The Vanity Publisher – Part III

PART I | PART II

This short story was written many years ago by myself in retaliation to a certain subsidy publisher who had been hounding me with junk mail, all of which is now happily stuffing some old shoes. It should be known by the reader that I purposefully wrote this in a casual style: all errors were intentional. —Kaleb

CONTINUED

“You’ll never be an author, you starving bum!” she greeted him as he came up the road.

“Ah, but mother,” he said with a hint of vain reproof. “I shall, when my publisher finishes their work.”

“What?” his mother said, adjusting her earpiece.

“I will be an author. A subsidy publisher will publish me.”

“Ha!” his mother said. “You mean a vanity publisher!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” the author bellowed, and he left her there and ran off into the wheat fields, and sat on a rock, and realized that her words were true. It was a vanity publisher, under the disguise of a subsidy publisher. They were making their money off of his vanity: and probably hundreds of other hapless authors who were desperate to see their books in print, and didn’t want to do the work of finding a real publishing house.

As he thought about how he had been hoodwinked, he became worth his salt, and realized with deep anger that he must rid the world of the subsidy publisher, before some other hapless author fell into their trap. He went home to his mother, swallowing his pride and a new man. She handed him his mail and started to fix him some eggs and biscuits, because she could see that he was a new man now and had changed from his old ways.

In the mail was a package for him from the subsidy publisher, confronting him with even more fees, right and left. There were bank fees, food fees, travel fees, gas mileage fees, transportation fees, limo fees, catering fees, rental fees, photocopy fees, insurance fees, courier fees, clothing fees, speeding citation fees, plumbing fees, office fees, business fees, typist fees, automobile fees, billboard fees, advertising fees, fishing license fees, general expenses fees, computer part fees, cell bill fees, Nanny McFee fees, garden gnome fees, bodyguard fees, valet service fees, gas bill fees, dinner-party hosting fees, uncatalogued replacement fees, warehouse fees, and taxes on the whole list. They requested that the author send it back inside of the provided box in the form of twenty dollar bills, stacked up neatly and wrapped with red rubber bands. They informed him if he included one dollar too little, they would charge him a late fee and a processing fee. They also asked him to include three more copies of his book, because the last ones were so tasteful.

TO BE CONCLUDED TOMORROW…