On 11 Nov 2006 at 0:28, Peter Salwen wrote: > As one correspondent remarks, "The line between vanity presses and > non-vanity presses has been blurred for a long time now." And how! I think the emergence of digital print-on-demand publishing is making dramatic changes in the role of so-called "vanity presses" and I expect that they will become much more important within the publishing industry over the next five to ten years, both with printed books and ebooks. Just in the last three or four years, the cost of print-on-demand publishing for the average book has dropped from about $1500 to $500. Competition could drive prices for print-on-demand from PDF files much lower -- perhaps to $100 or less. The $500 they now charge pays for formatting from regular word processor files, but PDF files are like camera-ready copy and can be printed just as they are. Print-on-demand publishers could charge minimal set-up fees for those while still getting their regular fees for each copy printed. I would not be surprised to see "get published for $100" ads within the next year. At the same time, the shift towards digital publishing has changed the traditional relationship between authors and publishers. Traditional publishing has become less attractive to writers because publishers are demanding control of non-print rights and digital publishing will keep rights from reverting to authors long after the publishers have stopped printing their books. Many university presses have given Questia.com permission to reprint their entire back lists online. None of those books will go "out of print" and the rights will not revert to the authors even though they may never be available again in print. Anyone who has written a chapter for a collection of essays or an encyclopedia-type book in the last five or six years knows that although a chapter for a specific book may have been requested, authors are asked to sign over all rights for use in online media, databases, derivitive works, etc. -- and all for no additional pay. Under those contracts, publishers can profit from the authors' works forever but the authors will never receive a cent from later publications of their work. Print on demand can also be used to make hardcover books available at lower prices. One book I contributed a chapter to that was published by Praeger in 2001 sells for $92.50 -- if it sells at all at that price. If the editor retained paperback rights, she could release a print-on-demand paperback edition that could sell for as little as $14.95. Now that that's an easy and inexpensive option, more people ought to retain those rights when dealing with publishers, or insist on clauses that make separate paperback editions possible if the publisher doesn't release one within a year. Used copies of my out-of-print anthology of Twain's writings on the Philippine-American War are currently listed at Amazon.com and Abebooks.com for $90-$153. A print-on-demand edition could be sold for as little as $15.95. Because authors of print-on-demand books can set their own prices (adjusting their royalties upward), I would have a better chance of recouping up-front permission fees if I went that route than if I gave it to a regular publisher. The university press edition of that book was never carried by the book store chains but now a print-on- demand edition would be carried by Amazon.com, Borders.com and Barnesandnoble.com. The introduction and about a dozen other chapters from the book have been available online at my site since the rights reverted to me in 1998. Most regular publishers would want me to remove those chapters from the site, but I could keep them online if I reprinted it through a print-on-demand service. A friend of mine is currently looking into print-on-demand publishing to reprint some of his books that were published in Asia but don't have good distribution in the U.S. He started to think about it after he was contacted by a community organization here that wanted to reprint one of his books as a fund-raiser for the organization. That's an interesting idea. A good list of print-on-demand books could work like an endowment for a non-profit organization, generating a steady stream of royalties instead of dividends. I recently published a book through a print-on-demand service for another reason that might be unusual but certainly not unique. It was already being published serially in the journal of an historical society in Labrador. I decided to put it out in book form after they received requests for reprint rights for use in schools there. It already needed to be revised and expanded, and I might want to revise it again in a year or two if I find significant new information or am able to find descendents of the people discussed (the descendents of John Smith -- maybe you know a few :-). A university press here and a commercial publisher in Canada were recommended as likely publishers, but if I went that route I wouldn't be able to revise it until at least the first print run was sold out. With print-on-demand, I can put out revised editions as often as I want. The publisher charges a reasonable fee to update the file they print from. It's not as flexible as Internet publishing, which can be updated continually, but it's also not set in stone the way it would be with most regular publishers. There are a lot of reasons to use print-on-demand instead of signing over the rights to books to regular publishers. Although print-on-demand publishers will probably always be "vanity presses" to some extent, their primary business could turn much more towards reprinting of out-of-print books and publication of new books by established authors who see it as more efficient and profitable and less onerous in terms of their ability to control the rights in their work. Just as digital publishing is changing the nature of the business for publishers, the Internet and print on demand are broadening the options available to authors and making do- it-yourself publishing a much easier and more attractive option than it used to be. It also strengthens authors' hands when negotiating with publishers. Publishers used to have a strong position because if they didn't publish a book, who would? Now, authors can respond to anything they don't like in a contract with, "OK, I'll publish it myself instead." My guess is that publishers would then quickly respond by pointing out the value -- or "vanity" -- of their names, blurring the line in a very common but generally unacknowledged way. Jim Zwick