Nobody wants to shell out $20 for the exact same size book they can buy for $5 at Wal Mart or Amazon. I have negotiated with Double Day publishers for the next issue. Which I can get printed for about $3.

I have been selling e-book or PDF versions of my magazine just fine. But not a single person (including friends and family) has bought the POD.

Which do you think will sell better? $20 or $3?

A good example is PublishAmerica, notorious for falling (briefly) for the "Atlanta Nights" sting set up by several SF and fantasy writers and editors. They claim to have as high a standard as regular publishing houses and brag about getting their books into amazon and various brick and mortar venues (Borders, Barnes & Noble).

What this really means is that they obtain an ISBN for the book, and list it with Ingram (the big book distributor). If someone happens to ask for your book, Ingram will order a copy from PA. That's all they're willing to do. They brag of offering a token advance of $1 but then ask for hundreds or thousands of dollars in production costs from their authors. They are also notorious for not only NOT proofreading manuscripts, but for introducing errors into the text during typesetting. And despite their "high standards," they apparently didn't even bother to read "Atlanta Nights" until the sting went public, because one chapter was "written" by a random text generator (the more traditionally written chapters were deliberately made as awful as possible). They've also been caught lying about their sales figures.

POD doesn't look as risky but you're also not going to get the readers, because it'll be up to you to promote your book.

I would not take either of these options. If something sounds too good to be true it almost always is. Don't be tempted to take a shortcut you'll regret later.

Edit: That reminds me. Many of the more unscrupulous vanity publishers (like PublishAmerica) are easily recognized by their willingness to abuse writers' insecurities by pointing out that "the big NY publishers" are too busy promoting Stephen King or John Grisham to handle Poor First-Time Writer.

This is not only sickening, it's also stupid. Publishers can't rely on the same backlist of authors (no matter how hard some of them try) because there's always someone retiring, or dying, or losing popularity, or trying to move to a less frequent publication schedule. Publishers need books to fill those slots and they can't do it solely by stealing writers from each other. They need new blood.

Look at it this way: With a traditional publisher, you're facing long odds of being published, long odds of finding an audience, and long odds of keeping an audience. With POD/vanity publishers, even the aboveboard ones, you'll have the book in print, and no setup in place for promotion and no widescale distribution, which makes it much *more* likely that you won't find an audience in the first place.

If you want to make a living as a fiction writer -- a difficult enough proposition -- I think you're better off spending your time writing a whole bunch of novels (improving your writing with experience as you go) and hoping to eventually sell one to a real publisher, rather than self-publishing one novel and spending your time promoting it.

**Edit**
Ok, I can't find it right now, and by the time I do find it, I'll probably forget why I was looking for it... so... someone else try...

However, my novels are for traditional houses.

I have a friend who published on iUniverse - Dell saw the book and negoitations began. Occassionally it does happen happily, but for most, POD (which is not Vanity) is best reserved for books that aren't easily suitable for the established market.

Vanity will buy anything (PublishAmerica would be an example of that - and also of a scam-type-notorious-bad-bad-company)

iUniverse, which will sell your books internationally, does have access to a warehouse, can get you into the Barnes & Nobles shelves and WILL reject you is a very good POD.

But then, CafePress, Lulu, and BookSurge (whom I don't recommend because even though they're $50 it looks like yuk) will print a quickie book for you.

In the end, if you've put a ton of work into your novel, what's 6-8 months? Send out multiple submissions (except to Tor and don't get me started on them! - bah!) and start your next book. Do not wait. Send the mail (include a postcard) and begin the next book.

Best of luck!