The Writing Life: The Downside of the Revolution

Publishing, and subsequently writers, are in the middle of a revolution.
Not only do we finally have practical ebook reading hardware, there’s an infrastructure for ebook delivery that is not only up and running but rapidly expanding. Which means that there are now more books available from more outlets than there have ever been.
This is a good thing. Frankly, even the best publishing houses and editors (Hi, David), can only shepherd so many books to market. And even the best stores can only stock so much on their shelves. The ebook outlets can get long out of print books back into circulation. It provides a way for quirky, hard-to-classify authors or books to try their wings and maybe generate a little buzz for themselves.
Full disclosure: In case you don’t know, I’m a member of the online cooperative Book View Cafe, which is doing this exact thing, so, of course I think it’ a good thing.
And I’m telling you, it’s a sign of how much things have changed that I’d actually suggest publishing with an e-press, or even self-publishing with an outfit like the Kindle store as a route for an aspiring writer. But these days it can be a boost. If you’re careful, if you’re realistic and if you’re able and willing to get out there and push your work. When I was on an award jury a few years back, we found a book that had originally been e-published, and it was phenomenal. We all loved it for its fresh style and creative approach.
But all this expansion has also made for some new gray areas in the world of publishing, and thanks to the publishing giant Harlequin, it’s about to become even easier for new writers to get lost in the fog.
You see, Harlequin has just set up a vanity press.
This is very different from a traditional publishing house which pays the author a set amount up front in return for their work. It is different from an e-press where an editor goes over your work and the publisher puts it up for sale, giving you a percentage of the cover price for a contractually agreed-upon time frame. It is also different from a self-publishing situation where the writer themselves does the work of formatting and uploading your own book online with someone who is renting out out virtual shelf-space. A vanity press requires the aspiring author to pay up-front, in the case of Harlequin’s new venture between $600 to $1,600. In return, Harlequin will create an electronic file, and put a couple of lines in a large online catalogue.
In the old days, they would have shipped the author a carton of books, and a bill for purchasing additional copies of their own book.
This is not publishing. It is not even self-publishing where the author only pays a cut of their actual sales income once they’ve received it. It’s printing, pure and simple, and the only entity that will profit from it is Harlequin.
In short, it’s a scam. Pure and simple.