Beware the Long Grass

Hello and welcome to my latest blog.

You’ll probably already be aware that I am very much into my creative writing and I am confident that some of the things I have written (especially for children) are as good as anything out there.

The question you may ask is, is this confidence misplaced? I am my own harshest critic and I genuinely don’t think it is. Could my work be improved? Possibly, but couldn’t everybody’s?

The difficulty with writing is that the creative bit is the easiest part. Thinking of stories, characters, plot twists, comedy etcetera isn’t child’s-play, but it’s fun. It’s what makes most aspiring writers get out of bed in the morning. It’s what motivates us.

The hard bit, and nobody ever told me how hard (if they did I didn’t believe them), is getting your work accepted by an agent or publisher.

With the onset of the digital age, physically getting your work in front of agents and publishers is easier now than ever. No longer does a budding writer find him or herself printing out and photocopying reams of manuscript, binding them, putting them in painstakingly written envelopes trudging to the Post Office and buying enough stamps for the return. Nowadays, many agents and publishers will accept work digitally, via email or online portals. That, however, is as easy as it gets.

The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook used to be the “go to” place for reliable advice, and details of publishers and agents. Of course, this still is a mighty useful reference tool, but the internet is now littered with searchable information, accessible without even getting out of bed.

Handy, you may say. The problem is, sorting the good from the bad. Knowing what information is genuinely useful and which will lead you down a blind alley, or worse, is a skill. I say “or worse” because although a blind alley is annoying and costly of time, it is not financially costly. Some internet searches can lead you into traps; traps which will have you throwing good money after bad, in order to bring your creative genius to life.

It is those very traps which I will touch on in this blog.

I have not yet mastered the skill of whittling the good from the bad (I wish I had), so I can speak from very recent experience. That experience has left me frustrated and annoyed, but more determined than ever to push ahead with work that I have allowed to fester for far too long.

In late May this year I had a bit of midweek time off work. I currently work Monday to Friday so a weekday off is very precious to me. It’s time that I can spend alone; time to be creative, time to be lazy, do the gardening or simply catch up on TV. On this particular day I was feeling very motivated and keen to promote my stories. I had already researched some publishers on the world wide web and discovered one specific publisher who sounded fantastic. They were taking submissions in all genres and promised to be quick to respond.

As per any publisher, they have their own submission guidelines and it is important to understand these so that you fit the criteria; give yourself a head start and all that. As a consequence, I had to do a bit of editing, a bit of formatting and I had to compile five of my stories together into one file for upload. I have more than five stories, so I chose the five that I felt would be the most commercially viable. I wrote synopses for these and did a bit of a blurb about myself. This took me a good few hours and I then uploaded them to the publisher.

As promised, I got a response within a few days. These few days had felt like a week or so because I found myself repeatedly checking my e-mails, every hour (at least), every day, until I got a reply.

Excited, I opened the e-mail to read a generic message saying that my submission had been received and I would hear back in due course! It was a bit of a blow, but deep down I wasn’t really expecting the publisher to read all my work, consult on it and accept it within a few days. I had to be realistic. I was, however, hopeful and I was really looking forward to hearing back.

My e-mails became an obsession. My outlook in box has a “focussed” in box and an “other” in box. Being a middle-aged man, I still haven’t figured out the difference, as I have e-mails coming into both, so I habitually check them both. I now found myself checking both of these, plus my spam, several times a day (probably more than several), every day for the next three weeks or so. Nothing came.

Then, however, I received a thick envelope through the post. Contained within was an official letter and a contract for signing. How very exciting. Was this it? Was this my big break? Finally … after all this time.

The letter was detailed and spoke of how impressive my work was. My five stories had been discussed by the board and all board members were impressed. They felt for now that they should just run with one story “The Rainbow of Billingbob” and perhaps look at the others when I am established.

Wow! This was looking good. My heart was racing and I could barely finish reading one paragraph before rushing onto the next.

This was a great company; offices in London, Cambridge, New York and Sharjah and representation all over the place. They liked my work. THEY LIKED MY WORK! I was reassured that they weren’t running with all my stories, because this showed me that they were serious and balanced. It gave me confidence.

This was the same day we were going on holiday to Greece, so it already felt like a good day, about to get a whole lot better.

I then skipped onto the next paragraph, about the enclosed contract. This is where a huge knot grew inside my stomach and tightened. This is where I realised that this was an elaborate effort to take money from me.

What was actually offered was a “contributory contract”. This smelled to me like vanity publishing, a scam that has been prevalent for years. This one, however was dressed up as a professional outfit, with a good web presence and slick marketing strategy.

For those who don’t know, a vanity publisher targets the fragile ego of writers who want to be published. They massage that ego by blowing smoke up the backside of the writer, making them feel special. They inflate that ego and then ask for money to contribute to publishing the work. This is exactly what this letter was.

What this publisher wanted me to do was give them several thousand pounds for them to own the copyright to my work. No doubt they would have produced a book but what would have then happened to that book after that is anyone’s guess. Maybe it would go on sale, but I suspect their efforts would go onto the next mug who uploaded their work.

For me, this was a “no brainer”. They wanted me to give them money and give my copyright to them as well. It wasn’t happening.

I’m not going to name the publisher as I am given to understand that they fight vehemently to maintain their reputation and I don’t want to find myself on the wrong end of civil litigation. I have since, however, done some research on them. Whilst I make no statement as to whether the research I have found is true or not, I will allow you, dear reader, to follow the link* to that research should you wish to do so.

I have to say that I am a little disheartened by this turn of events, although I do like to view every experience, negative and positive, as a learning experience. I am now a little wiser and will not get my hopes up in future. I will probably also do a bit more digging before submitting my work and wasting my time.

Had I been a little more desperate, a little more vulnerable or a little more gullible, then perhaps I would have fallen for this scam. The “publisher” would, doubtless, have you believe that it is a fair deal; that they shouldn’t take all the risks with a new author … blah, blah, blah. In short, it is at best a bad deal and at worst, criminal. They’d have had to come and do my washing, cooking and gardening every day for ten years to make that a good deal … and I didn’t see that in the contract. Needless to say, I didn’t sign the contract and I shall be going no further with this outfit.

So … what about “The Hero of Schnool”?

Readers of my previous blog may recall the collaborative work I was doing with an artist for my story “The Hero of Schnool”. The very talented artist put a lot of work into creating illustrations and a world that was perfect for the story and we did submit this to numerous agents and publishers, but unfortunately, we got nowhere. This is a shame, but it was far from the end of the road for us. We decided to consider self-publishing as an option.

Unfortunately my busy world and her’s meant that we weren’t able to catch up as frequently as we would have liked so progress was regularly stalled. My recent efforts to catch up with her (I’ve tried numerous times since January) have proven fruitless and, for some reason, she is not returning my calls, texts nor messages. I have no idea why. In the modern, digital age, they call this “ghosting”, but sadly this has left The Hero of Schnool somewhat in limbo. The time has probably come for me to seek alternative publishers, with or without the illustrations, which is a massive shame, given the work that has gone into them.

So where am I now? I have ten stories, very much in the style of Dr. Seuss or Julia Donaldson and they are (I think) rather good. I have no illustrations, so am going to have to look at getting an agent or a contract with a publisher. I could self-publish, which is an option, but I feel that I would have more kudos if backed by a conventional publishing house.

I now need to start researching again and sending my work off to legitimate publishers or agents. This time I need to tread carefully and beware of the snakes in the long grass.

In the meantime, the book of poetry “Peering Through the Mist” that I compiled, with my late father, Jeff Whitehead (RIP) is available for sale on Amazon. This is adult poetry, so for goodness sake, don’t buy it for your kids! It can be found here.

Until next time …

 

* The link may or may not take you to details of the specific publisher I dealt with.