Recently, I was chatting with a new friend on Twitter who got “stuffed” by the same publisher that my dear friend Angelique got tangled up with a year ago. Their stories are the same. The publisher’s name doesn’t matter …it’s a vanity publisher, and they all work the same: you pay a lot of money to have your book published, and they do somewhere between a crappy job and an okay job of it. They might promote your book a little, or might require you to hire your own publicist and promote it yourself.

Vanity publishing is a form of self-publishing, and if you are going to self-publish, you can do it yourself at far less cost, and with fewer headaches that can become migraines. If you want a nice cover, pay a cover designer to make one. If you want a polished interior, pay an editor/proofreader to polish it. If you don’t know how to format a book for e-book and paperback versions, pay someone a small fee to do that. If you’re technologically challenged or lazy, you can even pay someone to set up accounts for you on Amazon and elsewhere, and upload your book.

If you do the latter, you will save a lot of money; you can oversee the process step by step; you will own your print and e-book files, your own copyright; and you’ll maintain your peace of mind. In this day and age, there are so many experts around who will help you for a small fee or even gratis, there is just no reason to fall into painful struggles with vanity publishers.