Vanity press
Encyclopedia
A vanity press or vanity publisher is a term describing a publishing house that publishes books at the author's expense. Publisher Johnathon Clifford claims to have coined the term in 1959. However, the term appears in mainstream U.S. publications as early as 1941.
In contrast, mainstream publishers, whether major companies or small press
es, derive their profit from sales of the book to persons other than the author. Publishers must therefore be cautious and deliberate in choosing to publish works that will sell, particularly as they must recoup their investment in the book (such as an advance payment
and royalties
to the author, editor
ial guidance, promotion
, marketing
, or advertising
). In order to sell books, commercial publishers may also be selective in order to cultivate a reputation for high-quality work, or to specialize in a particular genre
.
Because vanity presses are not selective, publication by a vanity press is typically not seen as conferring the same recognition or prestige as commercial publication. Vanity presses do offer more independence for the author than does the mainstream publishing industry; however, their fees can be higher than the fees normally charged for similar printing services, and sometimes restrictive contracts are required.
While a commercial publisher's intended market is the general public, a vanity publisher's intended market is the author.
, and that his or her work could not be commercially successful. In other words, a work published by a vanity press is typically assumed to be unpublishable elsewhere or not publishable on a timely basis.
Some companies offer printing
(and, very rarely, limited distribution) for a fee. Such services can be a viable way for an author to self-publish
without owning printing equipment. This is particularly attractive to an author of a work with a limited, specialized appeal which may not interest mainstream publishers, or to the author who intends to promote his or her work personally. Self-publishing is similar to vanity publishing because the author pays the costs of printing the work and takes charge of promoting and selling it.
A mainstream publisher traditionally assumes the risk of publication and production costs, selects the works to be published, edits the author's text, and provides for marketing
and distribution
, provides the ISBN and satisfies whatever legal deposit
and copyright registration
formalities are required. Such a publisher normally pays the author a fee, called an advance
, for the right to publish the author's work; and further payments, called royalties
, based on the sales of the work. This led to James D. Macdonald
's famous dictum, "Money should always flow toward the author" (sometimes called Yog's Law).
Scholarly journals often ask authors to pay page charges but use peer review
to keep a high scientific standard. A vanity publisher will publish almost any book if the author is willing to pay.
Presses that cater to self-publishers typically do little or no marketing. Formerly, they did little or no distribution. Today, vanity publishers may offer web-based sales, or make a book available via online booksellers, but they generally provide no marketing.
Poets often self-publish as their work is generally of extremely specialized appeal and therefore risky to mainstream publishers.
Among the many types of books that are unpublishable by major commercial presses, family histories often find their way onto vanity presses, since family histories have an extremely limited market.
Self-publishers
undertake the functions of a publisher for their own books. Some "self-publishers" write, edit, design, lay out, market, and promote their books themselves, relying on a printer
only for actual printing and binding
. Others write the manuscript themselves but hire freelance professionals to provide editing and production services.
More recently, companies have offered their services to act as a sort of agent between the writer and a small printing operation. In these cases, the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing is less obvious than it once was.
A slightly more sophisticated model of a vanity press is described by Umberto Eco
in Foucault's Pendulum
. The company that provides initial setting for the novel operates a small yet respectable arts and humanities publishing house as a front. It does not make a profit but it brings a steady flow of substandard authors. They are politely rejected and then referred to another publishing firm in the same office – the vanity press that will print anything for money. This was surprisingly similar to the business model adopted by Harlequin Horizons.
The most recent incarnations of self-publishing make use of print on demand
technologies based on modern digital printing. These companies are often able to offer their services with little or no upfront cost to the author, but they are still considered vanity presses by writers' advocates. Vanity presses earn their money not from sales of books to readers, as other publishers do, but from sales and services to the books' authors. The author receives the shipment of his or her books and may attempt to resell them through whatever channels are available.
often also consider directly hiring a printer
. According to self-publisher and poet
Peter Finch
, vanity presses charge higher premiums and create a risk that an author who has published with a vanity press will have more difficulty working with a respectable publisher in the future.
Some vanity presses using print on demand
technology act as printers as well as sellers of support services for authors interested in self-publishing. Reputable firms of this type are typically marked by clear contract terms, lack of excessive fees, retail prices comparable to those from commercial printers, lack of pressure to purchase "extra" services, contracts that do not claim exclusive rights to the work being published (though one would be hard pressed to find a legitimate publisher willing to put out a competing edition, making nonexclusivity meaningless), and honest indications of what services they will and won't provide, and what results the author may reasonably expect. However, the distinction between the worst of these firms and vanity presses is essentially trivial, though a source of great confusion as the low fees have attracted tens of thousands of authors who want to avoid the stigma of vanity publishing while doing just that.
, which produced and released Rebecca Black
's 2011 viral video
"Friday
".
These variants on the vanity press theme are still much less common than the traditional, book-based vanity press.
, who paid the expenses of publishing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and most of his subsequent work. Mark Twain
, E. Lynn Harris
, Zane Grey
, Upton Sinclair
, Carl Sandburg
, Edgar Rice Burroughs
, George Bernard Shaw
, Edgar Allan Poe
, Rudyard Kipling
, Henry David Thoreau
, Walt Whitman
and Anaïs Nin
also self-published some or all of their works. Not all of these well-known authors were successful in their ventures; Mark Twain's publishing business, for example, went bankrupt.
Ernest Vincent Wright
, author of the 1939 novel Gadsby
, famous for being written entirely in lipogram
, was unable to find a publisher for his unusual work and ultimately chose to publish it through a vanity press.
In contrast, mainstream publishers, whether major companies or small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
es, derive their profit from sales of the book to persons other than the author. Publishers must therefore be cautious and deliberate in choosing to publish works that will sell, particularly as they must recoup their investment in the book (such as an advance payment
Advance payment
An advance payment, or simply an advance, is the part of a contractually due sum that is paid in advance for goods or services, while the balance included in the invoice will only follow the delivery. It is called a prepaid expense in accrual accounting.-See also:*Advance against royalties*Pay or...
and royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
to the author, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
ial guidance, promotion
Promotion (marketing)
Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix . It is the communication link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing, or persuading a potential buyer's purchasing decision....
, marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, or advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
). In order to sell books, commercial publishers may also be selective in order to cultivate a reputation for high-quality work, or to specialize in a particular genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
.
Because vanity presses are not selective, publication by a vanity press is typically not seen as conferring the same recognition or prestige as commercial publication. Vanity presses do offer more independence for the author than does the mainstream publishing industry; however, their fees can be higher than the fees normally charged for similar printing services, and sometimes restrictive contracts are required.
While a commercial publisher's intended market is the general public, a vanity publisher's intended market is the author.
Differences from mainstream publishers
The term "vanity press" is sometimes considered pejorative, and is often used to imply that an author who self-publishes using such a service is only publishing out of vanityVanity
In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but...
, and that his or her work could not be commercially successful. In other words, a work published by a vanity press is typically assumed to be unpublishable elsewhere or not publishable on a timely basis.
Some companies offer printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
(and, very rarely, limited distribution) for a fee. Such services can be a viable way for an author to self-publish
Self-publishing
Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
without owning printing equipment. This is particularly attractive to an author of a work with a limited, specialized appeal which may not interest mainstream publishers, or to the author who intends to promote his or her work personally. Self-publishing is similar to vanity publishing because the author pays the costs of printing the work and takes charge of promoting and selling it.
A mainstream publisher traditionally assumes the risk of publication and production costs, selects the works to be published, edits the author's text, and provides for marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
and distribution
Distribution (business)
Product distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.The other three parts of the marketing mix are product, pricing,...
, provides the ISBN and satisfies whatever legal deposit
Legal deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The requirement is mostly limited to books and periodicals. The number of copies varies and can range from one to 19 . Typically, the national library is one of the...
and copyright registration
Copyright registration
The purpose of copyright registration is to place on record a verifiable account of the date and content of the work in question, so that in the event of a legal claim, or case of infringement or plagiarism, the copyright owner can produce a copy of the work from an official government...
formalities are required. Such a publisher normally pays the author a fee, called an advance
Advance against royalties
In the field of intellectual property licensing, an advance against royalties is a payment made by the licensee to the licensor at the start of the period of licensing which is to be offset against future royalty payments.For example, a book's author may sell a license to a publisher in return for...
, for the right to publish the author's work; and further payments, called royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
, based on the sales of the work. This led to James D. Macdonald
James D. Macdonald
James D. Macdonald is an American author and critic who lives in New Hampshire with his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Debra Doyle. He works in several genres, concentrating on fantasy, but also writing science fiction, and mystery and media tie-ins.-Biography:Macdonald was born in 1954, and...
's famous dictum, "Money should always flow toward the author" (sometimes called Yog's Law).
Scholarly journals often ask authors to pay page charges but use peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
to keep a high scientific standard. A vanity publisher will publish almost any book if the author is willing to pay.
Presses that cater to self-publishers typically do little or no marketing. Formerly, they did little or no distribution. Today, vanity publishers may offer web-based sales, or make a book available via online booksellers, but they generally provide no marketing.
Poets often self-publish as their work is generally of extremely specialized appeal and therefore risky to mainstream publishers.
Among the many types of books that are unpublishable by major commercial presses, family histories often find their way onto vanity presses, since family histories have an extremely limited market.
Business model
With vanity publishing, authors pay to have their books published. Because the author is paying to have the book published, the book doesn't go through an approval or editorial process as it would in a traditional setting where the publisher takes a financial risk on the author's ability to write successfully. Editing and formatting services may or may not be offered and they may come with the initial publishing fee (or more correctly, printing fee) or might be offered at an additional cost.Self-publishers
Self-publishing
Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
undertake the functions of a publisher for their own books. Some "self-publishers" write, edit, design, lay out, market, and promote their books themselves, relying on a printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
only for actual printing and binding
Bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching covers to the resulting text-block.-Origins of the book:...
. Others write the manuscript themselves but hire freelance professionals to provide editing and production services.
More recently, companies have offered their services to act as a sort of agent between the writer and a small printing operation. In these cases, the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing is less obvious than it once was.
A slightly more sophisticated model of a vanity press is described by Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
in Foucault's Pendulum
Foucault's Pendulum
Foucault's Pendulum is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988; the translation into English by William Weaver appeared a year later....
. The company that provides initial setting for the novel operates a small yet respectable arts and humanities publishing house as a front. It does not make a profit but it brings a steady flow of substandard authors. They are politely rejected and then referred to another publishing firm in the same office – the vanity press that will print anything for money. This was surprisingly similar to the business model adopted by Harlequin Horizons.
The most recent incarnations of self-publishing make use of print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
technologies based on modern digital printing. These companies are often able to offer their services with little or no upfront cost to the author, but they are still considered vanity presses by writers' advocates. Vanity presses earn their money not from sales of books to readers, as other publishers do, but from sales and services to the books' authors. The author receives the shipment of his or her books and may attempt to resell them through whatever channels are available.
Publishing variations
Writers considering self-publishingSelf-publishing
Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
often also consider directly hiring a printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
. According to self-publisher and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
Peter Finch
Peter Finch (poet)
Peter Finch is a Welsh poet, critic, author and literary entrepreneur living in Cardiff, Wales. He is Chief Executive of Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society of Writers. As a writer he works in both traditional and experimental forms...
, vanity presses charge higher premiums and create a risk that an author who has published with a vanity press will have more difficulty working with a respectable publisher in the future.
Some vanity presses using print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
technology act as printers as well as sellers of support services for authors interested in self-publishing. Reputable firms of this type are typically marked by clear contract terms, lack of excessive fees, retail prices comparable to those from commercial printers, lack of pressure to purchase "extra" services, contracts that do not claim exclusive rights to the work being published (though one would be hard pressed to find a legitimate publisher willing to put out a competing edition, making nonexclusivity meaningless), and honest indications of what services they will and won't provide, and what results the author may reasonably expect. However, the distinction between the worst of these firms and vanity presses is essentially trivial, though a source of great confusion as the low fees have attracted tens of thousands of authors who want to avoid the stigma of vanity publishing while doing just that.
Libraries
Libraries often choose books by the application of a collection development policy designed to meet the needs of a particular user community. When libraries accept the products of a vanity press, they may require the donor to sign a form giving to the library the right to do what it pleases with the items, including disposing of them or redonating them.Vanity publishing in other media
The vanity press model has been extended to other media. Some companies produce videos, music, and other works with less perceived commercial potential in exchange for a fee from the creators of those works. In some cases, the company may contribute original content to the works (e.g., supplying lyrics for a melody). A notable example is ARK Music FactoryARK Music Factory
Ark Music Factory is a record label based in Los Angeles, California. The label was co-founded in 2010 by Patrice Wilson, who partnered up with producer/composer and multi-instrumentalist Clarence Jey. In May 2011, Clarence Jey left Ark Music Factory to focus on his own production company Music...
, which produced and released Rebecca Black
Rebecca Black
Rebecca Renee Black is an American pop singer who gained extensive media attention with the 2011 single "Friday". Her mother paid $4,000 to have the single and an accompanying music video put out as a vanity release through the record label ARK Music Factory. The song was co-written and produced...
's 2011 viral video
Viral video
A viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...
"Friday
Friday (Rebecca Black song)
"Friday" is a song by American recording artist Rebecca Black, written and produced by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson. It was released as a single on March 14, 2011, by Ark Music Factory as Black's debut single. The music video for the song became a viral hit due to criticism of the song's lyrics,...
".
These variants on the vanity press theme are still much less common than the traditional, book-based vanity press.
History
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was common for legitimate authors to, if they could afford it, pay the costs of publishing their books. Such writers could expect more control of their work, greater profits, or both. Among the authors taking this route were Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, who paid the expenses of publishing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
and most of his subsequent work. Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, E. Lynn Harris
E. Lynn Harris
Everette "E." Lynn Harris was an American author. Openly gay, he was best known for his depictions of African American men who were on the down-low and closeted...
, Zane Grey
Zane Grey
Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage was his bestselling book. In addition to the success of his printed works, they later had second lives and continuing influence...
, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
and Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...
also self-published some or all of their works. Not all of these well-known authors were successful in their ventures; Mark Twain's publishing business, for example, went bankrupt.
Ernest Vincent Wright
Ernest Vincent Wright
Ernest Vincent Wright was an American author known for his book Gadsby, a 50,000 word novel which, except for the introduction and a note at the end, did not use the letter "e".-Biography:...
, author of the 1939 novel Gadsby
Gadsby (novel)
Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter "E" is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized thanks to the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth group he organizes.The novel is written...
, famous for being written entirely in lipogram
Lipogram
A lipogram is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E", the most common letter in the English language.Writing a lipogram is a trivial task...
, was unable to find a publisher for his unusual work and ultimately chose to publish it through a vanity press.
Examples
- American Biographical InstituteAmerican Biographical InstituteThe American Biographical Institute is a paid-inclusion biographical reference directory publisher based in Raleigh, North Carolina which has been publishing biographies since 1967...
- AuthorHouseAuthorHouseAuthorHouse, formerly known as 1stBooks, is a self-publishing company based in the United States. AuthorHouse uses print on demand business model and technology.-History:...
- Dorrance
- Famous Poets SocietyFamous Poets SocietyThe Famous Poets Society is a vanity press that offers a poetry contest, a convention contest, and vanity publishing opportunities. Poets can submit their poems online using the website. Nearly all responses, regardless of artistic merit, are accepted for publication. All accepted authors receive...
- iUniverseIUniverseiUniverse, founded in October 1999, is a self-publishing company, co-located with AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana. Publishers Weekly notes iUniverse has partnerships with The Writers' Club and the Writer's Digest .-History:iUniverse initially focused on business-to-consumer print-on-demand...
- L.B. Associates (Pvt) Ltd (INDIA)
- Ivy House
- Poetry.comPoetry.comUntil recently, the domain name Poetry.com was owned by New Catalyst Fund. On March 7th, 2009, Lulu.com purchased that domain from NCF. Publish Today and Noble House Publishing, the branches of Poetry.com that managed the publishing and printing of their books, have gone out of business.According...
, aka The International Library of Poetry - Tate Publishing & EnterprisesTate Publishing & EnterprisesTate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC is a Christian publisher that prints books of all types. In general, it operates on the vanity press model in which most authors pay for the publication of their books...
(there are at least three companies called Tate Publishing; the others include a reputable art publisher and a defunct software book publisher) - Vantage Press
- XlibrisXlibrisXlibris is a Bloomington, Indiana-based self-publishing and on-demand printing services provider founded in 1997., The New York Times stated it to be the foremost on-demand publisher. The founder and chief executive is John Feldcamp.- Overview :...
See also
- Author millAuthor millAn author mill is a publisher that relies on producing large numbers of small-run books by different authors, as opposed to a smaller number of works published in larger numbers...
- Custom mediaCustom mediaCustom media is a marketing term referring broadly to the development, production and delivery of media designed to strengthen the relationship between the sponsor of the medium and the medium's audience...
- Print on demandPrint on demandPrint on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
- PublishingPublishingPublishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
- SamizdatSamizdatSamizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
- Self-publishingSelf-publishingSelf-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
- Vanity galleryVanity galleryA vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges artists fees to exhibit their work and makes most of its money from artists rather than from sales to the public. Some vanity galleries charge a lump sum to arrange an exhibition, while others ask artists to pay regular membership fees and then...
- Vanity labelVanity labelA vanity label is an informal name given sometimes to a record label founded as a wholly or partially owned subsidiary of another, larger and better established record label, where the subsidiary label is controlled by a successful recording artist, designed to allow this artist...