The term ‘Vanity Publishing’ dates back to the late 1940s … Over seventy years of the same playbook, and the warning signs authors are told to watch for today haven't changed much. The real giveaway for how to spot a vanity publisher is how they present themselves. They like to pose as traditional publishers, "offering" you a publishing deal, using the language of acquisition and selection, when in reality there's no care factor at all about what they're publishing. They're not upfront about who they are or what you're actually buying into.

That's the whole issue for me: it's not that they charge the author to publisher, it's the dishonesty around it.

The model is simple enough on paper: the author pays a publisher to produce and distribute their book. Not so dissimilar to hybrid publishing, right? Wrong.

Where it goes wrong is that while true hybrid publishers care about what they’re publishing, vanity publishers typically skip any real quality control, offer little to no genuine distribution or marketing support, and leave the author carrying all the financial risk while they carry almost none.