What CAM and Vanity Publishing Have in Common

What do "Complementary and Alternative Medicine" (CAM) and "Vanity Publishing" have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Some quick definitions to bring the non-writing and the non-medical public up to speed on each other:

The central tenet of legitimate publishing is "money flows to the author." Individuals and companies that make their money charging authors for anything from "reading fees" to "editing services" to actually producing books are not legitimate publishers. They are scammers preying on ignorant and/or gullible authors who, holding a book in their hands with their name on it, don't really understand what publishing is all about.

Medicine as defined in this day and age is the application of science to the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Of course there is an "art" to medicine, mainly because the science is incomplete. CAM refers to individuals who prey on ignorant, gullible and/or desperate patients who do not understand medicine, offering magical thinking cloaked in the trappings of scientific medicine (calling themselves "doctors," for example.)

One fascinating similarity is that outside their respective fields, neither is considered much of a big deal:

In general, non-physicians don't see the harm in allowing stupid people to spend money on things like homeopathy, Reiki, supplements and chiropractors, and don't understand why physicians are so up in arms over the issue. Deaths from curable conditions treated with fake medicine are chalked up to the tragedy of stupidity. They may not even believe or understand what's wrong with CAM in the first place. It makes you feel better; isn't that what medicine's all about?

Non-authors and people not involved in publishing couldn't care less about vanity publishing. What difference does it make if an author is published by Random House or Publish America? It's a free country; if people want to spend their money self-publishing their books to call themselves "published authors," so what? Good people are victims of fraud. Tough; it happens. If someone who actually writes something with legitimate potential has his career destroyed before it begins because of a Lulu ISBN, who cares? A book is a book, isn't it?

Muddying the water is the fact that under specific and limited circumstances, some versions of both CAM and vanity publishing have their uses. Certain kinds of yoga and relaxation exercises have been shown to improve well-being in patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy, for example. Some people with highly personal or technical books who need a small number of them for sentimental or professional purposes ("back of the room" books after a lecture, or a family biography) can have them produced beautifully by a company like Lulu. Problems arise when, ignoring limitations, these scenarios are used by the unscrupulous to validate other, less appropriate contexts of their false promises.

Another important similarity is that many "consumers" of both CAM and vanity publishing don't consider themselves victimized at all. They are a large part of the problem, and explain why both forms of fakery continue to flourish. Many patients with vague symptoms, ill-served by busy doctors, find "relief" in the arms of the homeopaths, the chiropractors and other quacks, and then spread the word like religious zealots. Likewise, discouraged by both the rigor as well as the seeming randomness of the legitimate publishing industry (including literary agents) plenty of people have turned to what is essentially self-publishing, where they are the ones primarily responsible for selling their books through signings and "author events." They see nothing wrong with having to purchase their own books at 50% off the cover price and then re-selling them themselves. They consider themselves legitimate, published authors and no one can convince them otherwise.

Flying equally under the radar of both groups are the forces trying to warn and protect the other, hoping to transform the ignorant and gullible into the knowledgeable and savvy:

• Writer Beware
• Preditors and Editors
• Quackwatch
• National Council Against Health Fraud

Still, it's difficult for each group to get all worked up about the travails of the other. So why should they? Here's why: People shouldn't be allowed to defraud others out of their hard-earned cash with false promises -- whether of legitimate publishing or rational health care.