PSA: Companies to avoid

I know a lot of you are writers. If you are, David Gaughran has a good post of various vanity publishing companies to avoid. A lot of big name traditional publishers are getting into the vanity publishing business these days, and in my opinion most if not all of these companies are little more than scams.

It is darkly amusing that so many traditional publishers, who for so long defended themselves as the gatekeepers of literary quality from the unpublished hordes, are now so quick to transform themselves into vanity publishers to bolster their profit margin.

Seriously, there is nothing these companies offer that you either cannot learn to do yourself with moderate (and basic HTML, which is needed for ebook layout, is useful in many other fields of endeavor), or that you cannot contract out to someone for a reasonable, one-time fee.

-JM