Primrose Road

The New York Times presents a semi-positive look on self-publishing today. (Hat-tip to TC for forwarding this.) Unfortunately, their talk of "elitism" and "traditional publishers" who seek only big-name authors seems to only add fuel to the fire, convincing naive author-hopefuls that the repeated rejections they've received from agents and small presses are entirely the result of Big Bad Publishing's refusal to pay attention to the talent of new writers.

Most vanity presses do not do the marketing or even create the return policies necessary to get your book on bookstore shelves; the writer is responsible for ensuring that potential audiences find out about the book so that they can place online orders; they edit (sometimes) for grammar and spelling but not for continuity as professional fiction editors do; and, they provide no Cataloging-in-Publication data that would allow libraries to purchase the book. Yet, in using the language of "get your voice heard" and "publish yourself" and worse, "follow your dreams," many vanity presses convince authors that their unedited, overpriced, unprofessionally marketed books will reach a wide audience.

Some commenters seem excited about the way that print-on-demand presses are changing copyright and intellectual property. While POD is a technology that can certainly effect such changes, POD presses like PublishAmerica, AuthorHouse, and a host of others employ language that suggests a leftward shift in intellectual property and publishing in order to make their product (authorship, not the books themselves), which is in actuality all about individuals following their personal goals in the belief that they will make money, seem legitimate to general audiences. The Times seems to have fallen for this attempt at legitimization.