Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
I gather a "real publisher" includes any of the Agency publishers.
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The usual definition of a real publisher is based on how the money flows and who the publisher's actual customer is.
For the vanity publisher, their customer is the author: their advertising is geared to attracting authors, their products are those needed by authors, and most important of all, the overwhelming majority of their money is paid to them by authors. For the real publisher, their customer is the book buyer (either retailer or end-user, depending). Their advertising focuses on selling books, their products are their books, not their "author services", and they pay authors, rather than authors paying them.
Basically, if they accept your book because they can make money selling your book, it's traditional; if they accept your book because they can make money printing your book, whether or not it sells, it's vanity. In fact, that's one single question (aside from the "who pays whom?" already mentioned) that can distinguish the two: Will they lose money if your book tanks? For traditional publishers the answer is a resounding "yes", and for vanity publishers (despite what they claim about the "added value" of their services) the answer is an equally resounding "no".