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I don't think I said they were all bad, Steven. I said they were fruitful targets for vanity presses that were after their wallets, giving them nothing they couldn't get elsewhere cheap or free. Plus they think they've accomplished something, which nicely combines denigrating the efforts of real authors with never giving themselves the chance for the commercial success they might have had, if they do indeed have a good book. They lose everything, particularly their money, and gain nothing except, perhaps, egoboo. And it's false ego, since it will crumble to dust when they find out how publishing actually works, like the poetry "contest" winners.
It would be one thing if they walked in with their eyes wide open and knew they were just doing something to give to their family, like the cookbook a relative of mine did (oh, could she cook...). But they don't; they've been told that this is how other authors do it, and that they'll make vast sums of money from their hundreds of dollars of "investment", and instead they're left with a nine-dollar PDF, little more than they could have made on their own computer.
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