What’s wrong with vanity?
A decade or two ago, publishing your own books was described as Vanity Publishing. To escape the derogation implied in the term, the genre then morphed into Self-Publishing. Nowadays, it carries the more assertive soubriquet of Independent Publishing. Does that mean vanity was not involved in what I’ve just done?
I have recently published two novels without the aid of ‘traditional publishers’. It wasn’t that I wished to avoid the stultifying weight of ‘tradition’. The reason I haven’t got anything so common as a Penguin or Simon and his friend Schuster crawling all over my front covers and book spines is that I couldn’t make it past the agent barrier. Five rejections were enough for me; the ego couldn’t take any more. Besides, I saw their point. They weren’t judging my literary accomplishment; they were assessing whether I could make them money. Since my drive to write wasn’t financial, I understood our disconnect. For me it was a hobby not a profession which is not the attitude to attract agents and publishers.
So I dipped into my threadbare pockets to launch myself into the crowded pool known as histfic. As they were threadbare, launch is something of an overstatement. I pushed the publishing boat out without the sails or engines of marketing, knowing that I was heading straight for the rocks. But that was alright because I was being independent which is better than being vain, isn’t it?
I’m not so sure.
Committing anything to print or screen is an act of conceit. It’s attempting to get inside the heads of people you don’t know and never will. To compound that mischief, you are likely as not to charge them for invading their privacy. I don’t believe ‘independence’ encompasses that. Independence has connotations of standing alone, unafraid and uncaring of what others think. To ask others to pay for letting my imagination and opinions loose in their heads is not being independent, it’s being presumptuous. Presumption is a pretty close cousin to vanity.
If a traditional publisher had strung the sails and fired the marketing engine for me, that wouldn’t be my presumption, it would be their greed. They would have exploited my vanity in the hope that I could become a cash cow for them (allowing me a small share of the cream to keep me tied to their teats).
The upshot is that I feel encouraged to embrace my conceit. My books made it to market because I paid a publisher to place them there (that company has been excellent, by the way). For brand and sales reasons, they prefer not to or consider themselves Vanity Publishers. I’m happier with the term than them because what self-respecting author does not have excessive pride in what they do? You can’t make your way in writing by being half-hearted. Readers appreciate that you’re committed to what you’ve written, although it’s their prerogative to disagree with it.
I’m unsure whether any disquiet with vanity has a gendered slant. Far more women publish today than men, ‘traditionally’ and ‘independently’. Women may be more at home with vanity – after all, the vanity case is still around and sells well in that guise. Shakespeare can’t be blamed for the gender association. He never said ‘Vanity, thy name is woman’ and misogynists only lay the misquote at his door because they haven’t the balls to claim it for themselves.
Which is leading me to the conclusion that I should stand up tall as a vain male author. A light dose of vanity is not intrinsically devaluing and if you acknowledge your own vanity, doesn’t that neuter any pejorative sting? So here goes.
In 2026, I VAINLY PUBLISHED ‘A BODY IN THE BARN’ AND ‘DON’T BLAME OLIVER’.
Yes, in both senses of the word.