There's a difference between self-publishing and vanity press 
publishing! Professionally done self-published books (The Breastfeeding 
Atlas is an example) can do very well and are respectable. The 
self-publisher hires experts to help with each stage of the process, or 
develops the required expertise, and hires a printer to produce the 
finished books.

Vanity Publishers on the other hand, make all their money from charging 
authors high prices upfront for the joy of seeing their (usually quite 
substandard) material in print. They generally do not edit material, and 
layout and art is rudimentary or boilerplate. Few books published by 
vanity presses sell more than a handful of copies, usually to friends 
and relatives of the author.

In traditional publishing, the publisher provides editorial, design and 
layout services, pays for all these and the printing expenses, 
publicizes and distributes the book, and pays the author a royalty on 
each copy sold.

Creating controversy is one way to market a book, however published. 
Let's not participate!

Catherine Watson Genna, BS, IBCLC  NYC

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