Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

Richard Grayson (who happens to be a friend of mine), also has three POD books at Lulu:

http://stores.lulu.com/graysonric

The two fiction titles have each had criminally low sales, so do yourself and Richard a big favor and buy one or both of them. Lorimer Street was a great read, and I just bought Highly Irregular Stories yesterday.

Getting Published Through a “Self-Publishing Company.”

Writers are confused and it’s not their fault. In searching for the best way to break into print, they come across self-described “self-publishing companies”. I get emails asking if I can self-publish for writers. That is impossible!

The problem is that many vanity publishers are calling themselves “self-publishing companies.”

We have been building name recognition for self-publishing for more than 35 years; there are more than 85,000 of us in the U.S. Self-publishers, write, publish and promote their own books.

According to Wikipedia, Self-Publishing is the publishing of books and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers.The only “self-publishing company” is you—by definition. If you contract with a publisher, your book is not SELF-published.

Now that people know what self-publishing is, we find we have to re-educate the public to the fact that we are the real self-publishers and the other DotCom digital publishers are really just vanity publishers masquerading as us. They are trading on the good reputation we have built.

For information on the choices for breaking into print, get the f-r-e-e Information Kit #2 on Publishing at
http://parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/infokit.cfm

Let’s respect historical and common definitions. These publishers are “vanity” or “subsidy” presses. Stop confusing people new to the book trade.