Nadia Lee: Why Simon & Schuster’s Archway Publishing Is Bad for Authors

From Nadia Lee, a response to the latest publishing news, and a handy comparison chart, reproduced below.

A few months ago, Penguin Books, realizing that their vanity-press venture was selling like coldcakes, bought the world’s leading experts on vanity press scams: Author Solutions, Inc. Now Simon & Schuster has announced a ‘premium’ vanity imprint, to be called Archway, run in ‘partnership’ with Author Solutions: which means that S&S will funnel slush writers to Archway, and AS will do the grunt work of separating them from their money. The so-called service is ‘premium’ because the ripoff is steeper than with most vanity presses: it starts with $1,599 for a simple children’s book and ranges up to $25,000 for the full-service screwing.

Withal, here is Ms. Lee’s comparison chart, so you can judge for yourself:

I have only this to add:

There are only two differences between an Archway or other vanity-press deal and a traditional publishing deal.

1. In traditional publishing, the publisher pays the up-front costs and gives you an advance. In an vanity deal, you pay the up-front costs plus a guaranteed profit for the publisher.

2. In traditional publishing, Simon & Schuster (or whoever) releases the book under the name of a commercial imprint and makes at least some attempt to get it into stores. In a vanity deal, the vanity press’s name guarantees that no reputable bookseller will order the book. (The partial exception is Amazon, which will not order your book in, but will list it on their website just in case anybody ever wants to buy it. But you can get your book listed on Amazon much more cheaply, quickly, and easily by self-publishing.)