Apple opens doors to vanity publishers Apple has provided a publishing service on the iPad for those who don't want to go through all the hassle of finding a publisher. Responding to a long-standing enquiry from Mac Life, Cupertino is now inviting budding authors to sign up for self-publishing, as long as the work is in ePub format, the author has an ISBN and a US …
"Apple is the first but it won't be the last and we look forward to being swamped by the literary equivalent of thousands of farting applications any day now."
Far from swamped, I, personally, will never even see any of this drivel. Are you actually going to go out of your way to submit yourself to it? If so, why?
From the link: "The total cost for a block of ISBNs is the registration fee plus the processing fee." Registration fee is $30 for 10, but the cheapest processing fee is $245, making a total cost (for a USian) of $275
Seems like the UK is reasonably cheaper than the US, not the other way around
Due to American efficiency and it not being a rip-off country, or are ours pricier to reflect the average greater number of syllables per word?
I'm tempted to throw in something about Blackadder's offering his confibularities to Dr. Johnson, but it would sound like IT Sales speak.
It's actually $245.00, according to the page you linked to. That's $30 registration fee for the ISBNs, plus a $215 "processing fee". Unusually, the UK price is actually cheaper than the US one.
Flames are for the marketers who put the $30 fee first and hide the $215 in small print.
And what sort of heinous agreement will they get these hopeful authors to sign, for this privilege? No doubt the words 'irrevocable', 'world-wide', 'perpetual', 'royalty-free' and 'exclusive' will appear in the small print somewhere. What joy it must be to be monetised as another Apple revenue stream.
self-publishing is when you act as your own publisher, doing all the stuff that comes before (and alongside) actually printing the books (or packaging them into the e-book format of your choice). for many niche writers, this may be more effective - publishing houses are notorious for not actually doing any marketing outside of the latest pot-boiler, and even in some cases for what amounts to sabotage of the writer's own marketing efforts.
vanity publishing is when a normal publisher lets *anyone* pay to publish books on the publisher's label. vanity publishers usually have lower-than-normal acceptance criteria (i.e. non-existent aside from legal liability checks), as the vain writer is paying to have the book published.
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