By ericvancewalton on Skatehive
The book publishing world in the pre-internet days was a little like the wild west. The wolves were lurking everywhere and part of finding your way in that world was learning how not to become their prey. When I began seriously pursuing a writing career in the early 1990’s the most dangerous of all the wolves were the vanity publishers. These unscrupulous publishers preyed on the naivete of unsuspecting new authors and offered to publish their books for a hefty fee and an extraordinarily large cut of the royalties. They wouldn’t waste any of their precious time or money promoting your book, that was the author’s job. Their goal was to flatter the most authors they could, make them believe their book would become a bestseller, then extract as much money as possible from them before they caught on to their scheme. Vanity presses were not much better than pimps and I’d guess there weren’t many of us indie authors who escaped unscathed. Once upon a time I was tricked by one of these vanity