An old term used for self-publishing. It was used in a negative way, implying the books were so uninteresting or poorly written that their authors had to pay to have them published—and no one wanted to read them anyway—so it was all an exercise in vanity. That was undoubtedly true with many vanity press books, but then again, many famous writers used the vanity press. For example, books by Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, and other famous names were vanity press productions.