Help... There's a Mad Woman in my Tardis!

2007 was an annus horribilis...

Things just seemed to go wrong. I actually put a blog on my MySpace page entitled 'Victor Meldrew Week,' because of the number of times in one week I said the words 'I don't believe it!'

People I cared for died. I was in a car accident which wrote off my car and left me with whiplash. My wife had to leave her Primary School Headship due to ill health. My hobby of amateur dramatics had for one reason or another stopped being fun, and I seemed to be getting nowhere in my quest to publish 'Tasting the Wind.'

I felt a need to make changes, to regenerate, but didn't know where the energy to do so was going to come from. I haven't mentioned yet a sad fact about my life which is my obsession with the T.V. programme Dr. Who. I find the idea of regeneration fascinating, and think of it as a modern myth representing the changes that we all need to make at points in our lives in order not just to stay alive but to really live.

The other thing I haven't mentioned is that some years ago I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don't know if it was anything to do with the fact that the Summer of that year had failed to happen, but when it got to October my SAD symptoms kicked in with a vengeance- tiredness, low mood, anxiety. It's like watching twenty four hour reruns of 'Eastenders.'

It was sometime in November when I was checking my emails that I found that someone had sent me a message through MySpace.

It was entitled 'Can we join forces?'

The message claimed to be from someone called Lynn, who went to the same school as me, and now wanted to be my friend on MySpace. l wasn't in the mood for making friends with anyone. I remembered David Tennant's Doctor, grieving after leaving Rose in a parallel universe, (non-afficianados please bear with me) then suddenly finding that there was a strange mad woman in his Tardis.

That's all I need- a stalker.

I popped downstairs to refill my glass, and mentioned the message to my wife. She suggested it might be someone after money.

Of course! The profile mentioned fundraising.

Then I saw it. This lynn was not only a fundraiser, she was a public speaker. And not only that. She was an author. A published one. Someone who had been published was trying to contact me...
TO BE CONTINUED...

Vanity... Vanity... all is... not Vanity (or so it would appear.)

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I referred previously to Johnboy and his unwitting stumble into vanity publishing. I won't be dealing with that subject here- just Google 'Vanity Press' and you will find endless websites and blogs with a message which can be summed up in three words: don't do it!
What I'm more interested in here are the ways in which the internet has created a new environment for people to make money from the writer's desire to get published.

The first rule to apply is never to part with money. Not that all services that ask for money are disreputable- some will provide you with a professional critique at a cost, with no catches. I myself paid for one from Golganooza, and from frontlist (My experiences are chronicled elsewhere in this blog.)

The internet has also opened the way for print on demand (POD.) What POD does is cut out the need for expensive print runs, as a book is only printed when someone orders it. Your book is stored electronically. Publication: guaranteed, no cost: guaranteed, sales... well.

One criticism of POD is that if you look at what is available in this format you will not have heard the names of any of the writers. Although sites may promote your book, they do not have behind them the vast marketing resources of the big Publishing houses.

But it does mean that you could publish now, even if it means that your only readers are your friends. A very popular site is 'Lulu.' You can also upload your work to Amazon Kindle. This is a new e-book reader which promises to be as easy on the eye as paper. We have yet to see if readers will embrace this over the centuries-old paper book. In my opinion I don't think that we should underestimate the sensory satisfaction gained from the feel and the smell of a book.

In an episode of Star Trek, when Captain Jean Luc Picard was on leave, he sat reading a book. The creative minds behind the series obviously felt that whatever the technological advances we will still be reading books made of paper. And It looked sort of right.


Continuing my quest for an agent over the internet I came across what looked like a promising company calling themselves the 'Writers Book Agency.'

They said that they were different to other agents in that they worked closely with promising writers, giving support and feedback which would get their work to a publishable standard.

I sent my letter, synopsis and opening chapters and, whoopy-do, they were interested.

They said things to allay my fears, like not asking for the whole book. They said that they had got four books published- surely, I thought, if this were a scam they would not claim such a modest number.

So I applied one of my tests- I googled 'Writers Book Agency review.' What it brought up was an interesting debate- one in which the Writers Book Agency were taking part- about the integrity of the company.

The question was raised as to why the WBA never revealed the identities of those they had taken to publication. It also emerged that after a series of very wordy emails the WBA suggested that writers pay for an independent reading of their work. The implication was that the 'independent' readers recommended were actually WBA by another name.

I will withold judgement, but we have here an agent who won't tell you which published authors they represent (the agents in the writers and artist's yearbook list their clients) and which inevitably asks you to part with money. They even implied that unwillingness to spend some money on the process indicated lack of belief.

This exploitation of the needs and insecurities of the unpublished writer doesn't seem that far removed from the methods of the Vanity Press.

And yes, I got my email, saying that they wished to take me on, and recommending people who would, at a price, read my work. I ignored it. Who knows- this may be a genuine outfit which has helped four people achieve their dream. But if it is not a scam, why doesn't it realise that it is going around around dressed as one?

Has anyone out there seen Frontlist ?

After a chance encounter in the Apocalyptic wastelands of Golganooza, I went to the highly recommended 'Frontlist.'

Now this is kosher- it even got a mention in the 'Writers' and artists' yearbook.

You upload your synopsis and sample chapters. These are reviewed by others who have sent in their work.

In return, you have to review the contributions of five other writers. This involves commenting on aspects such as idea, characterisation and appeal. You then score them on each of the selected areas, and if you get above a certain mark your work is then passed on to a publisher. You get sent your result, and the only time you have to part with money (£10) is if you want to view your critiques.

The up side is that you get to see the work of other people who are trying to get their novels published, and they get to see and comment on yours.

The down side... is exactly the same as the up side.

I received one piece which I thought might have appeal. The other four were of very poor quality.

Nevertheless, I tried to empathise (after all, we all have the same dream,) and started, as you should, with picking out the positives. For one of them, all I managed was 'I will never forget the scene where the main character sat, wearing a gas mask, enjoying the mass suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.'

I also gave some advice on which authors I thought might provide good models. Having done that I was disappointed to find that not all of the other reviewers had taken the same amount of trouble. Although I had made some naive mistakes (like submitting too short a synopsis and two chapters which were too far apart in the book to make sense in isolation) I did not think that my submission warranted the comment made by one 'reviewer' in the 'appeal' column, where he wrote 'none at all.' I consoled myself with the thought that he was the author of the dross to which I had given my lowest score.

I am not averse to criticism, but I did wonder if some of the writers hadn't quite entered into the spirit of things, and just wanted to get their own reviews without contributing much to the Frontlist community.

Otherwise, I must admit, I sort of like the 'Frontlist' idea. That is why I rewrote my synopsis, and submitted it with the first two chapters. You don't have to pay anything if you don't want to, and I still like the idea of writers helping oneanother out by passing on advice from wherever they are in the learning curve.

But... whereas before I started to receive my pieces to review almost immediately, this time they didn't arrive. I went back to the site, and found a note which said that due to a backlog of reviews they were not presently accepting any more submissions.

I gathered when I first used Frontlist that often reviews had to be chased up, so can't help but wonder if the tardiness of contributors has caused the process to grind to a halt.
After my experiences with the Golganooza site I sincerely hope that this is just a blip, and not the beginning of the end of another worthy internet publishing experiment.

Check it out at: http://www.thefrontlist.com/




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