Maybe. I think it indicates poor business practices if a publishing company is compelled to ask their customers to help fund publishing books.
My opinion only perhaps.
There are many 'Vanity' publishing companies out there that do EXACTLY this! The Church Ladies that publish a recipe book do this - they PAY someone to publish 100s of copies of their book which they then sell and try to cover the cost back and then make a profit. It's a 'cutthroat' business practice but hardly a 'poor' business practice. I thoroughly understand your 'opinion' - but NO ONE is forcing you to support this project at gunpoint, so if you disagree with the project - it's so simple -
don't fund it!
I sense you don't have much experience in the ways of the publishing world. In fact - one vanity company asked me to pay them $10,000 to get my book published ... needless to say I didn't!
Here are some definitions for you:
BTW - This is only part of an article from a site called 'The Koi Wonder'; the "I" refers to the writer for The Koi Wonder - and not Me (TB).
Commercial publishers, subsidy publishers, vanity publishers, self-publishing--what's the difference? Here are some classic--and, as you'll see, not necessarily current--definitions:
• A commercial publisher purchases the right to publish a manuscript (often along with other rights, known as subsidiary rights), and pays the author a royalty on sales (most also pay an advance on royalties). Commercial publishers are highly selective, publishing only a tiny percentage of manuscripts submitted, and handle every aspect of editing, publication, distribution, and marketing. There are no costs to the author.
• A vanity publisher prints and binds a book at the author's sole expense. Costs include the publisher's profit and overhead, so vanity publishing is usually a good deal more expensive than self-publishing. The completed books are the property of the author, and the author retains all proceeds from sales. Vanity publishers do not screen for quality--they publish anyone who can pay. For an extra fee, some may provide editing, marketing, warehousing, and/or promotional services (often of dubious quality), or they may provide variously-priced service packages that include differing menus of extras.
• A subsidy publisher also takes payment from the author to print and bind a book, but contributes a portion of the cost and/or adjunct services such as editing, distribution, warehousing, and marketing. Theoretically, subsidy publishers are selective. The completed books are the property of the publisher, and remain in the publisher's possession until sold. Income to the writer comes in the form of a royalty.
• Self-publishing requires the author to bear the entire cost of publication, and also to handle all marketing, distribution, storage, etc. However, rather than paying for a pre-set package of services, the author puts those services together himself. Because he can put every aspect of the process out to bid, he may pay a good deal less than what's charged by vanity publishers; self-publishing can also result in a higher-quality product. Completed books are owned by the writer, and the writer keeps all proceeds from sales.
People often use the term "vanity publisher" and "subsidy publisher" interchangeably. Strictly speaking, this isn't correct--there are differences, as described above.
However, the lines have blurred over the past few years. What you'll most often find these days is neither a vanity publisher nor a subsidy publisher in the classic sense, but a kind of hybrid operation, which follows the vanity model in terms of pricing and selection (building a fat profit into its fees and publishing anyone who will pay) and the subsidy model in terms of income to the author and book ownership (the publisher owns the finished books, and the author earns royalties). There's usually some degree of distribution through online booksellers and major book wholesalers such as Ingram (which means that books will be available for special order, but not necessarily that stores will stock them), and the publisher may sell or include some basic promotional services--though these are usually based on cheap and ineffective methods such as press releases and bulk e-mailing, and not worth the money if you have to pay extra.
If the vanity publisher is honest, it won't try to convince you that it's selective, or that it invests its own resources in publication. Be especially wary of any publisher that claims to be a subsidy publisher--or a "joint venture" or "co-op" or "partner" or "equity" publisher, or any other term that suggests it's contributing something to the relationship. The kind of subsidy publisher described in the definitions above, always a rare bird, is even rarer these days; you aren't likely to find one outside of very specialized markets, such as poetry or academic books. A publisher that wants you to pay for publication, yet also claims to invest its own money and/or resources, is far more likely to be an overpriced vanity with a deceptive line of patter.
Something else to watch out for: the growing crowd of vanity publishers that attempt to deceive authors by presenting themselves as "traditional" or "small press" publishers, failing to reveal their fees until late in the submissions process or shifting the cost to some aspect of the book production process other than printing/binding. A few of these publishers don't require upfront money at all; instead, they ask their authors to perform various services, or pressure them to buy their own books. The bottom line, however, is the same--even if the writer isn't laying out cash at contract-signing time, she's still paying to see her book in print.
Given all these changes and shifty dealings, I suggest the following "new" definition of the term vanity publisher:
A vanity publisher is any publisher that relies on its own authors as its primary source of income, whether or not it charges an upfront fee.
