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YouWriteOn.com / New Generation Publishing / Legend Press

priceless1

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If he is claiming to be a "publisher", wouldn't you think he would make sure the copy he supplies to LS would be to publishable standards? But then, given that it was stated that the YWO publishing was a combined project with Legend Press...
It's incumbent upon the publisher to format the layout to the proper specs. They are the ones who submit the file for printing. Most "real" publishers employ an interior designer, but that takes...money.

But, I believe YWO writers went for the scheme because they believed that being published by an Arts Council sponsored body was somehow more respectable than self-publishing. The snag with that is that, as I understand it, this YWO publishing project is not condoned by the Arts Council.
I think you're right. This was a perfect storm aimed at writers who know very little about the publishing industry. They hatched an author's no-win scheme (a la 5,000 books by Christmas) under the umbrella of a respectable entity (the Arts Council) without any kind of acceptance standards or professionalism in the hope that they would make a ton of money by authors buying bushels of their own books. It's fairly obvious Legend/YWO weren't in the least bit concerned about creating a quality work. It was all about the money. If anyone's sphincter should be puckering, it should be the Arts Council, to allow such a travesty to take place on their watch.
 
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Old Hack

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Sadly, if YWO authors had ... been informed that, between them, they could buy 10 ISBNs for around £100, there would not be these distressed authors anxiously waiting for their trusted leader to sort things for them.

Petec, I tried, and I tried, and I tried. I've even suggested it today to a whole slew of YWO writers who have emailed me asking for advice.

I blogged about this deal three times (and I'm planning a whole new blog post or two for after Christmas, once this is all over). I discussed it at length on several other writers' message boards. In return I've received hate mail from a few writers, my blog has been spammed with the most vitriolic messages I've ever read there, and people have called me all sorts of names (some of them were even spelled correctly!).

My blogging efforts have not been made alone: Writer Beware blogged about it too, as did several other people. I know of several writers who read all of the blog posts and message board analyses, yet still went ahead with their applications. And now, even after it's clear that it's all going horribly wrong, many of them are tiptoeing around on the YWO message boards being grateful to have been given this chance, thanking Ted for helping them and telling anyone who is still asking questions not to be so ungrateful. Meanwhile, lots of them still don't know if their books will even appear anywhere this side of New Year, and I'm beginning to wonder if YouWriteOn is going to become the UK equivalent of PublishAmerica.
 
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gothicangel

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Not if I can help it!

I'm testing out a theory (with the aim of getting the Arts Council to withdraw support.)
 

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It's fairly obvious Legend/YWO weren't in the least bit concerned about creating a quality work. It was all about the money. If anyone's sphincter should be puckering, it should be the Arts Council, to allow such a travesty to take place on their watch.

You're right: when last I counted it all up, YouWriteOn had received around £65,000 in funding from the Arts Council over three years or so. That's a living wage over here (I have no reason to believe that YWO is anything more than a one man band). Quite recently it's received another grant of around £10,000, I think. It's possible to search the Arts Council website to find full details: I think I found them by searching for the name of the owner of YouWriteOn, Edward Smith (although I've seen him called Edward Morris on the internet too: I wonder what that's about?).

I'd suggest that anyone who is remotely concerned about this should contact the members of the executive board of Arts Council England; and the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to which the Arts Council reports. And oh, look. Barbara Follett MP, one of the ministers there, happens to be married to the bestselling author Ken Follett. That's nice.

I'd suggest a calm, rational letter which explains why vanity publishing is such a bad idea; why this scheme of YWO's is a vanity scheme even though they ask for no money up front (because they're going to make the majority of their money they earn selling to the writers involved, and not from selling on to new readers); why it's guaranteed to result in bad books (no editorial selection process, no editorial input to the books); and just what that means to writers, readers AND the Arts Council.

Here's a link to Jonathon Clifford's website. He's the person who came up with the label "vanity publishing", and he's campaigned against it for many years. He'd be a useful person to quote, or to get onside.

Feel free to quote at will from my blog, if any of it is useful (I bet that Writer Beware would be happy for you to quote them, too). And it might be helpful to remember that when Ted from YWO joined here in order to promote his website, Victoria had to admonish him for (repeated?) copyright infringement in his posts. He's not got anyone telling him off over on his own board, though, so he continues to cut and paste without properly attributing the work over there: although I did hear that the Guardian took him to task over this earlier in the year. I wonder what happened there.

(And now I've posted all that, what's the betting that my posts and/or account over at the YWO message board gets deleted? Does anyone want to start a book on it?)
 

BlueLucario

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Don't tell me YouWriteOn has a bad rep too. :( I happen to be a member of that site.
 

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You're OK if you just use it to get feedback on your work, Blue: but I'd advise you to not even consider using its publishing facility.
 

BlueLucario

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You're OK if you just use it to get feedback on your work, Blue: but I'd advise you to not even consider using its publishing facility.
Heck no. It's frustrating and difficult enough trying to get a crit point critting someone's work. I'd rather use SYW, where critting isn't mandatory, but a good idea. :)
 

petec

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Petec, I tried, and I tried, and I tried.

I know. I managed to see some of your posts on the YWO message board before they were culled. The fact that they are no longer visible is very telling.

That site is funded by British public money and, as such, is supposed to be available to ANY member of the British public. However, the man in the hot seat seems to think he has the right to deny public access to anything he does not want revealed.

You only behave that way if you have something to hide.
 

Old Hack

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That site is funded by British public money and, as such, is supposed to be available to ANY member of the British public. However, the man in the hot seat seems to think he has the right to deny public access to anything he does not want revealed.

You only behave that way if you have something to hide.

Just underlining that. In case it's needed.

(And thanks, Petec, for your support.)
 

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I want to add a slightly dissenting voice, if I may.

Although I agree that the YWO publishing venture seems to have gone badly wrong, and I was dubious about it from the start, I do think Ted has acted in good faith and in the interest of the site's members. He’s a good guy, but I think his enthusiasm may have got the better of him.



I’m still hoping all this will be sorted somehow.


The whole debacle makes me very sad for everyone concerned. I’m not sure how YWO’s reputation will ever recover from this.
 

gothicangel

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I nearly got sucked into this kind of thing a few years back, God knows what made me snap out - but I did.

I find no reason to believe Ted has behaved with any decency. I posted chapters last year; it was useful - but I removed the chapters a few weeks ago. Such is my disgust. I was recommended this site by Old Hack, which I am eternally grateful for!

I'm also disgusted at the behaviour being levelled towards a friend of mine on the message boards - he seems to be the only one over there resident on planet Earth. Oh well, they'll probably come back down around April.
 

Roger J Carlson

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I want to add a slightly dissenting voice, if I may.

Although I agree that the YWO publishing venture seems to have gone badly wrong, and I was dubious about it from the start, I do think Ted has acted in good faith and in the interest of the site's members. He’s a good guy, but I think his enthusiasm may have got the better of him.

I’m still hoping all this will be sorted somehow.

The whole debacle makes me very sad for everyone concerned. I’m not sure how YWO’s reputation will ever recover from this.
I don't think anyone here suggested that YouWriteOn had bad intentions. (I may be wrong and I'm not going to scan the whole thread.) In fact, I think a lot of bad agents and bad publishers start out with good intentions. However, when they discover that they can't make water run up hill or they can't make PI equal to 3, then they start to fall back on methods that harm the writer.

Fact is, commercial publishing work the way it does because -- well because that's how it works.
 

gothicangel

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Forgot to say hi to the guys coming over from YWO. If you need a shoulder to cry on or have a rant we're here 24/7.

Check out the Publish America threads. The similarities are unreal!
 

gothicangel

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Tried getting back on a certain thread on YWO; but it has vanished. Looks like the Thought Police are on patrol again.

So I'll have to paraphrase:

"Ted is going to revolutionalise the industry".

Keeping believing that; two men with the sum of two years publishing experience are going to turn in industry on it's head. If there was a better way of doing business, publishing executives would have thought of it first.

Trust me.
 

Momento Mori

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Ted Smith:
Lightning Source are currently at their max preparation/printing time capacity for preparing books during the very busy Christmas period.

Erm ... surely this should have been anticipated in advance by YWO? And given that Christmas is always going to be a busy time for Lightning Source given that people will be seeking to print up books for their friends and family, it probably wasn't such a good idea to add an extra 5000 titles to that workload.

Ted Smith:
How this project has worked is that we have had a high volume of great books

Yes, Ted. Have you considered that the reason why you've had such a high volume of books is because you said you were going to publish the first 5000 books sent through to you?

Ted Smith:
many images and interiors have have not met submission guidelines and requirements, so we and Legend Press have been working very hard to remedy books with problems to assist the writers, for free

Again - this is a totally foreseeable problem and the solution would have been to either not accept any book that didn't meet your submission guidelines and requirements or to have started the submissions process earlier in order to meet the Christmas deadline.

Ted Smith:
The aim by doing this is to help have a positive influence on the print on demand industry, as we have done with the review process, which has led to leading publishing becoming involved with YouWriteOn.

How does accepting the first 5000 books sent through to you have a positive influence on the POD industry? How does not having the facilities in place to ensure that those 5000 books meet the Lightning Source requirements in time for Christmas publication have a positive influence on the POD industry? How does the fact that authors are being expected to market and flog their own books have a positive influence on the POD industry?

Ted Smith:
We look forward to seeing all books completed through the publishing process, and, as stated and agreed to by writers, if not published by Christmas, books will be published as soon as possible after Christmas.

That's a fat lot of good for anyone who had been hoping to give people their book as a Christmas present or for anyone who might have counted on making pre-Christmas sales to people looking for a present. Well done, Ted. Great job.

I feel for the people who have submitted to this and now might not have anything in time for Christmas. But at the same time, none of this is exactly a surprise and should surely have been foreseen by all parties.

MM
 

qwerty

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That's a fat lot of good for anyone who had been hoping to give people their book as a Christmas present or for anyone who might have counted on making pre-Christmas sales to people looking for a present.
MM

Absolutely. Like the writer posting on the YWO message board about her children's Christmas book, which will now be no use for another year.

Then there is the writer who had set up a pre-Christmas promotion function, only to find he will not have any copies of his book to promote.
 

qwerty

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I find no reason to believe Ted has behaved with any decency.

I have reason to know he often doesn’t. At his own discretion, he will down-rate writers’ work if a member dares to question his supremacy. Not only is that detrimental to aspiring writers, it is unfair to members who review and highly rate work they feel to be worthy. Not exactly in keeping with YWO’s stated mission (to discover and promote writing talent) for which Edward Smith receives a considerable amount of Arts Council funding.


I'm also disgusted at the behaviour being levelled towards a friend of mine on the message boards

Speaking as someone who was publicly attacked and falsely accused by Edward Smith on the message board, I understand your disgust. Of course, I was denied the right to reply and/or defend myself against his abusive post because he instantly banned me. Not exactly the conduct of a decent person.

The point here being that this man is the administrator of a public funded scheme which carries the Arts Council of England seal of approval. A man who made false promises to members of that scheme that 5,000 books would be published and available before Christmas.
 

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Momento Mori wrote:

How does accepting the first 5000 books sent through to you have a positive influence on the POD industry? How does not having the facilities in place to ensure that those 5000 books meet the Lightning Source requirements in time for Christmas publication have a positive influence on the POD industry? How does the fact that authors are being expected to market and flog their own books have a positive influence on the POD industry?

A major figure in UK publishing has made his feelings clear on this already, MM.

When Sally Zigmond blogged about the YouWriteOn publishing scheme in September, Scott Pack (who used to run Waterstones, and now runs The Friday Project, an imprint of HarperCollins) commented there. This is what he wrote:

Five minutes watching The X Factor is proof enough that most people want a shortcut to fame no matter what their talent.

I have found YouWriteOn to host some great writing actually, but how an influx of thousands of unedited works will end up baffles me.
 
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gothicangel

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Considering it costs a publisher £20,000 to launch a new writer; I'm astounded that people are happy to publish their books 'on the cheap.'

I did laugh at the 'publishing standards' line. What? You mean the screening; editing; illustrators working on the jacket; pre-publication publicity . . . (I could go on forever!)
 

priceless1

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"Ted is going to revolutionalise the industry".
Ach, if I had a dime for every time I've heard vanity and POD presses say this, I'd own the Bahamas. How you can claim the ability to revolutionize anything on a severely limited budget and no experience is hubris. This should be a huge red flag to any author who sees this on a publisher's website.
 

gothicangel

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Now members are encouraging others to flame message boards like Writers' News.

Couldn't help having a bit of fun: one member claims to be 'properly' published by Raider Publishing International. Could help popping that one (another vanity publisher.)
 

petec

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Now members are encouraging others to flame message boards like Writers' News.
Gothic where did you get that info?
If it was not so sad it could be interesting to see how they fare