Thursday, May 4, 2006
I was surfing around the Net late last night, and in my bleary-eyed delirium came across a writer’s website. This site supposedly allows published authors a place to promote their work and discuss the business of writing. But in reality, what it does primarily is promote vanity press titles, because those authors are looking for any place that will help them get the word out. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, “vanity press” refers to any company that will produce books for a fee. The author of the book pays for it, literally and figuratively–because anyone with a few bucks can publish there, these books are not taken seriously by the industry and it usually does a writer far more harm than good.
Hypnotized by the descriptions of most of the featured titles, I scrolled down to one of the worst covers and clicked on “Horse of the Dawn” by Pamela Lynn Palmer. I was curious, you see; it was sort of like rubbernecking at the scene of a particularly bad accident. I felt terrible for these writers, who were trying so hard and didn’t realize they already had two strikes against them when they signed up with a place like Author House or Publish America; and I also wanted to know how bad it would get between the sheets.
Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the “search inside” feature on Amazon and started reading. Perhaps it was my shock at finding coherent writing and a fairly compelling plot, when I’d expected an unreadable mess; but I don’t think so. Take a look and decide for yourself. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
I was impressed. This was far better than most of the other vanity press titles out there. If you don’t believe me, do a search for fan fiction, or visit the Publish America site to see.
Here’s the real tragedy involved in vanity presses. It destroys the credibility of a writer, so that even if he or she has talent, nobody is going to pay attention. Now, I don’t know how good the rest of “Horse of the Dawn” is; it may well be that the plot doesn’t hold together, the writing wanders, the characters aren’t interesting. But the fact remains that this writer does have talent. I can only guess what brought her to PublishAmerica, but I hope she made her choice for some compelling reason, other than simply being too new to the industry and getting sucked in by the promise of “getting her book in print.”
With a vanity press, authors pay for the honor of bad cover art, little to no editing, no marketing support and the chance to be treated like a pariah by the rest of the “legitimate” publishing industry. And that’s a shame. Because every once in a while, a talented writer gets caught up in this net, and the majority of them will never be able to fight their way out.
I hope Pamela Lynn Palmer gets her chance to fight. For the rest of you aspiring writers out there, please think twice before signing a contract with a press that will publish a laundry list for the right price. Trust me, it’s going to hurt you more in the end than you can imagine. Anything worth having is going to take time and effort; put in the time, learn the craft, make connections and land a legitimate contract. You’ll be glad you did.
