I published my first print book, A Rocky Path, with a vanity press. I paid about $450 for the privilege of publishing with them. At the time, ebooks weren’t an option, and I don’t think affordable places like CreateSpace were available. My biggest beef with this vanity press is that they charge $19.99 for my fairly short paperback novel. The only people who have ever bought one have been family and friends. Since the time I published with them, they bug me constantly, wanting me to pay for this or that, mostly marketing. But how do you market a $19.99 book by a fairly unknown author?
The advantage of using the vanity press was all I had to do was send them a word document and a picture that I wanted on the front cover, and they did the rest. The inside looks fine, but the cover wasn’t that great. I had my cover artist redo the cover for the ebook. When I published a book recently with CreateSpace, I had a great cover done by my cover artist and I did all the formatting myself. And it only cost me $39! And it wouldn’t have cost anything, but I wanted the expanded distribution.
Anyway, what got me really going on this today was that I got an email from them saying they would do a book trailer for me for ONLY $999. Yeah, right. And not long ago, they offered to pay half for shopping my book for a movie deal. My half was only $1500. How can I make these people leave me alone? I don’t answer my phone when they call, but they keep trying.
When I published with this vanity press, they assured me that I could remove the book at any time since I had all rights to it. But I wonder if that will be as easy as it sounds. I’m filled with a sense of dread every time I think of dealing with these people. I want to republish it eventually with CreateSpace after I have all of my other ones done. Has anyone else had any experience with taking down books from vanity presses, or are all of you so young that other options were available when you first published? 🙂
lauralynnelliott.com 
Never done it, but take it down from them immediately. If no one is buying it (and why would they at 19.99 when you can release it through CreateSpace for half that?) then you’re not losing anything and perhaps you can get out of their system.
Thanks for making me get it done! You are the master! 🙂 I’ll work on that this weekend.
Aaah! Yeah, LL, when you did this, it was the only way to go. But the sad thing is that it’s just not anymore. And now that there are better, much cheaper ways of getting work out there, the fact that they’re charging these kinds of prices is just piracy. And since there ARE better alternatives now, where people pay much less and actually get readers and get paid, they way they keep operating at these prices and coming up with new “products” that seem like little more than scams just seems like a stupidity tax and it’s wrong. And I probably wouldn’t be so PO’ed about it right now, except that Kait’s post today reminded me that there are still writers out there who don’t know stuff–like how the NOOK market is growing and you need to be available to it, and if people don’t know that, then there are probably people who don’t know that there are low-cost/no-cost options out there.
And plus, while I was reading your post in Gmail, an ad for the publishing company you’re talking about came up in the sidebar. Grrr. Someone linked me to another author services company, asking me to check it out and see if it seemed legit. Not only were the prices insane, but they actually posted articles with completely bogus science that “proved” how effective their company was at selling books on Amazon. I think I actually screamed.
Sorry for the rant. Yay for the rebirth of A Rocky Path!
You can be all ranty on my blog anytime you want. 🙂
I can remember when that same vanity press emailed me wanting to charge me for publishing A Rocky Path as an EBOOK. I emailed them back and said no thanks I had already done that on my own for FREE. I got no response to that. LOL
It’s sad that some authors know so little. But, you know, we didn’t know much when we started and we learned as we went. Some of us had other authors with more experience to help us. That’s why I try to help newbies as much as possible. I’ve only really been taken advantage of by one person, and I don’t think the author really realizes that she’s doing it.
There may be an excuse for being new and green, but there’s no excuse for the attitude that author took with Kait. So I have no sympathy for that one. She should have listened to good advice.
Obviously it’s not doing you any good to keep it listed there so I agree with Kait…take it down! 🙂
I plan to. I just hope it’s not going to be a hassle. My blood pressure can’t take it if I lose my temper. Because that’s really a rare occurrence. 🙂
I’ll fourth that! I’m not a copyright lawyer, but I play one at work (lol). If you own the rights, run, do not walk, away! They are desperate in the face of the changing publishing world, and grabbing at straws, hoping you will not know better or will be too polite to make waves.
Elizabeth, I think I’ve been way too polite by not taking it off. I haven’t been in a big hurry because I want to get my other books in print first. But I think it will look funny to have one paperback on Amazon at $19.99 and another one at $9.99. And it might take awhile for it to come off of Amazon, and I want it to be gone before I republish it. So that’s this weekend’s project.