How can you tell if a book is self published?

[Holoman]

Just wondering if anyone knows if there is a way to tell whether a book is self published. At the moment I can sometimes see the publisher on Amazon and check if it's a company, but often I can't really tell.

Not got anything particular against self published but I've read a few books that raised my eyebrows with lots of spelling mistakes and tried to find out if they were self published but couldn't.

So anyone know?

 

[La Volpe]

You could try looking on the first few pages (using amazon's "Look Inside!" feature). Books usually have that copyright/printing info page. If it was printed by a publisher, it should be indicated there. Then just google the publisher and see if it's just an actual publisher.

I suspect that bigger publishers would also include a lot more legal jibber-jabber on that page.