I spent the evening yesterday with some friends. Now we are all writers, but the next conversation never happened before, I suspect that writers have their own "religion" they follow. One was strongly for self-publishing and another was all against, and it made for an interesting evening. Of course this got me to thinking. Is there really such a great debate?

To these two there always will be, perhaps it is because they have seen success in only one type of publishing or not. So being me, I had to ask them: (knowing the answer full well) what would you consider a vanity press?

Answer A: "A vanity press is anything where the writer pays for services to bind a book. That is a vanity press. It's only for the author's use.'

Answer B: "A better and stronger form of writing, which is available to all who want it. I wouldn't call it vanity press, but self-publishing"

Okay, so I'm middle ground, but what about the self-publishing companies? Well there are many here are the list that both agree aren't so reliable to work with: AuhtorHouse, IUniverse, Xlibris, Publish America, and Trafford. To varying degrees neither one of them were happy with the services rendered. Price was one of them, although you can find them on any of the websites you can get the newest prices, but still can you make a profit with these self-publishing companies.

They also agreed, sort of, about Lulu press and Lighting Source are two of better ones. One even went as far to point out that the above mentioned self-publishers use Lighting Source to publish their books.

I was a bit more suprised about this development. This caused me to wonder, what really is self-publshing then?

So IMHO: self-publishing is when you pay for services and get books for said services, that you sell to readers, you are the author and the writer, and the chief marketing executive and inventory personnel and anything and everything in between.

There is another few things I might add.

What else?

Well, I would also say that the company you do go to also is the publisher of the books, not sending it out to another company to do the printing work for them. I don't feel the need to have my own "work" done by a large company who then sends it out to someone else.

If it was something that I would do, I would use a local printer, this way I can say my book is published "homegrown" and I can also see the process. I can also garner local support. People enjoy knowing that they are valued.

So, this also leads me to my next point, when writing do you know the rest of what goes on? This Is one of the reasons why I think going to get a book self-published is a good thing, it gives a writer an idea, a small idea, of what really goes on in the publishing industry.

Just as publishing via the traditional route gives an idea of the type of choices a publisher must make each and everyday. There is value in everything.

As for calling something a vanity press, I told both of them that I would call something a vanity press if it doesn't give back at least part of what they promise, by this I mean books. ( You understand the kind you can sell for profit) Even if I spent 100 dollars, and not get books, I still would consider it a vanity press. If I spent 100 dollars, and got enough books to break even or close to even then it's (to me at least) a self-publishing company.

When I told this to my two warring friends, I got some bemused looks. I suppose some people won't change.