Talk:Vanity press

I'm interested how the vanity press can charge for copies if they are not even bound. Can anyone give any source on this? How common is this problem? --Daniel C. Boyer 18:21, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

There is a discussion of that phenomenon in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. I don't remember the details, but I think that the publisher pretends to market copies to libraries etc..., but doesn't, and saves money by not even finishing to bind them. David.Monniaux 16:08, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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In some cases librarians will reluctantly accept a vanity publication coming from somebody with the political power to close down the library or from somebody who makes regular contributions of extremely large amounts of money to the library budget. Other librarians will choose to resign rather than accept such publications.

These are some rather extreme claims. Evidence? --203.206.52.13 06:55, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Extreme? On the contrary, we are talking about frequent occurences in small towns with a small library and only one professional librarian holding the fort. There are stories about this in books dealing with library acquisitions methods. And of course, the Library Journal, which is the main publication of the A.L.A., (the American Library Association) has chronicled the phenomenon for sevral generations. When we do our master's in Library Science we have a special course just on the acquisition of materials. One of the main goals of an acquisition policy (but not the only one) is to establlish solid grounds for refusing unwanted gifts. When this crucial policy is flouted, by imposing vanity books or other books (old books usually) which we know by experince that the library patrons will not be interested in reading, the very basis of the collection is imperiled. Of course, the wise librarian will start looking for a job elsewhere, find one, and after that resign while stating as a basis the flouting of reckognized principles in the field of Library and Information Science. --AlainV 13:50, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Be that as it may, you've yet to provide any evidence, only generic references to "small towns" and "some librarians." A citation to a specific issue of the Library Journal to substantiate your claims would be helpful. You present a false dichotomy of librarians either begrudgingly accepting such work on pain of dispossession or resigning in protest. There is a third possibility: the librarian takes the book knowing no one else will ever read it but attended by no rancor. This selective reporting should be indicative of POV problems. Lastly the collections problems presented by donations of marginal works (vanity published or otherwise) belongs more properly to an article on library science. — 207.24.168.10 05:38, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In retrospect I see how it might seem like a dichotomy when in fact there are more than two and even more than three courses of action. I realise now that I have been meaning to give a less anecdotal slant to this and to integrate this in an Acquisitions process article for too many months now. I have removed it from the Vanity press article since it appears in the talk page. There should be a link to a selection of materials article (or Library acquisitions article) but I am still stuck on how to phrase it or how to start it off. --AlainV 16:20, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I know this is barely relevant to vanity presses or even to wikipedia, but I was very suprised to see this figure quoted for the processing of a book for a library. I just don't see how it could possibly cost that much. What is involved?

Entering the book into the computer system, making a label and barcode, stamping the book, laminating (possibly) and putting the book in the shelves. Am I missing anything? That couldn't possibly take more than 15 minutes per book at the most. What is driving the cost up so high?

My thoughts also, having worked in a library for a few months recently. Though there were a few extended discussions on how to classify particular niche or cross-category items between the senior staff, processing most books (at the time I took the post, they had just received a large delivery, and took a couple more during my tenure) was a rapid and straightforward affair. Look up the appropriate dewey code (not much more involved than actually looking for a book to read) or see if it had been pre-supplied with one (common) IF it was reference, or check the author name and produce a typewritten spine label appropriately; insert selfadhesive loan stamp label, security alarm strip and serial asset ID barcode; add a few possession rubber-stamps throughout the pages and on the page-edges; plastic-jacket it if necessary. Then click onto the 'add item' icon in the cataloguing software (continually running on several PCs), scan the barcode, type in a surprisingly small number of pertinent details, do a quick check for typos, hit OK and dump the book onto the re-shelving trolley. If that represents $50 of work (or, about 5 hours at my junior rate of pay), then I'll be suing the library for a significant amount of underpayment... the materials certainly couldn't be worth more than a few cents per title. As an aside, the quality of these alternatively-published materials must be pretty awful given some of the trash I had to process from major publishers! :) --tahrey 22/5/07

It can take several hours just to catalogue a book if the book is not already in common cataloging databases like OCLC's, all neatly prepared for "copy cataloguing" or "derived cataloguing". And the library pays a certain amount to OCLC (or other suppliers) for the data needed for cataloging. Yes, if we are talking of a book which is already in one of those cataloging databases it can take less tha an hour to catalogue and process the book, but most vanity books never make it to the Library of Congress databases or to the OCLC databases (and some rare books which sometimes end up as donations to the library are not completely described by Library of Congress databases, OCLC et alia) so they have to go through a process called "original cataloging", which sometimes requires hours. In other words a professional librarian (somebody with a master's degree in Library and information Science) has to nearly read the book then look up comparable books on the databases to know not only in which part of the Library classification it will be placed but also what other elements are necessary for a useful description of the book, using both that library's adaptation of rules derived from the International Standard Bibliographic Description and possibly the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). Whew! This means heavy labour costs, so big libraries (university, State or national libraries) break up the process among several types of library employees (paid at different scales), with the library clerks (persons with a high school diploma) doing the tagging and shelving, the library technicians (persons with a junior college or tech college diploma in library techniques) doing the preliminary intellectual work and the professional librarians (master's degree) doing the final work and approval of the cataloguing. This "assembly-line" process is usually integrated with the book-selecting and book-buying acquisitions process so donations to the library, wether they are vanity press books or not, can very easily screw thing up completely, unless provisions are made beforehand to treat donations in another process. --AlainV 03:54, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

isn't the "American Biographical Instiute" a vanity publisher?

Vanity press#History isfdb.org

<ref name="isfdb/30364">{{cite web |title=Publisher: The Abbey Press |url=https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?30364 |website=[[isfdb.org]] |access-date=15 December 2025}}</ref>

Piñanana (talk) 03:48, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

You are using that solely to establish that there was an Abbey Press in New York.... a fact that is sufficiently established by the next reference. As such, this reference serves no function but to clutter up the sentence. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 05:21, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

actually, to notify the careful reader that Abbey Press in New York published science fiction

Piñanana (talk) 05:25, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

As we're not saying that they publish science fiction, that's not something we need a reference for. And since we don't have a source that indicates that that is what they primarily published -- after all, a vanity press is apt to publish whatever comes in the door with a check attached -- it's likely not something worth noting. Really, if you want to hold a lot of information about Abbey Press, the right answer may be to start a page about them. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 05:41, 15 December 2025 (UTC)