About Vanity Publishing
What is Vanity Publishing? What is a Vanity Publisher?
A vanity publisher is:
"any company which charges a client to publish a book; or offers to include short stories, poems or other literary or artistic material in an anthology and then invites those included in it to buy a copy of that anthology."
(British Advertising Standards Authority Advice Note, Vanity Publishing, July 1997)
However, many such companies prefer to use other terms, which you may find misleading, such as:
- Joint venture publishing
- Co-Operative publishing
- Subsidy publishing
- Shared responsibility publishing
- (incorrectly) self-publishing