Trading standards inquiry into vanity publishing trade

THE VANITY publishing industry, which publishes books at the writer's own cost, is the subject of an investigation by trading standards officers for possible contravention of the Trades Descriptions Act, writes Marianne Macdonald.

Hampshire trading standards opened the inquiry after an expose of the industry by Johnathon Clifford, founder of the National Poetry Foundation. Last month it circulated 130 trading standards departments asking whether they had had complaints about the industry.

The move follows the publication of a book by Mr Clifford in which he described what he believes are the high prices and misleading assessments of literary worth often given by the vanity press, after he sent 12 firms in the United Kingdom a selection of 'ghastly and deplorable poems' under a pseudonym earlier this year. Mr Clifford disclosed the reaction in his book, Vanity Press and the Proper Poetry Publishers.

One independent editor had lauded the 'closely constructed yet explosively apocalyptic language' of the offerings, and quoted pounds 2,400 for a hardback collection of the poems without specifying the print-run. Another had commended the 'very attractive poetic style' and offered to print up to 48 poems for pounds 1,960, again without specifying the number of copies.

Mr Clifford, 54, of Fareham, Hampshire, also compared the vanity publishers' prices with those of an average printer. One firm asked pounds 4,000 for a print run of 1,000 copies, compared with pounds 1,250 from his own printer. He said: 'Some of these firms are implying that the poet will make money from publishing the collection in royalties. You only have to do your own maths to realise that that is absurd.'