The concept behind a manuscript display site is simple: provide writers with a forum in which to display their work, in the hopes that an editor or agent will come browsing and discover a literary gem hiding among the HTML. Over the years plenty of these sites have come and gone so that now, new versions are often referred to as a YADS: “yet another display site”.
Some display sites are just that: no frills, no extras, just a shop-window for manuscripts. Others have writers’ message-boards attached; some have review systems coupled with complicating rating systems. Authonomy comes to us courtesy of HarperCollins, and offers a manuscript display site, comment facility and message-board; while YouWriteOn offers vanity publishing in conjunction with Legend Press, which has put many people off what might otherwise be an excellent peer review facility.
These sites all have a couple of things in common.
The standard of writing on such sites ranges from good to poor, with that latter end making up the vast majority of the work on show. And despite what you might read online, I’ve only heard of a single book being published as a result of a browsing editor or agent spotting it in these electronic slush-piles: apart from that one title, the successes that have happened have all come about because the writers involved submitted their work in the usual way.
If you want to find out more about the history of manuscript display sites, then go to this post at Writer Beware's blog and make sure you read all the comments that have been made: there’s a fabulous discussion attached to it.
Showing posts with label YouWriteOn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YouWriteOn. Show all posts
Monday, 14 September 2009
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Writers' Message Boards And Online Communities
There are lots of places on the internet where writers gather: I've written some general posts about them here. Many writers' message boards include a discussion forum and an area where writers can receive feedback and criticism on their work, but some of them are far better than others: it all depends, I think, on what the writers who populate the place are like. If a writers' site has a good proportion of accomplished, well-published writers in its membership then the advice there is likely to be above average; if the members are all aspiring writers with little or no experience of publication, or there's a high proportion of vanity-published writers among the membership, then it's very likely that the advice that's on offer isn't going to be quite so good.
Here are a few of my favourites. I'd be grateful if you'd provide links to the places you like in the comments, and let me know what's so special about them.
AbsoluteWrite is probably the best writers' site on the internet. It's got a fabulous message board and it seems to me that the people who comment there have a higher-than-average level of intelligence and publishing expertise. It's American, and lots of the information it contains is restricted to that continent: but there's still an awful lot of good stuff there for anyone who is interested in writing, revising, and getting published. It's free to read, free to join, and free to take part in, and I love it.
Authonomy is HarperCollins UK's interractive writers' site. There's a sprawling message-board (which takes forever to load on my dial-up service), a large selection of work on view; and every month the five (I think) most well-received pieces of work get looked at by HarperCollins editors, and are commented on. This is not to be sniffed at: but do bear in mind that so far not one of any of the top five books has been published by HarperCollins, and only one book has been taken from the Authonomy slush-pile for publication.
Litopia has a good reputation, and several of my friends are members: however, I've never stuck with it long enough to gain access to its inner workings, and so cannot vouch for its quality (although I'm sure that a few of my readers will be able to advise).
WriteWords is a UK-based site which charges an annual membership fee but which does have a very high proportion of published and successful writers in its members: consequently, the advice that you'll find there is well above average, and very valuable. It's very writing-focussed, with an excellent peer-review system across lots of genres.
YouWriteOn. What can I say? It began with the excellent premise of providing writers with an online community and the chance for the best writers there to get a critique of their work from a professional editor or agent; but then in the autumn of 2008 it introduced a vanity publishing option which was neither well thought-out nor well-received. I really don't like its vanity publishing scheme; and from what I've seen, the standard of writing and advice on its boards are not nearly as high as you'll find on other boards.
Zoetrope has sections for novel-writing, short fiction, screenwriting, and all sorts. It has a slightly confusing system of public message boards with a subculture of private rooms, which any of its members can set up and invite people to join; it's well thought-of, and has a reputation for producing excellent writers through strong criticism and robust comment. I have taken part, but found the system of private rooms (where most of the action goes on) made it a little too scattered and time-consuming for my liking.
Further recommendations from our readers:
The Backspace Forum
Critter's Bar
The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror has a mixture of published and yet-to-be published writers. Also the chance to have your work critiqued by well-known authors or editors.
Scrawl: The Writers Asylum has a number of talented and helpful writers in several genres.
The Writer's Chronicle
Here are a few of my favourites. I'd be grateful if you'd provide links to the places you like in the comments, and let me know what's so special about them.
AbsoluteWrite is probably the best writers' site on the internet. It's got a fabulous message board and it seems to me that the people who comment there have a higher-than-average level of intelligence and publishing expertise. It's American, and lots of the information it contains is restricted to that continent: but there's still an awful lot of good stuff there for anyone who is interested in writing, revising, and getting published. It's free to read, free to join, and free to take part in, and I love it.
Authonomy is HarperCollins UK's interractive writers' site. There's a sprawling message-board (which takes forever to load on my dial-up service), a large selection of work on view; and every month the five (I think) most well-received pieces of work get looked at by HarperCollins editors, and are commented on. This is not to be sniffed at: but do bear in mind that so far not one of any of the top five books has been published by HarperCollins, and only one book has been taken from the Authonomy slush-pile for publication.
Litopia has a good reputation, and several of my friends are members: however, I've never stuck with it long enough to gain access to its inner workings, and so cannot vouch for its quality (although I'm sure that a few of my readers will be able to advise).
WriteWords is a UK-based site which charges an annual membership fee but which does have a very high proportion of published and successful writers in its members: consequently, the advice that you'll find there is well above average, and very valuable. It's very writing-focussed, with an excellent peer-review system across lots of genres.
YouWriteOn. What can I say? It began with the excellent premise of providing writers with an online community and the chance for the best writers there to get a critique of their work from a professional editor or agent; but then in the autumn of 2008 it introduced a vanity publishing option which was neither well thought-out nor well-received. I really don't like its vanity publishing scheme; and from what I've seen, the standard of writing and advice on its boards are not nearly as high as you'll find on other boards.
Zoetrope has sections for novel-writing, short fiction, screenwriting, and all sorts. It has a slightly confusing system of public message boards with a subculture of private rooms, which any of its members can set up and invite people to join; it's well thought-of, and has a reputation for producing excellent writers through strong criticism and robust comment. I have taken part, but found the system of private rooms (where most of the action goes on) made it a little too scattered and time-consuming for my liking.
Further recommendations from our readers:
The Backspace Forum
Critter's Bar
The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror has a mixture of published and yet-to-be published writers. Also the chance to have your work critiqued by well-known authors or editors.
Scrawl: The Writers Asylum has a number of talented and helpful writers in several genres.
The Writer's Chronicle
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
YouWriteOn and The Bookseller Blog
Last week, I was invited to write a response to a piece on The Bookseller Blog about YouWriteOn's publishing scheme. My contribution has just gone up, and you can read it here.
Many thanks to all of you who provided information and helped with the research: naturally, I'm not going to out any of you here but you know who you are and your help is much appreciated.
I have two more pieces due to appear there over the next couple of weeks: they which discuss vanity publishing, self-publishing, and the growing involvement of mainstream publishers in such schemes. I'll provide links when they appear.
Many thanks to all of you who provided information and helped with the research: naturally, I'm not going to out any of you here but you know who you are and your help is much appreciated.
I have two more pieces due to appear there over the next couple of weeks: they which discuss vanity publishing, self-publishing, and the growing involvement of mainstream publishers in such schemes. I'll provide links when they appear.
Thursday, 5 February 2009
YouWriteOn and Arts Council England: What's The Connection?
There’s a lot of confusion over who runs YouWriteOn, and how it’s related to Arts Council England. People seem to think that YouWriteOn is run by Arts Council England, organised by Arts Council England, or part of Arts Council England in some other nebulous way, but this is not the case: YouWriteOn’s only apparent connection with Arts Council England is through the substantial funding it has received from that organisation.
Arts Council England’s funding has forged a link between Arts Council England and YouWriteOn which many people perceive as a stamp of legitimacy. When the YouWriteOn publishing scheme was first launched, there were writers who saw it as a chance to get published by Arts Council England; others felt reassured that the scheme had to be above-board because of Arts Council England’s apparent involvement. However, when Arts Council England was asked for clarification of its involvement in the publishing scheme it replied:
You’ll find Arts Council England’s letter reproduced in full in comment number 5 to this blog post. Soon after that letter appeared on the blog, a disclaimer was posted on YouWriteOn’s home-page which stated that its vanity publishing arm was separate from the Arts Council England-funded area of the site: that disclaimer has since been edited, but at the time of writing it reads,
Despite YouWriteOn apparently being taken to task by Arts Council England and instructed to distinguish between the Arts Council England-funded and vanity-funded areas of the site, the Arts Council England logo still appears at the top of every one of YouWriteOn’s web pages—including the pages which offer the vanity publishing packages.
Some writers have now contacted Arts Council England (and here's a handy list of its chief executives, just in case you were considering doing the same) to ask why it funds a vanity publisher, but have received what they consider to be less-than-satisfactory replies: while I’ll not reproduce them here, I suspect that anyone with a complaint would do better to contact the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Government department to which Arts Council England reports: one of the ministers there is the rather effective Barbara Follett, who also happens to be married to a writer called Ken something-or-other.
It’s widely felt that it’s inappropriate for Arts Council England to be associated with a vanity publisher in this way: vanity publishing doesn’t support writers, it exploits them, and Arts Council England has apparently stated independently that it does not and will not condone such schemes. While I’ve been unable to find written evidence of this stance, it seems likely considering Arts Council England’s remit to support and encourage the arts. My opinion is that YouWriteOn should either accept funding from Arts Council England or continue its vanity publishing operation, but that it shouldn’t run the two projects side by side: there are too many conflicts of interest between them. But YouWriteOn is unlikely to give up its Arts Council England funding just because I think that it should, because there's too much at stake: it's received nearly £85,000 from Arts Council England in the last three and a half years (the following links will download PDFs when you click on them):
June 2005: £29,896
February 2007: £24,000
2007-8: £10,000
February 2008: £10,000
October 2008: £11,000
Total Arts Council funding received by YouWriteOn since June 2005: £84,896
I’m particularly interested by the £11,000 paid last October: the grants information form states that this amount was paid to Edward Smith of YouWriteOn.com to fund “A major new writing competition in partnership with Random House. This will give new writers the opportunity to have their books published by a major publisher”. I’m intrigued to know more about this competition: this funding was approved four months ago, and yet no announcement of any competition has yet been made. I wonder what Random House will have to say about that?
This Arts Council England funding, plus the £11,000 or so which YouWriteOn has received as a result of its vanity publishing operation, works out to a rather nice turnover of around £27,400 each year—impressive for a start-up business which seems to be run by just one man. It’s worth noting that there are a few layers of potential income that I’ve not included here:
Arts Council England’s funding has forged a link between Arts Council England and YouWriteOn which many people perceive as a stamp of legitimacy. When the YouWriteOn publishing scheme was first launched, there were writers who saw it as a chance to get published by Arts Council England; others felt reassured that the scheme had to be above-board because of Arts Council England’s apparent involvement. However, when Arts Council England was asked for clarification of its involvement in the publishing scheme it replied:
YouWriteOn.com receives funding from Arts Council England to run its website forum and professional critique service for writers.
Arts Council England has not funded, and has not endorsed, the separate Print-on-Demand self-publishing service offered through the site.
As with any self-publishing service, Arts Council England would encourage writers to read the terms and conditions carefully and make an informed judgement about the service on offer. If in doubt, you should contact the Society of Authors http://www.societyofauthors.org/ who have information sheets and guidance about self-publishing and vanity publishing.
We have asked the site moderator to make this absolutely clear, so that there is no confusion about the involvement of Arts Council England.
You’ll find Arts Council England’s letter reproduced in full in comment number 5 to this blog post. Soon after that letter appeared on the blog, a disclaimer was posted on YouWriteOn’s home-page which stated that its vanity publishing arm was separate from the Arts Council England-funded area of the site: that disclaimer has since been edited, but at the time of writing it reads,
The Arts Council fund critiques for new writers from leading publishers each month on YouWriteOn.com.YouWriteOn also offers its own book publishing initiative, funded solely by us.
Despite YouWriteOn apparently being taken to task by Arts Council England and instructed to distinguish between the Arts Council England-funded and vanity-funded areas of the site, the Arts Council England logo still appears at the top of every one of YouWriteOn’s web pages—including the pages which offer the vanity publishing packages.
Some writers have now contacted Arts Council England (and here's a handy list of its chief executives, just in case you were considering doing the same) to ask why it funds a vanity publisher, but have received what they consider to be less-than-satisfactory replies: while I’ll not reproduce them here, I suspect that anyone with a complaint would do better to contact the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Government department to which Arts Council England reports: one of the ministers there is the rather effective Barbara Follett, who also happens to be married to a writer called Ken something-or-other.
It’s widely felt that it’s inappropriate for Arts Council England to be associated with a vanity publisher in this way: vanity publishing doesn’t support writers, it exploits them, and Arts Council England has apparently stated independently that it does not and will not condone such schemes. While I’ve been unable to find written evidence of this stance, it seems likely considering Arts Council England’s remit to support and encourage the arts. My opinion is that YouWriteOn should either accept funding from Arts Council England or continue its vanity publishing operation, but that it shouldn’t run the two projects side by side: there are too many conflicts of interest between them. But YouWriteOn is unlikely to give up its Arts Council England funding just because I think that it should, because there's too much at stake: it's received nearly £85,000 from Arts Council England in the last three and a half years (the following links will download PDFs when you click on them):
June 2005: £29,896
February 2007: £24,000
2007-8: £10,000
February 2008: £10,000
October 2008: £11,000
Total Arts Council funding received by YouWriteOn since June 2005: £84,896
I’m particularly interested by the £11,000 paid last October: the grants information form states that this amount was paid to Edward Smith of YouWriteOn.com to fund “A major new writing competition in partnership with Random House. This will give new writers the opportunity to have their books published by a major publisher”. I’m intrigued to know more about this competition: this funding was approved four months ago, and yet no announcement of any competition has yet been made. I wonder what Random House will have to say about that?
This Arts Council England funding, plus the £11,000 or so which YouWriteOn has received as a result of its vanity publishing operation, works out to a rather nice turnover of around £27,400 each year—impressive for a start-up business which seems to be run by just one man. It’s worth noting that there are a few layers of potential income that I’ve not included here:
- Its original vanity-publishing package, which it runs in association with Legend Press, costs £399, £699, £899 or £1,499, depending on which package you choose.
- YouWriteOn runs a paid-for critiquing service: prices start at £75 for a short story of up to 3,000 words, and then increase with your page count: a report on a 400-page novel would set you back £550. Writers are asked to state which three advisors they'd prefer to comment on their work: while the people who provide these reports do seem reputable and experienced (although I haven't checked out any of the names), I could find no guarantee that anyone would get the advisor(s) they requested.
- It’s not yet clear how many books YouWriteOn/Legend has vanity-published at £39.99 each and it seems that not all books have yet been published, so the initial income from this will almost certainly reach a figure higher than the £10,906.35 I quoted yesterday.
- YouWriteOn will continue to earn money from every one of the sales of those vanity-published books as their writers work to sell them.
Meanwhile, I’ve found this quote about YouWriteOn and the man who runs it, Edward Smith, buried in the depths of this PDF from Arts Council England:
Edward Smith, YouWriteOn’s director, provided the design spec for the site, and manages it from day to day, with some support from web company ZARR. In terms of user experience, the site is clunky, full of broken links and difficult to navigate, with forums that mysteriously open at particular hours only. Nonetheless, YouWriteOn.com has 6,000 members, and receives millions of page views a month. There is clearly a hunger for these services. (Edward used to work in a Citizens Advice Bureau and sees his work as being about information and empowerment.)(Bolding mine: I added the link to YouWriteOn's "web company", too: perhaps it knows what's happened to the forum.)
Just yesterday, Tom Chalmers of Legend Press told The Bookseller that the project has "largely been a success". Meanwhile, there are many writers who Smith promised to publish in time for Christmas who, despite making numerous attempts to contact Smith, have still heard nothing from him, several weeks later. Many don’t know whether or not their books will even be published; and while several have now cancelled their contracts, few have received any confirmation of their cancellations, leaving them worried about the future of their books.
I wonder just how empowered they feel right now.
Monday, 2 February 2009
YouWriteOn’s Free Publishing Offer: An Update
Last autumn, YouWriteOn’s “free publishing deal” attracted a lot of attention from writers and industry watchdogs. It was discussed on several writers’ message boards; Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware blogged about it; and so did I.
The deeply sceptical felt that it was at best an ill-thought-out scheme or at worst, a cynical vanity publishing plan to separate naive writers from their money; the optimistic saw it as an innovative publishing scheme designed to break the mould of corporation-controlled publishing (in case you haven’t read my original posts, I fell in with the sceptics).
Publication was initially scheduled for the first week of December but as we moved into the second week of the month, only a tiny handful of writers had been notified that their books were available. Books trickled onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble—but only those written by authors who had paid what Ted was misleadingly referring to as the “distribution fee” (the £39.99 he had charged writers to assign an ISBN to their books): not a single book appeared from the writers who had chosen the free option.
YouWriteOn members began to post questions on the YouWriteOn message board, asking when their books would appear: but Ted Smith, who seems to run YouWriteOn single-handed, largely failed to respond directly to their questions: instead, he pointed out that publication by Christmas had always been an aim, but not a promise. When the level of complaints and in-fighting threatened to overrun the message board, Smith began deleting posts (including a few of mine); then he began deleting whole threads; and then, on December 19, he closed down the entire message board, supposedly for its brief annual Christmas break. The board remains closed to this day. It’s apparently undergoing upgrades. They had better be good.
What is YouWriteOn doing with this break from message board moderating? You’d think that it would be taking care of the legal obligations that come with running a reputable publishing company, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Last week a representative of the British Library confirmed to me that despite all publishers having a legal obligation to provide it with copies of all their books under the Legal Deposit scheme, YouWriteOn has not provided a single copy of any of its latest titles. And YouWriteOn can’t say that it was unaware of this obligation: it was discussed on the YouWriteOn board before the board was taken down, and in Absolute Write’s thread about YouWriteOn which Ted Smith has contributed to; and if that were not enough, the Legal Deposit team alerted YouWriteOn to its legal obligation last summer when it had to make an official request for one of YouWriteOn’s previous publications, when YouWriteOn failed to provide a copy within the legal deadline.
Meanwhile, what of YouWriteOn’s authors? As I write this, 192 books are listed under the YouWriteOn imprint on Amazon, and 273 on Barnes and Noble—although I’ve also noticed several YouWriteOn books listed without any imprint details, so the actual number will be higher.
Not one of those books that I’ve checked (and I've looked at over half of them) has any form of synopsis to tell the browsing reader what the book is about: and most of the jacket designs use the same standard template in purple, cream and black which is, I’m afraid, downright ugly; or an image of a blue planet, which renders the superimposed title illegible. So much for the ten foot rule.
I’ve spotted many errors in Amazon’s listings: one author’s first name was correctly given as Tamsin on her book jacket, but was listed as Jasmine in the Amazon details, which would have made searching for her by name impossible; there were several cases where the Amazon details referred to one book but a completely different book appeared in the cover image provided by YouWriteOn. Many more showed spelling errors in names and/or titles on the provided image of the book jackets, in the details provided to Amazon, or on both; and there were some particularly odd inversions of the authors names. Two authors have discovered that their titles, names and ISBNs are confused to such an extent they’re not sure which is their book, and which belongs to the other. Am I nitpicking? Hardly. Out of one hundred YouWriteOn books that I chose at random from Amazon UK two weeks ago, sixty seven had errors in the details provided to Amazon by YouWriteOn. Of those sixty seven books with errors, only one now shows corrected copy. The remaining errors are still in place.
One writer paid to have her cover professionally designed and, while the designers did a good job, all thirty of the copies which she ordered for her launch party arrived with a green stripe running across the cover, as did copies that her friends ordered at different times: which implies that this was not a printer malfunction, but an issue with the PDF held by Lightning Source—which was, of course, supplied by YouWriteOn.
At least she has a book, though: several writers have still heard nothing about their books’ status from YouWriteOn despite repeated requests for information. Writers who didn’t cough up for the “distribution fee” have been told that their books will be available to order from the YouWriteOn website on some unspecified date in the future and as the contract states that they won’t earn any royalties on copies they buy themselves, they have no real way to make money from the sales of their own books. Some writers have cancelled, but have received no confirmation that their cancellations have been received; and meanwhile, YouWriteOn has blithely announced on its own website that following the huge success of its publishing scheme it’s planning to open its doors to a new round of submissions in the spring.
I have to ask: a success for whom? Not for the writers who still have no idea when, or if, their books will published; nor for the writers whose books are incorrectly listed on Amazon. And while I’m genuinely pleased that some YouWriteOn writers are happy with their books, I wonder how well their books will do bearing in mind that YouWriteOn has provided these books with no editorial input or distribution whatsoever.
One thing that has been provided, though, is a nice big chunk of money to YouWriteOn: the authors of every single one of those 273 YouWriteOn books now showing on Barnes & Noble paid £39.99 to YouWriteOn to get them there: a total of £10,906.35, plus the income provided by the authors whose YouWriteOn books are listed as “imprint unknown”. That’s a very nice return for making a couple of slapdash downloads every day in the four months or so since this scheme launched: and it doesn’t take into account any of the money which YouWriteOn has earned on the back of the sales of these books. Is this vanity publishing? It certainly looks like it to me.
(Please note: I'd have liked to have linked to various posts at YouWriteOn's message board to provide my many sources for this piece, but as it's been taken down that's not possible; and while it might have been useful to link to some of the many errors I've seen on Amazon I didn't want the authors concerned to feel that I was poking fun at them: so I've decided not to highlight any individual books here.)
The deeply sceptical felt that it was at best an ill-thought-out scheme or at worst, a cynical vanity publishing plan to separate naive writers from their money; the optimistic saw it as an innovative publishing scheme designed to break the mould of corporation-controlled publishing (in case you haven’t read my original posts, I fell in with the sceptics).
Publication was initially scheduled for the first week of December but as we moved into the second week of the month, only a tiny handful of writers had been notified that their books were available. Books trickled onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble—but only those written by authors who had paid what Ted was misleadingly referring to as the “distribution fee” (the £39.99 he had charged writers to assign an ISBN to their books): not a single book appeared from the writers who had chosen the free option.
YouWriteOn members began to post questions on the YouWriteOn message board, asking when their books would appear: but Ted Smith, who seems to run YouWriteOn single-handed, largely failed to respond directly to their questions: instead, he pointed out that publication by Christmas had always been an aim, but not a promise. When the level of complaints and in-fighting threatened to overrun the message board, Smith began deleting posts (including a few of mine); then he began deleting whole threads; and then, on December 19, he closed down the entire message board, supposedly for its brief annual Christmas break. The board remains closed to this day. It’s apparently undergoing upgrades. They had better be good.
What is YouWriteOn doing with this break from message board moderating? You’d think that it would be taking care of the legal obligations that come with running a reputable publishing company, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Last week a representative of the British Library confirmed to me that despite all publishers having a legal obligation to provide it with copies of all their books under the Legal Deposit scheme, YouWriteOn has not provided a single copy of any of its latest titles. And YouWriteOn can’t say that it was unaware of this obligation: it was discussed on the YouWriteOn board before the board was taken down, and in Absolute Write’s thread about YouWriteOn which Ted Smith has contributed to; and if that were not enough, the Legal Deposit team alerted YouWriteOn to its legal obligation last summer when it had to make an official request for one of YouWriteOn’s previous publications, when YouWriteOn failed to provide a copy within the legal deadline.
Meanwhile, what of YouWriteOn’s authors? As I write this, 192 books are listed under the YouWriteOn imprint on Amazon, and 273 on Barnes and Noble—although I’ve also noticed several YouWriteOn books listed without any imprint details, so the actual number will be higher.
Not one of those books that I’ve checked (and I've looked at over half of them) has any form of synopsis to tell the browsing reader what the book is about: and most of the jacket designs use the same standard template in purple, cream and black which is, I’m afraid, downright ugly; or an image of a blue planet, which renders the superimposed title illegible. So much for the ten foot rule.
I’ve spotted many errors in Amazon’s listings: one author’s first name was correctly given as Tamsin on her book jacket, but was listed as Jasmine in the Amazon details, which would have made searching for her by name impossible; there were several cases where the Amazon details referred to one book but a completely different book appeared in the cover image provided by YouWriteOn. Many more showed spelling errors in names and/or titles on the provided image of the book jackets, in the details provided to Amazon, or on both; and there were some particularly odd inversions of the authors names. Two authors have discovered that their titles, names and ISBNs are confused to such an extent they’re not sure which is their book, and which belongs to the other. Am I nitpicking? Hardly. Out of one hundred YouWriteOn books that I chose at random from Amazon UK two weeks ago, sixty seven had errors in the details provided to Amazon by YouWriteOn. Of those sixty seven books with errors, only one now shows corrected copy. The remaining errors are still in place.
One writer paid to have her cover professionally designed and, while the designers did a good job, all thirty of the copies which she ordered for her launch party arrived with a green stripe running across the cover, as did copies that her friends ordered at different times: which implies that this was not a printer malfunction, but an issue with the PDF held by Lightning Source—which was, of course, supplied by YouWriteOn.
At least she has a book, though: several writers have still heard nothing about their books’ status from YouWriteOn despite repeated requests for information. Writers who didn’t cough up for the “distribution fee” have been told that their books will be available to order from the YouWriteOn website on some unspecified date in the future and as the contract states that they won’t earn any royalties on copies they buy themselves, they have no real way to make money from the sales of their own books. Some writers have cancelled, but have received no confirmation that their cancellations have been received; and meanwhile, YouWriteOn has blithely announced on its own website that following the huge success of its publishing scheme it’s planning to open its doors to a new round of submissions in the spring.
I have to ask: a success for whom? Not for the writers who still have no idea when, or if, their books will published; nor for the writers whose books are incorrectly listed on Amazon. And while I’m genuinely pleased that some YouWriteOn writers are happy with their books, I wonder how well their books will do bearing in mind that YouWriteOn has provided these books with no editorial input or distribution whatsoever.
One thing that has been provided, though, is a nice big chunk of money to YouWriteOn: the authors of every single one of those 273 YouWriteOn books now showing on Barnes & Noble paid £39.99 to YouWriteOn to get them there: a total of £10,906.35, plus the income provided by the authors whose YouWriteOn books are listed as “imprint unknown”. That’s a very nice return for making a couple of slapdash downloads every day in the four months or so since this scheme launched: and it doesn’t take into account any of the money which YouWriteOn has earned on the back of the sales of these books. Is this vanity publishing? It certainly looks like it to me.
(Please note: I'd have liked to have linked to various posts at YouWriteOn's message board to provide my many sources for this piece, but as it's been taken down that's not possible; and while it might have been useful to link to some of the many errors I've seen on Amazon I didn't want the authors concerned to feel that I was poking fun at them: so I've decided not to highlight any individual books here.)
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Manuscript Display Sites
There are all sorts of manuscripts display sites available on the internet, like the infamous YouWriteOn, and HarperCollins’ Authonomy. Anyone can register with these sites and download a chunk of their work which might then be reviewed by other members; in return, you review their work and everyone gets a little feedback.
Both YouWriteOn and Authonomy run a rankings scheme whereby each month the ten most highly-scored pieces of work are read by editors and/or agents, and offered criticisms. This is an opportunity not to be sniffed at: I’ve read several of the professional critiques alongside the displayed work and they all offered good, solid advice which the writers would be wise to act on.
There is a downside, though. In order to attract enough reader-attention to make it to the top ten, Authonomy writers have to network their socks off—and that’s very time-consuming: frankly, I’d rather spend that time writing and have my agent work on getting it seen by the right editors; while over at YouWriteOn there have been accusations of vote-rigging, and some writers claim not to have received the editorial reports that they were promised.
Never mind, say the members: there’s still a chance that the books will get seen by an agent or an editor trawling the site, looking for talent. After all, the review process ensures that the work is of a much higher standard than most of the slush-pile, so they’re bound to be looking.
Well—no. The review process does improve the work but there are several limiting factors working here. The only people offering advice to the majority of the members are the other members who, while perfectly literate, tend not to be very experienced writers and so some of the advice that they offer is of limited value. In many cases, the criticism they offer doesn’t get beyond the level of pointing out errors in punctuation, grammar or spelling; and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of the stringent structural work that most books require. Structural editing is made almost impossible by the medium in which the work is displayed: it’s incredibly difficult as an editor to have a good impact on a full manuscript if you’re only considering a short extract from it.
But the biggest reason that agents and editors are unlikely to plough through the work that is on offer at such manuscript display sites is that these people already have far too much slush of their own. Every day, new submissions drop on their desks in far greater quantities than can ever be published. Reading through their own slush is bad enough: why would they want to go and read through everyone else’s?
Writer Beware has blogged about Authonomy, and this particular post provides a very useful history of manuscript display sites (make sure you read the comments to get the full value).
Both YouWriteOn and Authonomy run a rankings scheme whereby each month the ten most highly-scored pieces of work are read by editors and/or agents, and offered criticisms. This is an opportunity not to be sniffed at: I’ve read several of the professional critiques alongside the displayed work and they all offered good, solid advice which the writers would be wise to act on.
There is a downside, though. In order to attract enough reader-attention to make it to the top ten, Authonomy writers have to network their socks off—and that’s very time-consuming: frankly, I’d rather spend that time writing and have my agent work on getting it seen by the right editors; while over at YouWriteOn there have been accusations of vote-rigging, and some writers claim not to have received the editorial reports that they were promised.
Never mind, say the members: there’s still a chance that the books will get seen by an agent or an editor trawling the site, looking for talent. After all, the review process ensures that the work is of a much higher standard than most of the slush-pile, so they’re bound to be looking.
Well—no. The review process does improve the work but there are several limiting factors working here. The only people offering advice to the majority of the members are the other members who, while perfectly literate, tend not to be very experienced writers and so some of the advice that they offer is of limited value. In many cases, the criticism they offer doesn’t get beyond the level of pointing out errors in punctuation, grammar or spelling; and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of the stringent structural work that most books require. Structural editing is made almost impossible by the medium in which the work is displayed: it’s incredibly difficult as an editor to have a good impact on a full manuscript if you’re only considering a short extract from it.
But the biggest reason that agents and editors are unlikely to plough through the work that is on offer at such manuscript display sites is that these people already have far too much slush of their own. Every day, new submissions drop on their desks in far greater quantities than can ever be published. Reading through their own slush is bad enough: why would they want to go and read through everyone else’s?
Writer Beware has blogged about Authonomy, and this particular post provides a very useful history of manuscript display sites (make sure you read the comments to get the full value).
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Cover Price, Gross or Net?
Royalties can be calculated in all sorts of ways. They’re usually calculated as a percentage of the selling price, which seems pretty straightforward: but there are all sorts of ways that things can get complicated, and it’s essential that writers check their contracts carefully and ensure that they understand all that it implies.
A percentage of cover price is nice and simple, so long as the cover price is set: a royalty of 10% of £10.00 will always end up with the payment of £1.00 per book sold.
A percentage of profits is not nearly so desirable: it might seem better initially, as the percentages given based on this calculation are often higher than those calculated on cover price. But so much depends on how the publisher calculates those profits: do they refer only to the profits made by your book, or to profits made by the whole company? If the latter, your book could end up subsidising the publication of other less successful books; and you’re always at risk of subsidising a feckless publisher’s fondness for new computers or business lunches.
Things are bad enough if royalties are calculated on gross profits: but if they’re calculated on nett profits, then your receipts are going to be even lower.
The problems are compounded by the non-standard contracts common with some of the less standard presses: YouWriteOn’s publishing arm promises a 60% royalty “after printing costs”, but defines neither the printing costs nor the retail price leaving their authors with no accurate idea of how much money they’ll earn from each copy sold.
A percentage of cover price is nice and simple, so long as the cover price is set: a royalty of 10% of £10.00 will always end up with the payment of £1.00 per book sold.
A percentage of profits is not nearly so desirable: it might seem better initially, as the percentages given based on this calculation are often higher than those calculated on cover price. But so much depends on how the publisher calculates those profits: do they refer only to the profits made by your book, or to profits made by the whole company? If the latter, your book could end up subsidising the publication of other less successful books; and you’re always at risk of subsidising a feckless publisher’s fondness for new computers or business lunches.
Things are bad enough if royalties are calculated on gross profits: but if they’re calculated on nett profits, then your receipts are going to be even lower.
The problems are compounded by the non-standard contracts common with some of the less standard presses: YouWriteOn’s publishing arm promises a 60% royalty “after printing costs”, but defines neither the printing costs nor the retail price leaving their authors with no accurate idea of how much money they’ll earn from each copy sold.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Selling Books To Book Shops (Part II)
I’ve made no secret of my opinion of the YouWriteOn publishing scheme: but now that some writers have signed up to it, how can they persuade bookshops to carry their titles?
Before they even consider phoning their local store, it is absolutely essential that the writers concerned find out two things: which wholesaler or distributor the YouWriteOn books are going to be listed with, if any; and what the sales terms are. This isn’t something that the writers can arrange for themselves: it’s a publisher’s job to find a wholesaler willing to take a list on; to ensure that all titles are listed correctly; and to set the sales terms (I’ve already blogged about how self-publishers can get their books into Waterstones but in this case, YouWriteOn is the publisher and so is responsible for getting this done).
These wholesalers are essential because booksellers have accounts with them, and prefer to buy their stock from them. They are unlikely to be willing or able to buy books direct from YouWriteOn’s website. And booksellers will ask what the sales terms are: they need to know what they’re going to have to pay for a book before they buy it, so that they can be sure of covering their costs and making some profit on each sale; and they need to know if they can return the copies which don’t sell, because that will directly affect the number of copies they’re prepared to buy, and how forgiving they’ll be if the discounts are low.
Sales terms can be a bit tricky: I’ve heard of a few instances where bookshops have taken self-published titles at discounts as low as 35% off the retail price, but that’s rare in my experience (although I’ll admit here that I have little direct experience of self-publishing, so if anyone wants to add their comments I’d be grateful). Discounts of 45-60% are more common (Waterstones is unlikely to consider a book with less than 50% discount). And most bookshops will expect the books to be supplied on a sale-or-return basis, so that if after a couple of months the book has not sold, or is getting a little shelfworn, the retailer can return them at no cost.
Now, if YouWriteOn isn’t planning on paying a wholesaler to handle their supply-chain, then the bookshops will have to either order direct from the YouWriteOn website, or the writers will have to supply them. I’ll be interested to know how YouWriteOn intends to handle bookshop discounts in this case, as the contract makes no provision for author discounts, which is going to make it economically impossible for the authors to supply bookshops direct at the discounts they need.
Once writers know where bookshops can get hold of the books, and what the sales terms are, they can start selling: and that’s where the real work starts. A post or seven about that will soon follow.
(You can find Part I of Selling Books To Bookshops here.)
Before they even consider phoning their local store, it is absolutely essential that the writers concerned find out two things: which wholesaler or distributor the YouWriteOn books are going to be listed with, if any; and what the sales terms are. This isn’t something that the writers can arrange for themselves: it’s a publisher’s job to find a wholesaler willing to take a list on; to ensure that all titles are listed correctly; and to set the sales terms (I’ve already blogged about how self-publishers can get their books into Waterstones but in this case, YouWriteOn is the publisher and so is responsible for getting this done).
These wholesalers are essential because booksellers have accounts with them, and prefer to buy their stock from them. They are unlikely to be willing or able to buy books direct from YouWriteOn’s website. And booksellers will ask what the sales terms are: they need to know what they’re going to have to pay for a book before they buy it, so that they can be sure of covering their costs and making some profit on each sale; and they need to know if they can return the copies which don’t sell, because that will directly affect the number of copies they’re prepared to buy, and how forgiving they’ll be if the discounts are low.
Sales terms can be a bit tricky: I’ve heard of a few instances where bookshops have taken self-published titles at discounts as low as 35% off the retail price, but that’s rare in my experience (although I’ll admit here that I have little direct experience of self-publishing, so if anyone wants to add their comments I’d be grateful). Discounts of 45-60% are more common (Waterstones is unlikely to consider a book with less than 50% discount). And most bookshops will expect the books to be supplied on a sale-or-return basis, so that if after a couple of months the book has not sold, or is getting a little shelfworn, the retailer can return them at no cost.
Now, if YouWriteOn isn’t planning on paying a wholesaler to handle their supply-chain, then the bookshops will have to either order direct from the YouWriteOn website, or the writers will have to supply them. I’ll be interested to know how YouWriteOn intends to handle bookshop discounts in this case, as the contract makes no provision for author discounts, which is going to make it economically impossible for the authors to supply bookshops direct at the discounts they need.
Once writers know where bookshops can get hold of the books, and what the sales terms are, they can start selling: and that’s where the real work starts. A post or seven about that will soon follow.
(You can find Part I of Selling Books To Bookshops here.)
Friday, 17 October 2008
YouWriteOn Publishing: What’s In It For The Writer?
Following yesterday’s post about the cost of publishing with YouWriteOn, I’ve been asked how writers can work out for themselves whether or not this is a good deal.
Because we don't know how YouWriteOn will define the "printing costs" it mentions in its contract we don’t yet know what share of the revenue will be used as a basis for royalty calculations; and we don't know where YouWriteOn will set its retail prices. This makes it impossible to provide an exact breakdown: but I can make some rough comparisons.
Last year, I put a small book together using Lulu. The book was text-only and 28,000 words long, which came to about 110 pages: Lulu’s printing costs came to £3.92 per copy. I’ll set a cover price of £5.99, and will assume that YouWriteOn isn’t going to ramp up its printing costs over the actual figures.
I shall now play around a little with the numbers with the help of my lovely assistant (who is aged 13 and is top of his year in maths, clever boy). As you read along, though, do remember that longer books will have higher printing costs; and if YouWriteOn sets its printing costs higher, or its retail prices lower, the returns on its scheme will be lowered significantly.
Let’s start with the cost of the ISBN, because this seems to have tempted quite a lot of you. An ISBN costs £39.95 if you publish through YouWriteOn compared to £105.75 if you buy your own block of ten ISBNs direct from the UK ISBN agency (you can’t buy ISBNs singly). YouWriteOn does offer an immediate saving of £65.80 over self-publishing if you are only interested in publishing one book: but in return, you’re paying 40% of all future profits on the book to YouWriteOn.
A printing cost of £3.92 and a cover price of £5.99 leaves £2.07 potential profit, of which I would receive 60% (£1.24), with 40% (83p) going to YouWriteOn. If I published the book myself, I would receive 100% of that £2.07.
Using YouWriteOn, I’d have to sell 33 copies of the book to bring in £40.92, which would recoup the cost of the ISBN and get me into profit by a whole 97p; by publishing the book myself, I’d have to sell 52 copies to earn back the cost of the ISBN and bring me a very slightly larger £1.89 profit.
If I published more than one book, though, things get a little more interesting. By going through YouWriteOn I’d still have to sell 33 copies of each and every book in order to recoup that initial cost, because YouWriteOn offers a per-book price only, whereas by buying that block of ten ISBNs my break-even point is reduced. By publishing two books myself, the break-even point comes at 26 copies each; by publishing three books myself, that break-even point comes after I’ve sold 18 copies of each of the books.
After that break-even point is passed, each book published by YouWriteOn will still only earn me a royalty of 60% of income after they’ve deducted their printing costs, whereas I’d keep 100% of it from each book I self-published. In the projections that follow, I’ve deducted the cost of the ISBNs for the sake of simplicity.
If I sold 75 copies of a single title through YouWriteOn I’d earn £53.05, but by publishing it myself I’d bring in £49.50: in this instance, YouWriteOn is a better option by a narrow margin of £3.55.
If I sold 75 copies each of two books through YouWriteOn I’d earn £106.10, but by selling 75 copies each of two self-published books I’d earn £204.75. In this instance, self-publishing is a better option by a rather nice margin of £98.65.
If I sold 100 copies of a single title through YouWriteOn I’d earn £84.05, but by publishing it myself I’d bring in £101.25. In this instance, self-publishing is a better option by a margin of £17.20.
If I sold 100 copies of two books through YouWriteOn I’d earn £168.10, but by selling 100 copies each of two self-published books I’d earn £308.25. In this instance, self-publishing is a better option by a very nice margin of £140.15.
Remember that this model is based on a smallish book with low comparable printing costs, and I’ve assumed that YouWriteOn is going to price the books fairly, and not ramp up those undefined “printing costs”. A legitimately self-published book has a much better chance of getting into the bookshops than those which go through the YouWriteOn scheme, because of the problems with discounts that I outlined in my post yesterday. And very few self-published books sell as many as 75 copies, without these obstacles in their way.
Because we don't know how YouWriteOn will define the "printing costs" it mentions in its contract we don’t yet know what share of the revenue will be used as a basis for royalty calculations; and we don't know where YouWriteOn will set its retail prices. This makes it impossible to provide an exact breakdown: but I can make some rough comparisons.
Last year, I put a small book together using Lulu. The book was text-only and 28,000 words long, which came to about 110 pages: Lulu’s printing costs came to £3.92 per copy. I’ll set a cover price of £5.99, and will assume that YouWriteOn isn’t going to ramp up its printing costs over the actual figures.
I shall now play around a little with the numbers with the help of my lovely assistant (who is aged 13 and is top of his year in maths, clever boy). As you read along, though, do remember that longer books will have higher printing costs; and if YouWriteOn sets its printing costs higher, or its retail prices lower, the returns on its scheme will be lowered significantly.
Let’s start with the cost of the ISBN, because this seems to have tempted quite a lot of you. An ISBN costs £39.95 if you publish through YouWriteOn compared to £105.75 if you buy your own block of ten ISBNs direct from the UK ISBN agency (you can’t buy ISBNs singly). YouWriteOn does offer an immediate saving of £65.80 over self-publishing if you are only interested in publishing one book: but in return, you’re paying 40% of all future profits on the book to YouWriteOn.
A printing cost of £3.92 and a cover price of £5.99 leaves £2.07 potential profit, of which I would receive 60% (£1.24), with 40% (83p) going to YouWriteOn. If I published the book myself, I would receive 100% of that £2.07.
Using YouWriteOn, I’d have to sell 33 copies of the book to bring in £40.92, which would recoup the cost of the ISBN and get me into profit by a whole 97p; by publishing the book myself, I’d have to sell 52 copies to earn back the cost of the ISBN and bring me a very slightly larger £1.89 profit.
If I published more than one book, though, things get a little more interesting. By going through YouWriteOn I’d still have to sell 33 copies of each and every book in order to recoup that initial cost, because YouWriteOn offers a per-book price only, whereas by buying that block of ten ISBNs my break-even point is reduced. By publishing two books myself, the break-even point comes at 26 copies each; by publishing three books myself, that break-even point comes after I’ve sold 18 copies of each of the books.
After that break-even point is passed, each book published by YouWriteOn will still only earn me a royalty of 60% of income after they’ve deducted their printing costs, whereas I’d keep 100% of it from each book I self-published. In the projections that follow, I’ve deducted the cost of the ISBNs for the sake of simplicity.
If I sold 75 copies of a single title through YouWriteOn I’d earn £53.05, but by publishing it myself I’d bring in £49.50: in this instance, YouWriteOn is a better option by a narrow margin of £3.55.
If I sold 75 copies each of two books through YouWriteOn I’d earn £106.10, but by selling 75 copies each of two self-published books I’d earn £204.75. In this instance, self-publishing is a better option by a rather nice margin of £98.65.
If I sold 100 copies of a single title through YouWriteOn I’d earn £84.05, but by publishing it myself I’d bring in £101.25. In this instance, self-publishing is a better option by a margin of £17.20.
If I sold 100 copies of two books through YouWriteOn I’d earn £168.10, but by selling 100 copies each of two self-published books I’d earn £308.25. In this instance, self-publishing is a better option by a very nice margin of £140.15.
Remember that this model is based on a smallish book with low comparable printing costs, and I’ve assumed that YouWriteOn is going to price the books fairly, and not ramp up those undefined “printing costs”. A legitimately self-published book has a much better chance of getting into the bookshops than those which go through the YouWriteOn scheme, because of the problems with discounts that I outlined in my post yesterday. And very few self-published books sell as many as 75 copies, without these obstacles in their way.
Thursday, 16 October 2008
YouWriteOn's "Free Publishing Offer": Who Will Pay?
Clause 8 of the contract for YouWriteOn’s latest publishing scheme states,
This probably won’t concern the writers who only want to sell the odd copy to friends and family members: they can just direct everyone to YouWriteOn’s website, where they can order the books for themselves.
The people who should be most worried are the writers who want to sell more than just a handful of their books, and especially those who want to sell them through bookshops—which is where the majority of all books sold are sold.
When those writers make their sales visits to bookshops, they’ll need to have copies of their books on hand to show to the buyers. If the buyers want to buy copies there and then, the writer will have to supply them with those full-price, undiscounted, royalty-free books—but the bookshops will demand a discount, which means that the writers will lose money on every single copy that they sell.
They could ask the buyers to order the books direct from the wholesalers (Waterstones will only order self-published titles from Gardners, others may vary): but there’s a problem there, too. While it’s sometimes possible to get smaller bookshops to accept smaller discounts they’re rarely able to take anything below 40% off the retail price, while Waterstones usually requires a minimum discount of 57.5%. And there just isn’t that much money left in the pot after those nebulous “printing costs”, and the writers’ 60% royalties, have been paid.
Which leaves online sales. But again, online booksellers demand discounts, and where is that going to come from? Once you take away those “printing costs”, the writers’ 60%, and YouWriteOn’s 40%, there’s not enough left to cover the book sellers’ discounts. Not even if YouWriteOn gives up all of its 40% share.
Which means that these books are only really going to sell through YouWriteOn’s own website. And the last time I heard, that wasn’t very high up on the list of places that most readers go to when they’re looking for a good read.
“The Author shall receive a 60% net royalty on all sales of printed copies of the Work that the Publisher receives. The net royalty for each book sold is after printing costs. YouWriteOn will set the retail price. Author royalties are not paid on copies of the book bought by the Authors themselves.”So, the authors won’t earn any royalties on copies they buy for themselves. That wouldn’t be too bad if they got a nice big discount on those copies: but the contract makes no provision for any author discounts at all, despite such discounts being a standard requirement in most publishing contracts.
This probably won’t concern the writers who only want to sell the odd copy to friends and family members: they can just direct everyone to YouWriteOn’s website, where they can order the books for themselves.
The people who should be most worried are the writers who want to sell more than just a handful of their books, and especially those who want to sell them through bookshops—which is where the majority of all books sold are sold.
When those writers make their sales visits to bookshops, they’ll need to have copies of their books on hand to show to the buyers. If the buyers want to buy copies there and then, the writer will have to supply them with those full-price, undiscounted, royalty-free books—but the bookshops will demand a discount, which means that the writers will lose money on every single copy that they sell.
They could ask the buyers to order the books direct from the wholesalers (Waterstones will only order self-published titles from Gardners, others may vary): but there’s a problem there, too. While it’s sometimes possible to get smaller bookshops to accept smaller discounts they’re rarely able to take anything below 40% off the retail price, while Waterstones usually requires a minimum discount of 57.5%. And there just isn’t that much money left in the pot after those nebulous “printing costs”, and the writers’ 60% royalties, have been paid.
Which leaves online sales. But again, online booksellers demand discounts, and where is that going to come from? Once you take away those “printing costs”, the writers’ 60%, and YouWriteOn’s 40%, there’s not enough left to cover the book sellers’ discounts. Not even if YouWriteOn gives up all of its 40% share.
Which means that these books are only really going to sell through YouWriteOn’s own website. And the last time I heard, that wasn’t very high up on the list of places that most readers go to when they’re looking for a good read.
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
YouWriteOn Publishes The 5,000
The UK-based writers’ website, YouWriteOn, is offering publication by Christmas to the first 5,000 writers who submit their work. That’s right: 5,000 books. By Christmas.
Writer Beware has already blogged about this in an article called 5,000 Writers. Unsurprisingly, Writer Beware has come down pretty heavily against the scheme. I’d also advise everyone to steer well clear of this, for all the reasons that Victoria gives in her article and a few more besides.
If you think that this will be a route to a commercial publication, think again. These books are going to get no editorial screening, editing, sales, distribution, marketing, or promotion; there’s a significant doubt over what the writers will actually earn; and by signing up to this scheme, writers will lose the first rights to the books involved, and so make it far less likely that they’ll ever manage to sell them to a commercial, mainstream publishing house.
Regardless of the sales talk I’ve read on YWO, publishers are usually only interested in acquiring first rights to a book: if it’s already been published, in whatever form, then those first rights are gone for good. Lynn Price, the rather perky editorial director of Behler Publications (a very well-regarded independent press in America) has blogged about this in some detail: you can find her post by following the links here.
If you’re determined to give up those precious first rights then bear in mind that this deal does not appear to give you anything more than you’d get if you directly approached Lulu, Lightning Source, or any other POD printer, and had them produce your book via the POD route. You download your book; you sell your book; they print up what you downloaded and send it out. Doing it yourself via a POD supplier gives you the opportunity to correct and amend your book’s text, cover and layout at any time, and at no cost to yourself—something you’ll not be able to do via YWO.
But apart from all of those issues, which most writers with any experience of proper, commercial publishing could spot from a mile off, I’m just flabbergasted at the idea of one person (because as far as I know, YWO is a one-man team) coping with downloading 5,000 books onto a POD server in time for Christmas. Even if YWO ignores its own submissions deadline of the end of October and starts downloading the books right now, there are only about ten weeks to Christmas; so that’s 500 books a week, or 100 per working day. The last time I downloaded anything to Lulu it took me a couple of hours to get the text formatted properly and the cover on right: assuming that there’s one person at YWO working an eight-hour day, taking no breaks at all, then they’re going to have to download one book every five minutes. I just hope they have better bladder control than I do.
Remember: it’s better to not be published at all than to be published badly. You only have to speak with people who have been skewered by Publish America, or some of the other vanity presses, to discover that.
(If you would like to copy this particular blog post onto your own blog to spread the word, feel free: just so long as you acknowledge that it's my work, and you include a link back to here.)
Writer Beware has already blogged about this in an article called 5,000 Writers. Unsurprisingly, Writer Beware has come down pretty heavily against the scheme. I’d also advise everyone to steer well clear of this, for all the reasons that Victoria gives in her article and a few more besides.
If you think that this will be a route to a commercial publication, think again. These books are going to get no editorial screening, editing, sales, distribution, marketing, or promotion; there’s a significant doubt over what the writers will actually earn; and by signing up to this scheme, writers will lose the first rights to the books involved, and so make it far less likely that they’ll ever manage to sell them to a commercial, mainstream publishing house.
Regardless of the sales talk I’ve read on YWO, publishers are usually only interested in acquiring first rights to a book: if it’s already been published, in whatever form, then those first rights are gone for good. Lynn Price, the rather perky editorial director of Behler Publications (a very well-regarded independent press in America) has blogged about this in some detail: you can find her post by following the links here.
If you’re determined to give up those precious first rights then bear in mind that this deal does not appear to give you anything more than you’d get if you directly approached Lulu, Lightning Source, or any other POD printer, and had them produce your book via the POD route. You download your book; you sell your book; they print up what you downloaded and send it out. Doing it yourself via a POD supplier gives you the opportunity to correct and amend your book’s text, cover and layout at any time, and at no cost to yourself—something you’ll not be able to do via YWO.
But apart from all of those issues, which most writers with any experience of proper, commercial publishing could spot from a mile off, I’m just flabbergasted at the idea of one person (because as far as I know, YWO is a one-man team) coping with downloading 5,000 books onto a POD server in time for Christmas. Even if YWO ignores its own submissions deadline of the end of October and starts downloading the books right now, there are only about ten weeks to Christmas; so that’s 500 books a week, or 100 per working day. The last time I downloaded anything to Lulu it took me a couple of hours to get the text formatted properly and the cover on right: assuming that there’s one person at YWO working an eight-hour day, taking no breaks at all, then they’re going to have to download one book every five minutes. I just hope they have better bladder control than I do.
Remember: it’s better to not be published at all than to be published badly. You only have to speak with people who have been skewered by Publish America, or some of the other vanity presses, to discover that.
(If you would like to copy this particular blog post onto your own blog to spread the word, feel free: just so long as you acknowledge that it's my work, and you include a link back to here.)
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