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Vanity (Un)Fair?

© Joanne Reid

This column is ripped straight from my What Would You Do? Scenarios on the Writers Page.

It began because I noticed a new rash of questions and comments about subsidy publishers and vanity publishers cropping up on newsgroups and on mailing lists. Several people have been very enthusiastic about the great treatment they received from these publishers and others have been insulted at being asked to defray the cost of printing the book. On misc.writing last week, one person was complaining that reviewers would not review that person's book because it was published by a company known for asking writers to pay part of the cost of production. This leads me to wonder -- has anyone read any vanity or subsidy published books? And if so, what did they think of them?

There are some such publishers on the web and they often have the first chapter posted in order to hook the reader and that's about as close as I've come to reading the books. And to put it mildly, it's closer than I care to come in the future.

I feel badly saying that because I know that the writers poured their hearts into their novels but books need to be edited. Oh yes, they do. These don't seem to have had that benefit.

For instance, I took a look this week at Commonwealth Publications which has become quite well known as a subsidy-type publisher, although they claim that they have published books without asking the author for money as well.

The reason I took a look is that there has been a great deal of chat around and about the Net on the fact that Commonwealth signed Barbara Cartland, which apparently gives this company more credibility. At first, I did not go deeply enough into the site to find what books of Cartland they are publishing. I got stuck on the splash page which announces a new Diana book and has a photo of Dame Barbara Cartland, whose daughter is the second wife of Diana Spencer's father. The page announces that Barbara Cartland "assists in recounting the life of late Princess Diana in a new biography entitled Diana: a Commemorative Biography.

To me, this does not mean that Cartland wrote the book. The blurb says "Find out more about this exciting new book from Barbara Cartland herself in radio interviews from coast to coast, and an interview in SPY Magazine, check your newstands."

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