Blase Eight by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 6- Vanity Publishers
You’re one of the chosen ones. You’ve copyrighted your valuable material and are thrilled to receive a letter from a publisher. They seem to say that they have made a cursory viewing of your well-disguised iterative virtuosity at the Library of Congress. They want to see more and if it meets their exalted standards they are interested in publishing your very first effort. The words; “Holy fucking shit” resonate in your head. You full well knew that what you were writing was fantastic, but here is official proof from an “expert,” in the field for more than a hundred years. Hell, it says so right in the embossed logo right on the buttery envelope.
Though not expected, it fits. The people condemned to have crossed your path have told you of your excellence as they eyed their wristwatches and recalled a pressing appointment. Your significant other has at times sung praises and at other times expressed her reservations, but you know that the latter was mostly a ploy to retain her credibility. That opening with the description of the two paintings was not in the least bit pretentious. Regardless; here was the real thing; a
“professional” opinion attesting to what you wanted to believe.
They say that they want to see a few chapters to determine
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if your effort meets their standards. For a moment you wonder why they require a copy from your records when they have already said that they have had a certain degree of access through what you have publicly filed. Many possibilities flash through your mind ranging from the reviewer’s need to pursue the project in a seat more comfortable and quiet than the one publicly provided; to their practical requirement of your yet-to-be-stated interest in working with them; and about 33 other gradations in between.
You dismiss all of those immaterial considerations and find something greater to ponder. The letter has failed to mention how much money they plan to give you and there is a curious undefined word in its center; “author partnership.” You agonize before your remarkable intellect decides to do first things first. Which are the best chapters? You choose a few toward the end, but then question if they will be fully appreciated without the understanding of the subtle references to what had gone before. You decide that the risk of uninformed misinterpretation might jeopardize full appreciation of your intricate tour de force. Now professionally pursued you invoke your luxury. You also want to stop thinking about this commercial irrelevance and get back to writing; after all you’ve calculated your time to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000 an hour. You send them the first two chapters, fully assured that if they don’t like them there will be voluminous offers to come.
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In a week you are informed that the publisher has reviewed your book and it meets their standards. A contract is enclosed and you are only minimally concerned that they want you to pay them $15,000, permissible to be paid in installments, prior to the publication of your gem. You know that your royalties will vanquish this fee in a month. In return for taking your money and the rights to the work which has taken six months of your time they agree to provide assistance with cover design and editing. In addition they will make your book available in all markets and send out a press release to unspecified “interested”
parties. They direct you to a website replete with testimonials from their satisfied authors, attesting to their approval of the publisher’s services. In due diligence you visit the site, but rather than reveling in the expected accolades, you take names.
You try to match them with names that have been on a best seller list. No such luck. Hmmmmmm. So, even assuming that the testimonials are real, none have become the big success you deserve to be, even with $15,000 worth of their “professional”
acumen. You’ll be the first. ............ Your optimism is tested when that calculator in your head plugs itself into your butt, and you think; “How many times have I been the first to do anything? ............. Let’s wait on this one.”
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Silliness aside; vanity publishers never call themselves that. It’s just that everyone else does and most serious readers know their names, and over the years, have come to regard any author published by them as a reject. This view may have been altered somewhat in the current flood of self-published e-books.
Some have been around quite some time and you can expect them to do what they say they will. They will do their seasoned best to put your book in the best light possible and will inform you that hardly any of the books they’ve published make the author enough money to cover their fees. Their advantages over a website which makes similar claims is that it is reasonable to expect that you won’t encounter a take-the-money-and-run-website-outfit and even that maybe physical copies of your book will be on some retailer’s shelves.
It is also true that if you reject the $15,000 first request, you will get others for a lesser amount. This is partially informed speculation; but I believe I know how the
“vanity” publishers got their name. There are a fair number of people to whom $15,000 is like a quarter to me. Some of them have used and continue to use these services in order to slip their implied brilliance somewhere into social conversations with “proof” in a physical product. Chances seem to suggest that some of these books just must have become best sellers and
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subsequently classics, but my limited research has not found any.
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