Selling highly-priced, poor-value seminars and writing courses to aspiring authors isn’t just unethical – it’s also damaging to the publishing industry, says Litopia’s Peter Cox in this article for “The Bookseller”
That old scoundrel Sam Brannan would have felt completely at home in today’s publishing business. Sam, you may recall, was the original promoter of California’s 1848 Gold Rush. After first cornering the market in picks, shovels and pans (paying a mere 20 cents each wholesale), Sam proceeded to run though the streets of San Francisco shouting at the top of his lungs “Gold! Gold on the American River!”.
Accounts indicate that Sam’s brilliant sales promotion all but emptied San Francisco, as most of its male population departed en masse for the mines – equipped, of course, with a Brannan shovel at an eye-watering $15 a pop. It is hardly necessary to add that while most failed to find their own pots of gold, Sam certainly found his – becoming the Gold Rush’s first millionaire.
Fast forward 160 years. The industry is different, but the conversations are the same. “There’s gold in them thar slushpiles,” says one publishing executive to another. “If we had £15 for every submission sent in – why, pardner – we’d never need to sell books again!”
Suddenly, it seems as if every Tom, Dick and publishing Harriet are running writing courses, setting up seminars, organising conferences, selling critiquing services, creating writing groups, providing manuscript doctoring and generally trying to monetize the slushpile. Our industry appears to have declared open season on the naive, sometimes gullible hopes of aspiring writers. It’s the Wild West out there, and someone has to say that much of what is happening now is simply not right.
While many of these offerings are merely guilty of being extremely poor value for money – why anyone would pay hundreds or thousands of pounds for advice that’s available in any how-to book is beyond me – others are less benign.
I set up Litopia well over a decade ago to fill what I felt was not an economic but a social need. Writing is an isolating occupation, and writers work at unsocial hours. They need a supportive community, and that’s what we provided. Until very recently, it was entirely free (we now have to charge a small subscription just to maintain ourselves). Today, we receive a steady flow of new members who have been hurt, misled or generally turned over by other sites or organisations.
“I think everyone out there who dreams of being a writer deserves better than some predatory shark feeding off of their dreams”, one new member said to me recently, after a typically bruising experience elsewhere. Isn’t that the reason we all used to hate vanity publishing – that it raised false hopes, only to cruelly exploit them? So why are some of the biggest names in our business backing ventures like these?
Another member tells of paying a not inconsiderable sum to attend a writers’ conference, only to find that “pitch sessions” with well-known literary agents cost an additional $65 per manuscript! Agents who charge to review submissions have traditionally been rightly viewed as shysters. Why is this kind of behaviour acceptable now?
The slushpile industry doesn’t support, but confuses, authors. “I don’t think I’d ever have got anything published if I’d had all this advice flying at me,” Mortal Engines author Philip Reeve told me on a recent Litopia After Dark, “it’s terrifying!”.
The slushpile industry trashes our core business. “You too can be a bestselling author!” is the implied pitch (which is a bald-faced lie). By suggesting that anyone can write a bestseller, we denigrate those few and precious talents who actually do. Writing is not egalitarian: most people will never be able to write like Stephen King, no matter how many over-priced seminars they are induced to attend. Bestselling authors are our products. Shouldn’t we be enhancing our products’ specialness, scarcity and hence value? The slushpile industry does precisely the opposite.
And by the way: Sam Brennan died alone, forgotten – and broke.
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Come over here for a moment, would you? But be careful of the edge of the table, it’s rather sharp. Good. Now you can see things from my side of the desk. That towering pile you see in front of you? It’s what some unkind publishing folk call “the slush pile”. Yes, most of it’s…
Thinking back to December 1973… a village called Oberjoch (over the hill) in the Bavarian Alps. Six feet of snow! I was learning to ski with a six-man unit from 49 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery. It was a two-week course and we manage to ski fairly well down the smaller slopes…
I recently had a great movie night with my daughter. We made a fort (three kitchen chairs with a blanket thrown over the top and far too many stuffed toys to get comfortable), we made popcorn and a bowl of Skittles, and settled down in the living room to watch a movie with all the…
Well, it sort of is… I’ve been fascinated by dystopian fiction for many years – any story which explores a dramatic change in the way of life for a society, if not humanity (which can of course cross into the post-apocalyptic sub-genre). But it’s not just the ‘big picture’ of these novels which intrigues me,…
Marcel Duchamp said this: it’s art if I say so. He’s the guy who stuck a urinal on the wall and called it ‘Fountain’. And ever since he did that, the art world swivelled on its axis and became a place where apparently anything goes. And usually for a gazillion quid. Which really gets the…
As a writer, I tend to focus on plot. I love a good action scene, and I also enjoy writing dialogue (probably stems from loving to talk, myself. LOL!). Over the years, I’ve developed a method for outlining my novels that’s sort of a mash-up of different methods I’ve read about. I start with a…
The 28 Delegates from Earlston in Scotland here on their annual twinning visit with Cappella Maggiore attended Mass at a local church in Anzano. Fr Mario wanted to say a few words of welcome to them in English and then would I translate simultaneously the rest of the sermon. I didn’t say no, I just…
As a kid, I watched Star Trek. Some things have come true. I remember at the market you had to push to open the door. On Star Trek, the doors opened automatically with a SWOOSH when Captain Kirk made his dramatic entrance (wow, he’s still with us as I write this). A few years later…
Out of the Mouths of Babes This post was inspired by a comment made by my eleven-year-old son. It was prompted by his question regarding what I’d hypothetically create a YouTube channel about (reading and writing novels of course!). He summed up in one sentence what I took years to work out: “The most important…
The sun blazing down on this our fragile humanity enticing us to the cooling waters of the sea or the breezy shade of mountain trees. It is time for ball games on beaches, hide and seek on mountain slopes: laughter, friendship, care-freeness. It is time for distraction, the distraction that once saturated must eventually lead…
There are debates about audio books vs paperback vs digital formats. This post is not about that. Although that would be an interesting post. But I will not try to convince you to listen to a book if that’s not your jam. Well, I won’t deliberately try. As for SFF… you either love it or…
I recently wrote a blog post about bad writing in current media and decided that this month I would write about good writing instead. Bad writing is low-hanging fruit; it’s easy to spot, and easier still to complain about after you realise something has relieved itself on it. The Acolyte, the show I talked about…
My neighbouring village in Northern Italy enacted the 1917- 18 Year. They called the event the “L’an de la Fan” which is a Veneto Region dialect expression for “The Year of Hunger.” There was something special about this year. Apart from the massacre that left a painful dent in Italian history, it also attracted the…
Be Brave I’ve been writing seriously for years. The more I wrote (and read the work of other authors), the more I experimented with different genres, voice, style and structures. I realised I had nothing to lose by going down experimental rabbit holes, except time and effort. But hey, writing is a craft, right? And…
My Writing Journey During my formative years, I had spells when I thought I’d like to be an author when I grew up (if we ever really do). But I didn’t know any writers and it seemed like something that other, cleverer, more privileged people did, not someone like me. But when I reached my…
Donald Sutherland is gone. I saw him on stage at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles years ago in a play. What can one say? M*A*S*H etc… I knew Eddie Albert and bid him adieu nineteen years ago. Wow, stop the clock! I sat next to him at a few dinner parties at our…
I’ve never liked my voice. I’m not alone. People, in general, hate their voices. We are simply not biologically intended to hear our voices the way that other people do. I hear it and I think, “Who’s that guy?” No, actually, I don’t. I don’t do that. I hear it and I think, “Who’s that…
This year, for the first, time, I noticed the absence of something in June: rainbows. I’d never been particularly in love with them. The fact that Subaru will slap a rainbow on their ads, or that once a year a random company I never really patronize will reassure me how much they like the gays,…
Lately, I’ve been hearing lots of complaints about awful writing. Not mine – people aren’t saying it to my face anyway – but some movies and television shows that are getting some scathing reviews. Some cry that this is racism, homophobia, sexism etc. That these criticisms don’t hold water because of the place from which…
Originating from an informal meeting of finance ministers in 1973, in Washington DC, two years later the G6 established at its first meeting in Château de Rambouillet the following principles: a united commitment to promoting free trade, multilateralism, cooperation with the developing world, and rapprochement with the Eastern Bloc. In 2024 the group, now G7,…
A long-lost friend dropped by recently. Myka was in Berlin for a conference, and found herself with a free evening. We offered her a barbecue, a bed and a walk in the woods. Myka was thrilled. Like us, she had bought a house on the edge of a wood. She loves forest-bathing, or walking away…
Be Up-Front Agent Pete often says that writers should play to their strength and put it front and centre in the opening of their novel. It sounds so obvious but this hadn’t occurred to me before I heard him say it. Are you good at dialogue? Open with a conversation. Do you excel at action?…
A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet, Right? The Silence of the Lambs, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine, 1984, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Colour Purple – titles that we remember, titles that I love. But what makes them so effective? And do titles affect…
Food, travel, books, movies, television shows, and on…and on… A family member of mine doesn’t like avocado. Won’t dip his chip into guacamole. YUM. A friend I dine with loves escargot. YUK! Slimmy crawl ya’all. I recently watched—what I thought would be—a simple detective series, but when in episode 7 it was revealed the detective…
I always find Beta reading such a great opportunity to learn. I discover things that I’m sure I do myself as a writer that I critique as a reader. In my last few rounds of beta reading, I found myself thinking about the gap between being “the writer” and being “the reader.” I mean, of…
My experience with deal sites. This one is for the writers. Last week, I ran a promotion for my novel The Trouble with Prophecies. I slashed the price down to 0.99 for the week in an attempt to get sales going. For context, the last time I ran a promotion I made the book free…
I’ve always had a sense of affinity with the Mystic Padre Pio and the fact that he was born the same day I was, May 25th, makes that bond even closer. For years he drew upon himself the abuse of many, including that of the Pope because people were sceptical – claiming to have the…
Don’t Start with a Character Waking Up, Looking in the Mirror, or with a Hangover On Pop-Up Submissions, we received a lot of openings like this. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, at least in my humble opinion. It may be a cliché, but Fifty Shades of Grey starts with Anastasia Steele looking in the…
(Disclaimer: although not politically perfect, I’m going to use the familiarity of the term ‘disability’ rather than, say, ‘differently abled’ in this post.) I’m gonna say, straight up, that I can’t tell you how to write about disability, primarily because everyone’s experience is different. But I might be able to give you some food for…
I decided to self-publish my contemporary romances after unsuccessful attempts at the traditional route. There are pros and cons to making this decision and lots of issues to consider. Will you pay someone to edit and format your novel? What about the cover design? What platform/s should you upload to? How will you market the…
The pebble skimmed the surface ten times before running out of momentum, then seeming to flounder for a split second, sank into the dark still lake sending ripples radiating outwards. “Ten, dad. Beat that,” said Michael. “Hah, easy,” I said. I scanned the shoreline and spotted a perfect skimmer. A small piece of ancient flint;…
The 25th April is a national holiday here in Italy and it’s called Liberation Day. I had noticed, however, as the years went by, the enthusiasm to celebrate was dwindling a bit and basically I put the cause down to the fact that there seemed to be some confusion among the various sectors of Italian…
“So, what is the worst thing about being a writer?” my neighbor asks me at the Spring Social. “Ummmm,” I say, looking past him to the office. I had forgotten that there was a Spring Social going on today. I see the notices clipped next to my door for them a few times a year:…
Remember lockdown? Remember how we all got a bit excited in the first one and felt we had to make it count? And some of us, you know, wrote a book? Yeah. Turns out quite a lot of us were wrong there. 80,000 words of relatively competent sentences don’t always add up to a book.…
Rules and Commonalities I’m not a musician but even I know that songs have a structure, verses and a chorus, that they often have a beginning, middle and end, that they can build to a crescendo, explore a narrative, evoke deep emotion and stay in our hearts forever. But just what is the magic ingredient…
I’ve been doing the daily Wordle puzzle since it started. In case you missed it, Wordle is an online game that gives you six chances to guess a five-letter word. It was invented by Josh Wardle, a software developer, for his girlfriend who loved word games. Just for fun, so the story goes. Until he…
Last time, I spoke about stories that stay with you – or more accurately, the ones that don’t. This month, I want to take some time to unpick what makes a good story. One that lives in your psyche days, even years, after the final page has been turned. I think it’s fair to say…
You Are Not Alone Most people experience rejection when querying. Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, got so many rejections she ended up self-publishing. Now, over 45 million copies have been sold world-wide. Rudyard Kipling was told that he didn’t know how to use the English language. F. Scott Fitzgerald was told…
Time and Head Space When I was teaching full-time, I found it difficult to fit in any writing. It’s definitely not a nine-to-three job! My evenings and weekends were taken up by planning, preparing and assessing, as well as various administrative tasks. Not to mention the demands of family and general life. However, switching to…
In that heady, comforting, all-encompassing safety-net that is the deep love forged by a long life together, my soul-mate and I tried to find ‘our song’. Amongst all the haunting melodies and time-tested lyrics, surely we could find a single song that expressed the depths of our feelings for each other? He suggested some, I…
Who the hell do you think you are? I once heard that authors alternate between two perceptions of their work-in-progress. One is: ‘This is amazing! I’m a bloody genius!’ The other is: ‘This is the worst thing ever written! Ever! In the whole history of story!’ The truth, of course, is that it’s usually somewhere…
The International Children Books Illustration Exhibition opens its doors for six weeks every year at Sarmede, my home town, gathering the usual crowd of fans and supporters from various parts of the country. The Exhibition used to be held in the Town Hall of the village which has permanent mural illustrations done by the artists…
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. That opening line is indelibly inked in my memory. Other fictional characters captured my childhood imagination before the March sisters: Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, Big Red. All great stories for children. But ‘Little Women’, Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age story set…
The Brother has a view on modern verbiage ++ Now, c’mere ’til I tell you this. I’m all ears. What is it? The brother has barred himself from watching television above in the digs. Excuse me? Barred himself for the foreseeable future on account of him having been roaring at the TV in the residents’…
We All Have Our Own Opinions Of course we do! Life would be very boring if we didn’t. But there are elements to story that seem to be essential and universal. I’ve listed some below but it’s not exhaustive and I’m interested to hear other ideas. Character I often hear authors talk about the…
Say What? Writing a novel with more than one point-of-view can be tricky. How can you juggle different personalities and motivations – and somehow use them to tell a balanced, coherent and compelling story? How can you ensure that each character has their own ‘voice’ (something that I find extremely difficult to achieve!)? But does…
There’s something about cats. Yes, in January I burst my eardrum trying to cure the ear mite infection I caught from our two. They wont be sleeping on the bed pillows after that. But I mean more. The truth encapsulated in this post from Jennifer Adcock, writer. “You know who doesn’t get impostor…
Sorry! I’ve been a tad disingenuous with this title because I’m not referring to the act of writing on behalf of others, but rather the literal act of writing about ghosts! Trick, or treat? Of course, there are many ghost stories, especially in the horror genre, but I’ve selected a few from other genres to…
The last few weeks, I have been replaying a video game from my distant past. An old favourite by the name of Final Fantasy VII. I used to play this game almost once a year; I kept going back to it again and again throughout my childhood and often used to inform my imaginative play…
Over achievers rarely herald from untroubled upbringings. Being born to a mother with low confidence in her own abilities wouldn’t have been so bad, had she managed an ounce of confidence in her own children. Such is life. The poor woman was bullied by her father. He, in turn, had been emotionally wrecked by the…
Ciao. Getting ready for our two-week trip to Northern Italy. Northern Italy you say. What about the rest of Italy? Well, in due course. A friend of mine recently went to Italy and did the typical, American 9 day, 10 night tour of Italy on a bus. “Bring down your luggage and be on the…
“Aren’t you supposed to be writing?” I shove the nagging question away. The computer will still be there when I return to it, cursor blinking patiently at the top of a blank page. It is Thursday, one of my two weekdays designated for writing. I am cradling a cup of coffee and standing in the…
An Issue of Trust I’ll admit, novels with an unreliable narrator are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love them. You start off thinking the character is taking us on a believable journey and that we can trust their telling of the events, then unease creeps in. We start asking questions. We wonder where…
Mention the word Trope to us writers and we’ll recoil. Add the word Cliche and you’ll see us running for the hills. These two five-letter words are not what any of us want in our wonderful, new, original, works, right? But consider this: things only become tropes when they are overused, and they only become…
My three psychological novels have unlikeable point-of-view characters. Without balance, they can appear two-dimensional – and I’ve discovered that achieving that balance is rather tricky! What do I mean by balance? I suppose I’m talking in terms of the reader’s perception. Is the character’s dark side countered by a bit of light, or a reason…
I am made of regret, but not of sadness. During my brief and somewhat misguided youth, I spent my money and spoke my mind. I moved countries and continents. I learned languages, had adventures, and spent my life coloring outside the lines. I don’t recommend it unless you want to come back to where you…
A writer friend of mine and I have exchanged writerly encouragement to each other for many years. The most frequent reminder we bounce back and forth is that writing is really hard. We take baffling things in our life, in society, in the world, often stuff that strike us as chaotic, and we try to…
Dear Grandpoppypops Wish you were here? Look at the size of the stamps now! So much larger than the penny black you showed me from your visit. Not much has changed so far as I can see in human structure, society is still set on exploiting other sections of itself. Your industrial revolution really set…
Flann O’Brien’s much-loved character – The Brother – transported to the 21st century. What would he make of contemporary trends and fads? This episode imagines his reaction to Molecular Gastronomy, Nouvelle Cuisine, and the tampering of a subject very close to his heart. ****************** Now the brother has a thing or two to say on…
This is my first post on this forum, so I wanted to do something short and light. What types of distractions interrupt you when you’re hammering away at your keyboard? The phone rings? Your significant other shouts at you from the other side of the house? Your cat comes in and plops down onto your…
Go beyond the usual guide book notes of the Trevi Fountain and savour its unexpected pleasures.
PART ONE Walk through the heart of Rome and you will be lured in one direction and then another as instantaneously as a magnet does with a piece of iron… The Pantheon will attract you with its metaphysical force of the gods, the Foro Imperiale with its magnitude of power… while the Fountain of Trevi…
My first day as a professional writer, I lifted a police report from the pile at the Coffeyville station and read “Murder.” Now, this was a small town, and I was pretty sure this sort of thing was a rarity. I wasn’t sure there had been much in the way of this most heinous of…
First Things First I’ve never understood people who have a favourite song, book or film. Surely your choice depends on your mood. It’s the same with genre. Maybe today I fancy reading something light-hearted and fun. Tomorrow I might want to feel a shiver run down my spine. The next day I might be enticed…
Lucky seven they say, but the morning I had to load that many strong-minded mustangs onto a lorry at the top of the Swiss Alps with a 4am deadline, it seemed a doomed number. Especially when lorry drivers with ferry schedules and EU regulations have famously short fuses. They have been known to back out…
Hands up anyone who’s had a bit of writer’s block? Looking around I can see that’s pretty much all of us, right? Even you at the back, hiding behind your laptop screen, pretending you’re doing research into character types, whilst actually playing Royal Match and posting videos of your cat. Why do we have such…
I’m delighted to give you an early peek into this year’s Litopia Book Club selections, together with relevant purchase links. It’s a particularly strong and carefully-selected list, and as you’ll know if you’ve attended one of Jason’s riotous Zoom sessions, a good time can be guaranteed for all! For further information and exact dates, please…
Selling highly-priced, poor-value seminars and writing courses to aspiring authors isn’t just unethical – it’s also damaging to the publishing industry, says Litopia’s Peter Cox in this article for “The Bookseller” That old scoundrel Sam Brannan would have felt completely at home in today’s publishing business. Sam, you may recall, was the original promoter of…
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