Sure. To my mind, a vanity press is publishing something with a tiny circulation (maybe not much beyond friends/family); it’s really more about saying “See, I had something published in an actual book! I can do authoring!”. Self-publishing, IMO, is where the author believes the work warrants a wider audience but for whatever reason (niche subject, for example) can’t get a more traditional publisher on board and thus arranges for it to be published themselves.
It’s a false distinction.
Vanity press is printing whatever the hell you want in whatever quantity you want. The only difference between that and electronic self-publishing is that one is a treebook and one is an e-book.
Having a third party that evaluates quality to some extent makes a big difference.
No. It’s not a question of the size of the print run, it’s a question of where the publisher’s profit comes from.
[QUOTE=Merriam-Webster]
Vanity press : a publishing house that publishes books at the author’s expense.
[/QUOTE]
I dunno. I think there’s a difference too, but I don’t think Amazon’s self-publishing for Kindle is a “vanity press” even though they take a percentage of the sale price.
One difference is that Amazon supports publicity, via author pages, which a full-bore vanity press does not. They print 'em, and from that point you’re all on your own. Amazon gives you some additional support.
And what screen name is she posting under in this thread? Either I missed her, or it’s a strawman.