Legally—as a lowly lawyer, obviously I am not allowed to have
any literary opinions; just look at some "good" legal
writing—the distinction among a commercial publisher, a
vanity press, and self-publishing is best expressed in a two-step
sievelike test:
(1) Who has legal title to the books as they come off the press? If
it's the author, you're dealing with self-publishing, and don't
need to go to the second step.
(2) Is the guaranteed direction of capital flow toward the author
at the moment the first copy comes off the press? If yes, you're
dealing with commercial publishing; if no, you're dealing with a
vanity press. (Capital flow includes all of the necessary
concomittants of publishing, like copyright registration for US
books, advances, actual guaranteed nonreturnable sales, rights
payments, the value of the author's labor in creating marketing
materials/lists for the publisher, and a plethora of other
considerations.)
My earlier comments (cited by our Gracious Hostess) don't define a
commercial press so much as attempt to capture what a commercial
press becomes.
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