Editing Vanity press (section)

==History==

The term ''vanity press'' appeared in mainstream U.S. publications as early as 1941.<ref>{{cite magazine |date=22 December 1941 |title=Books: Literary Rotolactor |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932017,00.html |url-status=dead |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080609234923/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932017,00.html |archive-date=9 June 2008 |access-date=22 May 2016}}</ref> In that year, C. M. Flumiani was sentenced to 18 months in a US prison for mail fraud, arising from his scheme that promised book promotion (a line in a catalog), expert editing (they accepted all books), and acting as agent bringing books to his own publishing houses.<ref name="trends" />

By 1956, the three leading American vanity presses (Vantage Press, Exposition Press, and Pageant Press) were each publishing more than 100 titles per year.<ref name="trends">{{cite journal |last1=Sullivan |first1=Howard A. |title=Vanity Press Publishing |journal=Library Trends |date=1958 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=105–111 |url=https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/5811/librarytrendsv7i1l_opt.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |access-date=September 17, 2020 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210809024808/https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/5811/librarytrendsv7i1l_opt.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |archive-date= Aug 9, 2021 }}</ref>

[[Ernest Vincent Wright]], author of the 1939 novel ''[[Gadsby (novel)|Gadsby]]'', written entirely in [[lipogram]], was unable to find a publisher for his work and ultimately chose to publish it through a vanity press.