With the announcement of Harlequin Horizons, there’s been a whole lot of comment and an official response from RWA. What I’ve mainly noticed in the commentary is that many are confusing vanity publishing with self-publishing, although the good people at Writer Beware do a good job of explaining the difference.

Vanity publishing is not a winning proposition for writers. You pay to have your book "published", but it isn’t really. It’s not available to libraries or bookstores because it doesn’t have distribution. Good luck trying to convince your local library or bookstore to stock it, because they already don’t have enough shelf space for traditionally published books. So your book in print is functionally not for sale or available to readers, you footed the costs yourself, and your profit is…in the red. But wait, it’s worse. Because you didn’t self-publish so you don’t hold the copyright and you don’t get to decide what percentage of the profits, if you manage to make any, you keep. Horizons offers authors 50% of net royalties. Net is bad because it means any expense on the planet can be deducted before the author gets paid. 

Self-publishing, on the other hand, is a lot of work but in the end you own the copyright, and if you put in some effort, you actually can make some money with it. At the very least have your own printed copies for your own purposes that you got at cost. Patricia Simpson offers a detailed look at her experiment with self-publishing and POD and gives a rundown of the pros and cons. Author JA Konrath also gives numbers on his experiment with putting titles out for sale on Kindle. 

In the past, I used Lulu to make a POD version of one of my books for sale, when the original epublisher didn’t have print rights and no interest in using them. That cost me an ISBN fee and some time. When I resold the book to Ellora’s Cave, they printed a version which has distribution. Guess which sold better? Not the POD. But it didn’t cost me much and it made the book available to readers who wanted it in that format. It was a very low-risk move and it didn’t tie up my rights when a "real" publisher wanted the book.

So, self-publishing; it will cost you some time, but if you’re good with a computer and have or can barter for the right skills, it might not cost you much money. You retain your rights. You set the prices. And every once in a while, a self-published book takes off and becomes a big success. 

What other alterantive does an author have if they get rejected by a traditional publisher? Go indie. Sell your book to an indie epublisher like Samhain or Ellora’s Cave or Loose Id. Or in print, Dorchester, Sourcebooks, Juno, all of which represent a broad range of genres. Those publishers will pay YOU. You don’t pay them.They’ll even do all the formatting, editing, cover art, and ISBN registration for you, and they have distribution channels so your book can actually find a market.

We all get rejected. No matter how many books you have to your credit, published authors still get rejected. No matter how many ideas I come up with, one is always potentially a lemon. And when rejection happens, the author has a range of options to choose from. Is the book a lemon? Put it away, chalk it up to a learning experience. Is it just a different flavor? Then explore the options before consigning it to the sock drawer, but you can do that without writing a big check. You can even do it in a way that makes you money.