I’ll admit, when we got the press release this morning in which Cold Tree Press describes itself as “one of the United States’ most outstanding self-publishing companies,” all my internalized prejudices kicked into high gear. Finding out that Cold Tree author Marian Downs had parlayed her self-published Shut Up and Live into a book deal with Avery convinced me to look a little more closely at the release, though, which led to the discovery that Cold Tree actually turns a lot of manuscripts down because they aren’t actually publishable—which makes them seem a lot more like a traditional* publisher, except of course for the fact that authors are paying at least $1,400 to get their books out…with the newly minted special package of $9,800 that throws in a professional copyedit and a publicist. Which, heck, more and more authors who publish with mainstream publishers are paying for anyway; of course, they can (sometimes) also cover those expenses with advance money…
*Of course, I say “traditional” as if there wasn’t a period in history in which authors wouldn’t have batted an eye at the idea that they’d have to contribute to production costs.