On Greenshore, the ever-ready AbsoluteWrite forums have this:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=292778

With just about any such, you just need to google absolute write [name of publisher] and you should get it. Another place to look is preditors and editors:

http://pred-ed.com/

Which has listings of publishers, agents and so on, with a note about whether they do bad things like charge reading fees or are a vanity press.

Dear Emma D,

Thanks for that, I loved the bit about the barking lunatic

Many thanks for this Emma. I was going to write something similar about how copyright is immediately assigned the moment a writer's words (or an artist's brushstrokes) are committed to paper and so I couldn't see how Wordpress could (or ever claim to) have any hold over the blogger's creative material.

Billington, you may also find this link about 'public domain' useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

I do have some info about permission/copyright on my personal blog i.e. get in touch if you want to quote/use anything and so far I've had several folk contact me to ask for permission to use my art and poetry. It's lovely to know that my work has 'connected' with some people, and it's heartening to know I've been 'formally' asked for permission too. 

Also, the thread about Green Shore Publishing on Absolute Write is absolutely fascinating. I think there's probably a whole comic novel in there somewhere... ;-)

Dear Teika,

I've had a reply from Greenshore, and they state they are not a Vanity Publisher but a 'Subsidy' Publisher!!!

I am not convinced. I suspect that the more people they can hook with those magic words 'we are happy to publish your work', the more money thay rake in.

What happens afterwards is anyone's guess. I suppose  writers can go around claiming with absolute truth that they've been published, apart from the fact they had tp pay for it.

I think I'll leave them out.
Edited by BILLINGTON at 21:42:00 on 26 August 2014

Vanity publisher and subsidy publisher are the same thing.

Rule number one of publishing is that money flows TO the author, not away from them:

When a company has paid you for your book, then they get to decide how best to publish it. They pick up the bill for editorial work and distribution, and they should have a full marketing-and-publicity machine to make sure they earn that money back (which is why e-book only-royalties-only contracts need very, very careful inspection, because the publisher has so little invested in your book).

If money is flowing away from you, it's self-publishing, and you should have full control of everything, and there should be no pretence from the company that they're being a publisher: you're paying the piper, you call all the tunes. If you choose to buy help with some tuning that's up to you. There are perfectly reputable self-pub service companies around who do a good job, and they don't call themselves subsidy publishers...