While reading about literature magazines, I came across the phrase “vanity press.” Curious, I did some research about the term and I came up with useful information about vanity press.
It was noted that Johnathon Clifford coined the term in 1959, which means a printer of books would claim the title of a publisher and charges the writer a fee in return for publishing the writer’s books. If the common publication is intended to the general public and earns its income from the reading public, vanity press earns from the authors and writers themselves. A vanity press normally allows to produce a published copy of an author’s creation if the writer would agree to shell out money for printing and binding to take place, where these fees usually becomes the vanity press’s profits, unlike commercial publishers where their profits come from the sales of the published material.
I’ve found out that the term “vanity press” is actually considered derogatory, since it implies that a writer or author uses the service out of vanity, with possible lack of success in the market as compared to having it published from commercial publishers, which follows policies and standard procedures to make sure of such success of the work in the market. There are even confirmed vanity presses as scams, which ask for a large fee from the author in return of fame and fortune.
On example of vanity press in fiction is Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum. It talks about the inside mechanism of a vanity press functioning as a venture on the side of a more mainstream publisher, to drive out personal thoughts on the occult that cannot be published. The major publisher is managed by Signor Garamond, named for a well-known sixteenth century printer, while the vanity press is named after another prominent sixteenth century painter, ‘Manutius.’
Now I can say, in the world of publishers and publications, I have learned something new, that is, vanity press.