If I had a nickel for every prospective author who’s lamented that they can’t write their way out of a paper bag, I’d be a rich guy with a boat, a second home on the coast of Oregon, and a plan to visit Europe.
Actually, I already have those things, but my point is this: many people whom I meet in my role as a journalist would like to write a book and would like to see that book published. That’s where my wife and I come in. At our imprint, Elevation Press, our mission is making everyone’s dreams of authorship and publishing come true.
There was a time, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, when self-publishing meant paying a fortune to a so-called “Vanity Publisher.” These enterprises, as the name implies, were (and still are) in the business of stroking an author’s ego by cobbling a writer’s manuscript into a finished book.
I used to love watching the original “Law and Order” television series–I mean the classic show with Sam Watterson as Jack McCoy. One of the lawyer’s classic lines concerned how easy it is to get a grand jury to indict someone.
Said Jack: “That’s no challenge. I could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”
That’s how it works with a vanity press. For a few thousand dollars, a vanity press will gladly make someone’s ham sandwich into a finished book, regardless of the work’s merit.
The modern-day fount of wisdom known as Wikipedia, says it best in one succinct paragraph:
“A vanity press, vanity publisher, or subsidy publisher is a publishing house in which authors pay to have their books published. Where mainstream publishers aim to sell enough copies of a book to cover their own costs, and typically reject a majority of the books submitted to them, a vanity press will usually publish any book that a writer pays it to.”
Signing a contract with a vanity publisher is a bit like kissing your sister–assuming your sister charges you $15,000 for the privilege.
Elevation Press is NOT a vanity publisher. We don’t ask you to surrender your rights to your work. We don’t have you sign a contract. For a modest fee, ranging from $500-$1,000, we format your word-processed document to create a book cover and interior pages. Our product is a Portable Document Format (PDF) which can then be submitted to a print-on-demand service such as Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or to a commercial printer.
To view our finished products, visit our website: elevation-press-books
For a free, no obligation consultation, email us at [email protected]