The concept of the "vanity publishing house" is going the way of the dodo bird. Anyone who takes the time can self-publish a book these days! And frankly it is often free. That is if you are willing to do the layout, the cover, etc. The only thing a person needs to pay for is the ISBN #. Certain self-publishing companies sell the ISBN # for around $35 or so - and it belongs to you, not them. We bought a set of 10 ISBN #'s a couple years ago for $100-200. I don't remember how much now. They are yours for life.

Self-publishing has turned into POD (Print On Demand). Considering that over 50% of book sales in the US are on Amazon, this is a HUGE market! Not having a book on Amazon and even worse is not having the "Look Inside" function on a book - is a death knell for any book.

Can a person make a self done book work? Yes! You have to be your own publicist, you have to do the work. But in the end, the book is yours and you get all the money. With our first book we have sold more copies every year as it is out. That is not what traditional book publishers want. You get 6 months to a year to make it, then they don't care much.

We found a distributor on our own who we cut a deal with as well. In our business we run about 1/2 our books we print ourselves (we use a printing company in the mid-west that does short runs of 1 to 3 thousand) and the other half we have deals with Amazon where they print the book using their POD and they stock it. Amazon does runs when they need to.

Short runs on printing is a modern boon. It has lowered the cost of books very low. No vanity prices there. We don't pay any more than a regular publishing house as we act as our own. Again though, a person has to be the one to do the calling, getting quotes and handling proofs. The whole POD thing is very attractive as one has to do nothing after writing the book - they just wait for quarterly checks from Amazon or their POD deal (some use Lulu.com who then contracts with Amazon).

But to sum it up...when we first brought our book out...back in the day? We spent $35 and that was it. For that $35 we got an ISBN # and were put on Amazon. With the profits we made we bank rolled it into our present business.