.

Thanks for the feedback!

While Mr. Edmondson declined to utilize our editorial and cover design services, we have come to realize that we need to maintain certain standards to ensure that the author's brand and our brand do not suffer. While we provide self-publishing services, there are minimum standards that every book should meet.

Pete Nikolai
WestBow Press
www.WestBowPress.com

Glad to see you've "come to realize" the buying public (and in this case I mean the potential reader, not the writer) deserves a bare minimum of quality, since I mentioned just that in a blog comment to Michael Hyatt months ago.

If, however, you pick up a title at the bookstore and it has WestBow on the spine, please check the publishing date. Until very lately (a year ago? two?) WestBow was a non-vanity, non-subsidy imprint of Nelson that published some of the authors I most respect in this market. Those titles, you may want to consider purchasable.

I haven't seen anything from the pay-to-play WestBow yet. Probably there will be a title or two at the ACFW conference this September. We'll see.