Looking for help

[zykieea]

I just got about 15 romance novels without a title page in them.  The title page was not removed, it was never there. They are very nice copies, but I think there may be something special about these books, so I thought I would ask here.

Could these be books sent out to authors for proofreading? They are not marked ARC. They do have ISBN's that go back to the correct book in the Goggle catalog but nothing here on Ebay. Here is an example of an ISBN 9798363873799.

Any help with this question will be appreciated. I am very curious as to what they may be.

[maxine*j]

Just an observation: 

In normal publishing, this would be a manufacturing defect.  The collectors of some things seem to dote on errors, it seems, but among serious book collectors manufacturing defects and errors reduce the value.

This paperback is "independently published," doubtless POD, so maybe there never was a title page.

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[dbfolks166mt]

     Some pictures may help. Is it a first edition? Any other information re the publisher, place of publication? 

[maxine*j]

The info was at the ISBN OP gave which shows it to be vanity published, as I mentioned, and doubtless POD, so who knows if it had a title page at all, as we normally think of title pages:

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BMDJ49V2
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (November 15, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 186 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8363873799
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.47 x 9 inches

Here it is on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Thomas-Bride-Dukes-Brothers/dp/B0BMDJ49V2/ref=monarch_sidesheet

There are no copies for sale on ABE.

[krazzykats]

Save on paper costs.

[zykieea]

Thank you very much for your help.  I saw them on Amazon but thought there may be something special about these.  

[krazzykats]

It wasn't a joke about saving on paper costs and waste.  Go look at how a book is constructed. 

Everything is inserted in fours.  One extra oddball page means adding three more pages to make four.  So to save on costs, some will eliminate the extra page.

I'm not saying that's the reason for sure, but it's a reason to take out an oddball page.  

[onefootflippers]

Being that the books are almost certainly print on demand books the author or a friend of the author likely did the entire book layout instead of a professional doing it.  Or they literally uploaded their text right to the print on demand site and never made a page by page PDF of it in the first place.

That is why they are missing title pages, the authors never gave them title pages.

I know I did the complete layouts of every book I ever wrote, from cover to cover, if I didn't put it there then it wasn't there, including title pages, table of contents, indexes, page numbers, etc.

[lacemaker3]

@zykieea, if you click on "Read sample" on the page @maxine*j  linked to, it shows that the paperback should have a title page (see below).

I suspect that these were self-published through Amazon's publishing/print-on-demand service, since it only appears to be available on Amazon. So it's possible that some books might have missing pages. I also noticed that a lot of the reviews online were from readers who received free advance copies in return for their reviews, so there might be non-standard copies that were produced in advance.

[dbfolks166mt]

The info was at the ISBN OP gave which shows it to be vanity published, as I mentioned, and doubtless POD, so who knows if it had a title page at all, as we normally think of title pages:

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BMDJ49V2
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (November 15, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 186 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8363873799
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.47 x 9 inches

Here it is on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Thomas-Bride-Dukes-Brothers/dp/B0BMDJ49V2/ref=monarch_sidesheet

There are no copies for sale on ABE.

     Thank you for some reason I simply could not find it from the ISBN. I will attribute it to my bad eyes or fat fingers. 😀

[chapeau-noir]

Just a word - "Vanity" publishing is rather different than self-publishing btw. The term vanity publishing is a bit old fashioned, but its definitely still done, and will yield a more finished product as the press takes on book design, cover design, etc. - it's not cheap to do. A small press will do similar but they are selective of what they publish as they have an investment in the finished product. So if say an association wants their yearbook published, or a nice commemorative anthology, they'll often end up with a "vanity publisher" so they can have good collectible copies for their members rather than PoD with generic covers and kind of wonky pagination.

With self-publishing you're more on your own - I've read some awful self-published dreck, but it's often the only way a writer has of getting their work into the public, so there is also some excellent high-quality writing produced. The PoD books are pretty bare boned but they have all the words. One author I talked to accidentally sent one of his drafts to Amazon to be self-published, and was horrified when he realised that he'd mixed up his files. Just listening to his description of it made me a little queasy - that must have been awful.

Self- and subscription publishing used to be how authors published most of their books but this huge publishing industry with armies of editors and reps grew up around it and now people think that's the only way you get a 'real' book published.

[maxine*j]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Just a word - "Vanity" publishing is rather different than self-publishing btw. The term vanity publishing is a bit old fashioned...   

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You are absolutely correct, and it's true that old-fashioned me used an old-fashioned term inaptly. 

Thanks for the correction and for the reminder to think a bit longer before I hit the "Reply" button.  😄

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