The vanity press strikes again

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I've talked to people who said they haven't considered real publishing because real publishers "throw out most of your story and rewrite it the way they want." I've never been entirely certain if what they actually meant was "turned it into something at least vaguely resembling English" or if they seriously believed the things that some of the vanity presses tell them. As I think we can all tell from that signal-to-noise ratio, there needs to be, at the very least, some kind of proofreading involved. I'm in a discussion with a fellow in another thread whose response to my pointing out (okay, kind of making fun of) some errors in his blurb for his book wasn't to rush off and fix the errors in the book, or even the blurb -- it was to bring his brother in as a sock puppet to praise his book. That seems to be the reaction of the vanity press victims, too. The companies looting their wallets don't scare them off by telling them their stuff is unreadable; they tell them it's "special genius" and should be published exactly as it is. Which it is. And then everyone else looks at it ... stares at it ... goes "huh????" ... and deletes it.

In other words, it's kind of backward. The people who could most benefit from professional advice are least likely to acknowledge they need it, let alone seek it out, while the people who seek it out already know they need something, which is far more than half the battle, and are therefore more likely to start with something readable. More likely, in fact, than people like the lady in that newspaper article are to end with one.

It's a variant of what I've seen in online "writer's groups", where people post fragments of their work for critique. It becomes quickly apparent that what they want isn't actual critique - it's being told how wonderful their work is. Suggesting it isn't wonderful and might benefit from a few changes gets an unenthusiastic response at best, and outright hostility is far more likely.

But that's ultimately why vanity presses exist. Writing lays your ego on the line. You need a sense of perspective and a thick skin, as you will get rejected, a lot, on the path to publication, and actually getting published is no guarantee you won't get rejected again later. If you can't deal with that, best not try to become a writer.

I saw a comment online a while back from a writer who recounted scribbling on a napkin in a bar, and a cocktail waitress asked if he wrote on napkins because it didn't matter? He realized with a sense of shock that that was exactly why he did it. It didn't matter. It was just scribblings on a napkin. He concluded that some of his best stuff had been written on napkins.

Vanity presses and other "services" let you trade possible damage to your ego for cash. You can get your deathless prose published without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous editorial fortune. Of course, this simply delays the inevitable, as you'll discover when you try to get anyone to buy your work.
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Dennis