Don't mind me, I'm collecting links for later

[julesjones]

Nail Gaiman's blog post with the letter from Teresa Nielsen Hayden listing lots of useful links about the writing business and how not to get scammed:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/01/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.asp

"Follow the Money" -- TNH's analysis of a new model of vanity press scam exploiting POD technology to conceal the sting:
http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002692.html

In the middle of a discussion about a vanity press, a quick discussion of how bankruptcy law makes those bankruptcy clauses in publishing contracts effectively worthless if you're relying on them to get your rights back:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002703.html#22227
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002703.html#22244
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002703.html#22253
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/002703.html#22280

Scrivener's Error on the differences between commercial publishing, self-publishing and vanity publishing. The second link has a nice little table that shows you how to classify a publisher.
http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2003/07/now-observer-has-gotten-into-whole.html
http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2003/07/continuing-from-wee-hours-of-this.html

And that last one is the one I was looking for when I started collecting links to post in various places today if needed. Because if the books belong to the publisher as they come off the press, and the guaranteed capital outflow on publishing date is away from the author, then it's a vanity press. Doesn't matter what the publisher tries to tell you about only passing on fees from the printer, it's still a vanity operation if they own the books as they come off the press.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Writer beware had a nice article about an unusual vanity scheme: pay to be a 'co-author' in a Chicken-Soup style book. (No writing experience necessary)
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2007/11/victoria-strauss-wake-up-and-pay-yet.html

And fangs_fur_fey is currently running a series of articles of slushpile stories - guess what? Most of those published writers sent queries to agents and got representation and sold - some faster, some slower, but none waited for the +5 potion of publishing to appear.

[julesjones]

The background here is that there's an epublisher which as far as I can tell from the outside appears to be a commercial publisher on the epub side, but which is also offering authors the opportunity to have any of their books put into print if the author will pay the printer's set-up fee.

Which I wouldn't have a problem with if they were upfront about this being a vanity operation, but they keep insisting that they're *not* a vanity operation, because they're not charging a fee to be published, it's a fee charged by the printer that they're merely passing on. And of course a bunch of their authors have popped up on the comment threads to a couple of blog posts today to say how happy they are with their publisher, and it is not a vanity press because the money is a *printer's* fee...