A good friend posted a link on my Facebook wall this morning. It was an announcement of a so-called “Indie Publishing Contest” run by a major vanity publisher. The deal is, the contest prize is a “publishing, distribution and marketing package” from said vanity publisher.
So why am I FURIOUS? Because this vanity publisher is now claiming to be an “Indie” publisher. Which further confuses authors and makes my job cleaning up the mess even harder. NOTE: You are vanity published if another company’s name is on your book and you paid them for publication. If you pay a company and they put their name on your book, their ISBN on your book, and handle distribution for you, that is vanity.
The only way to be Indie published is to have everything, including distribution, ISBN, printer account, etc. registered in your name.
Please don’t believe the lie this publisher is throwing around by calling itself an “Indie” publisher! Indie stands for “Independent” which means without anyone else.
Obviously with Indie publishing you have other people helping you – editors, graphic artists, consultants, etc. But the bottom line is if you are Indie published, your name and your reputation go on your book, not some other company that sells “publishing packages.”
