Thursday 15 December 2011

Traditional and Vanity publishing houses

Rik's Coffee Thoughts

Random thoughts, mostly about writing, publishing, sailing, God, cats, my life, my loves and whatever happens to run across my mind between the first espresso and the last cup of regular before my shower. Now - if I could only get Captain Hook to bring me my espresso without spilling it, we'd have a good thing going.

I have been posting my morning coffee thoughts for a while now on a specific FaceBook group, and a number of the readers said "You should do a blog!"  OK - here we go, Rik's Coffee Thoughts:

Some simple thoughts on Traditional and Vanity publishing houses from twenty years of experience with five different publishing houses.

Point one - all publishing houses publish to make money for themselves, all of them! Every one!

Point two - there are differences. Traditional publishing houses take you on because they see your future sales and their commission on those sales as a potential source of income. Sometimes (not always) you get an up front advance, sometimes you don't. If you do get an advance, your sale's royalties pay off the advance before you see new money! 
They pay all the up front costs. Edits, cover design, sales promotion, proof copies, advance reading copies, sending those copies to readers, postage, phone calls, support. Everything. You should never ever pay anything up front with a non-vanity press!

Vanity publishing houses take you on because you are willing to pay your own up front costs and possibly a publishing fee. If they are lucky they might see a return based upon your sales and their commission on those sales, but that is secondary. You pay in some way for edits, cover design, sales promotion, proof copies, advance reading copies, sending those copies to readers, postage, phone calls, support. Everything. If you go Vanity - get in writing, everything you have to pay for, everything!

Which is best for you?

Depends upon:
  • how deep your pockets are,
  • how desperate you are to get your work in print, 
  • how lucky you might be in getting someone's attention, and 
  • last, but by no means least - how good your book is.
Point Three - another option - publish it yourself.

Just Rik's morning coffee thoughts ...

3 comments:

  1. I'm having my own coffee and reading this blog. You've boiled everything down to the bones and told it so plainly I don't see how anyone could misunderstand.

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  2. This is good stuff... and a fair warning to new writers on what to watch out for

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