Last week, Harlequin announced the opening of a digital publishing division, Carina Press. This week, it’s vanity publishing via Harlequin Horizons. When I first heard the news about Horizons, I went all Bill the Cat. 
What is vanity publishing, you ask? Basically, it’s when a writer pays a third party entity to print their book. Packages vary. Those at Harlequin Horizons start at $599.99. And then they climb. Climb. Climb. Climb. A vanity publisher usually retains some of the royalties (profits – in the case of Harlequin Horizons, they retain 50%), and pretty much anyone who wants to get published through this route can. There’s no slush pile in which to languish. No editorial hoops to jump through, etc. You can put your novel out there in all its typo-laden glory.
Self-publishing is often equated with vanity publishing, but differs in that the writer pays all the expenses and receives all the profits. The writer even obtains their own ISBN. There’s still no slush pile in which to languish. Still no editorial hoops to jump through—just your own. You’re in total control. You’re still paying to publish your book.
In traditional publishing (ie. Harlequin Enterprises aside from Horizons), the author doesn’t pay a dime. The publisher takes the monetary risk, does the editing, does the cover art, does the distribution. The author writes the books and earns her paychecks from (a) advances and/or (b) royalties.
Those are my definitions, and I’ll be the first to admit that until I started reading about Horizons on-line I didn’t truly understand the differences between self-publishing and vanity publishing. However, there are arguments for self-publishing that I could see myself totally agreeing with (such as an established author self-publishing an out-of-print back list for which she/he has received back the rights), whereas vanity publishing of novels in particular has never sat right with me. Vanity publishing of your family history? Of your favorite recipes to give as Christmas gifts? That I can totally see. But it doesn’t seem a viable way for a novelist to make a profit off her writing. The vanity publisher—oh, yeah, they’ll make a profit. 😉 To them, it’s a business.
The news of Harlequin’s vanity publishing venture has sparked some spirited discussions on-line, among them this thread at Smart Bitches Love Trashy Books and this one at Absolute Write (scroll down after you click the link). And my writers’ loops are hopping!
What does this mean for the future of publishing? For the struggling unpublished writer? Would you pay to get your book published? Would you harbor hope that if you published your book through Horizons and miraculously earned great sales that HQ’s traditional publishing arm would pick up your work?
You might not, but there are plenty of writers who would. Writers who expect to pay to publish their novels. Writers who might not understand that, in traditional print and digital publishing, you don’t pay!
I must say, I am pleased that the new RWA board has acted so quickly in response to the opening of Horizons. At this point, it doesn’t look like Harlequin/Silhouette will have an official presence at next summer’s RWA National conference in Nashville. Of course, that doesn’t mean Harlequin/Silhouette can’t be there. There are other ways a publisher can make their presence known at a conference—booking their own meeting spaces to disseminate information and take queries, for example.
Thoughts?