YouWriteOn.com / New Generation Publishing / Legend Press

Good morning or afternoon. Hmm, it was more an attempt to lighten the mood up. We don't tend to take ourselves too seriously. I don't really get much time to spend on other sites as I am so busy with YouWriteOn, but when I find some time away from business I will pop back in to answer your question. We've got a bank holiday here in the UK, which is a nice 3 day weekend for us, hopefully without the famed rain. I hope you all also have a good weekend and get down to some good books.

So ... you had enough time to post to tell us that you don't have enough time to post.

Interesting.

We will come back to it mscelina, and give a considered response. Just one more thing however, as Columbo used to say,

For those who like historical and literary fiction. I will leave you for the time being with our Book of the Year Award adult fiction winner as an example of writers developing on site. It's a good story to read over the bank holiday and gives a practical example of work on site. Currently the writer is working with editors at Christopher Little after we referred her there. We profit not at all, except from we hope the writer gets the success she deserves. Smoke Portrait Ta ta for now.

Not enough time to tell us who their distributer is and produce a rough number, but enough time to plug and link to several of their books?

Am I the only one who feels like that's the answer right there?

Momento Mori, the last thing you can expect is a direct answer to a direct question. Believe me, I know that from personal experience.

Victoria, I'm afraid that personal attack is a typical approach - especially if anyone has the temerity to ask akward questions.

YouWriteOn said:

We will come back to it mscelina, and give a considered response.

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I do hope you will.

I have to say I'm disappointed that, having invested a fair bit of time in expressing your concerns about Absolute Write, you now feel you're too busy to answer the concerns of AW members.

- Victoria

I've noted almost every post is an ad.

I have nothing against people plugging their stuff in their sig block or their avatar, but when my newest short story is published at the end of this month, I'll be posting something in the Bragatorium or maybe the Self-promotion areas and not clutter up threads.

Obviously, not everyone shares my reticence. *grin*

I think it's fairly well apparent that YWO doesn't have time to address concerns that are not related to his ultimate purpose here--which is broken down into two categories (1) the whole Amazon fiasco and (2) plugging books. *shrug* I suppose that anything outside those agendas is not worthy of notice, ergo the glib dismissal with talk of the bank holiday. Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

YouWriteOn, I hope that you do come back to answer what are really very straightforward questions, not least because as a UK citizen, I'd like to believe that the Arts Council is allocating public money to those prepared to respond to honest questions.

MM

Hello Momento, apologies that we couldn't get to your question yesterday. It was a busy work day and my pop-in was during a spare moment having a sandwich. We were putting together Random House's first feedback on the YouWriteOn's monthly Top Ten Chart, and also another agent had contacted us wishing to get involved with the site, which we were rather excited about and keen to get to work on.

I'll resist from further talk of the bank holiday (except to say we have a nice spot of weather, though a cloud or two is apparently expected from the West Europe Basin).

In answer to the question of writers that we have helped to assist, we've assisted writers to get representation and/or editorial help from agencies and publishers such as Christoper Little, Conville and Walsh, Random House and Orion. We try to help where we can, and site writers play the main part in the peer review process by developing their writing and feeding back to others. Some writers we hear from regularly, others less often, or when they've got some news.

For example, the work is mainly day-to-day development and progression by the site's writers. Examples in the last couple of weeks include that we heard from a regular writer that Walker Books, who publish writers such as Anthony Horowitz, had contacted them after seeing their story in the YouWriteOn Top Ten charts wanting to see their full novel; and from a writer who hadn't been in touch with us for us for over a year to inform us that he'd managed to get his book into his local Waterstones, the UK's largest book chain, and wanted to thank site members for helping him to develop his work. Another regular writer informed us that he was one of six writers awarded to be on a Arts Council funded writing apprenticeship scheme, and we saw from the list that one of the the six was a site member who we haven't heard from as yet. Another member who we hadn't heard from for a long time informed us they had published their novel with a review by renowned UK writer Will Self. Sometimes we don't hear from members direct, sometimes we hear from agents who are looking at them. It tends to be like that, successes and works in development on site and elsewhere, and writers who are progressing their writing.

Many of the site's stories are works in progress/ still developing. Our member's biggest achievements are through our annual Book of the Year Awards, examples from our inaugural Book Awards in 2007 include:

• Finalist Doug Jackson with Caligula, achieving a six figure deal with Random House, due to be published in July. He kindly credited members and a critique from one of our editors who works for Orion as helping him achieve his publishing success
• Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London by Keith Mansfield which achieved a 3 book deal with Quercus, publisher of books such as The Tenderness of Wolves
• Children's book winner Bob Burke's The Third Pig Detective Agency, formerly picked up by Scott Pack at the Friday Project, and now with Harper Collins, publisher of writers such as Ruth Rendell, also kindly dropping by to thank members for helping him to develop his story
• Bufflehead Sisters by Patricia J. DeLois which we published ourselves, now with a literary agent and discussing a 2 book deal with a leading publisher
• Finalist Bob Lock's Flames of Herakleitos, which we were informed was in the running for the Welsh Book of the Year

For Legend Press, the distribution is through normal POD distribution channels that Lulu et al use. Like with Lulu, it's a service that members may decide to use as they wish, or decide it's not for them.


Essentially we're a feedback site, we can't guarantee writers success, but our work is largely about helping writers to progress further in steps, we try to assist where we can. Below is some industry feedback on YouWriteOn, which I think can be applied in general to critique sites with a good membership who provide constructive feedback, and experienced literary professionals, not just us.

Senior Orion editor: "On YouWriteOn, the standard of work is much higher than on the slush pile. A piece of work has been through its paces several times. It may have been seen by an editor and rewritten. It's an evolutionary process; writing takes commitment and hard work."

Usually writers will find out on site if they will get a review from an editor working for publishers such as Bloomsbury or Orion within 4 to 8 weeks. We don't claim to provide a magic button to helping writers achieve publishing success, writing is hard work, and site writers really work at it. We consider peer and professional feedback does definitely help with development, and get highly rated writers consideration by the industry. I hope this provides you with some fuller information about what we do. Have a good Saturday.

Ted

YouWriteOn is currently offering to publish the first 5,000 writers to contact it for free.
More details here.

I've seen it discussed on a couple of on-line writing groups that I belong to and am pretty horrified by it, not least because there doesn't appear to be any warning about how going down this route could actually hurt an author's chances of getting that book picked up by a commercial publisher. In fact, it's going out of its way to suggest that this can help a writer get a publishing deal based on one example with the Bufflehead Sisters.

The kicker is that anyone entering will have to pay if they want their book made available to order through bookstores, which is still no guarantee of sales.

MM

Yep, YWO is promising to publish 5,000 (five thousand!) books by Christmas 2008. Submissions via email. No editing, design, layout or ISBNs offered: for an extra fee of £39.95 you get an ISBN which Legend Press (YWO's publisher) will register for you with various online sites (without that fee, your book will only be available via Legend's website). I thought that all ISBNs were automatically noticed by Neilsen BookScan (sp?), but if I'm right Legend is going to make sure that that automated service is performed.

Just this evening I posted a message over on YWO's message board, warning people away from the deal (my username there is HPRW, if anyone's interested). I have quite a few blog-readers who also belong to YWO, so I hope they'll pay some attention to me.

There is far too much stuff about this deal that's not been disclosed, as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't recommend this to anyone: not if I cared about my work.

Having monitored the YWO boards for a while, it seems to me that many of the message-board posters have moved on to Authonomy. Which is at least run by publishing professionals, and doesn't offer vanity publishing as an option.

The idea of 5,000 books, with no quality control whatsover, being published between now and Christmas is scary. All it takes is a 50 word synopsis to get a contract and notification that your book is accepted for publication.

I'm also concerned about a mass email onslaught (not confined to YWO members) offering the supposedly free publishing of that number of books.

The Arts Council of England has poured literally thousands of pounds into YWO, and I feel that a scheme funded by public money should be above spamming for commercial gain.


I might add that Harper Collins Authonomy members have complained that they have received emails from YWO inviting them to join.

A few weeks ago I searched the Arts Council website and eventually found that YWO had received over £63,000 from the AC since it started.

I have grave reservations about the Arts Council funding an organisation that offers a vanity publishing service.

I have spoken to the Arts Council about this, but as the people I spoke to were not involved in publishing I don't think they realised the significance. I know a few other people have written, to point out the obvious: I'd suggest that everyone else who cares does the same.

Old Hack said:

Yep, YWO is promising to publish 5,000 (five thousand!) books by Christmas 2008. Submissions via email. No editing, design, layout or ISBNs offered: for an extra fee of £39.95 you get an ISBN which Legend Press (YWO's publisher) will register for you with various online sites (without that fee, your book will only be available via Legend's website). I thought that all ISBNs were automatically noticed by Neilsen BookScan (sp?), but if I'm right Legend is going to make sure that that automated service is performed.

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I've made announcements about this on some of the site I belong to as well, Hackie. In my mind, this ridiculous offer is accomplishing one goal - to make Legend Press some nice cash flow. I urge writers not to help make this guy rich. One look at the Legend Press site should be enough to convince anyone.

Actually, if anyone wants to pay £39.99 for one ISBN they have to contact YouWriteOn@legendpress. As ISBNs can be bought for £517 per thousand, and it is YWO that is claiming to be the publisher, methinks the huge profit goes in that direction. Books without an ISBN are to be available from YWO, not Legend Press.

So far, the cost YWO will charge for each book has not been made known, but it is assumed that all those writers expecting to have their books in hand by Christmas will be paying whatever it costs for presents to give their friends and family.

I've worked as an editor for a real, commercial publisher. I've edited books for HarperCollins, Chronicle Books, and several other houses. I know what it takes to edit a book.

In addition, I’ve put together a couple of anthologies through Lulu and each one took me at least a couple of hours to get right: even then, I ended up with errors in the layout and design. It takes time to get the title and author’s name aligned correctly on the cover and the spine; to get the cover art in place; to stream the text in properly; to check that there are no widows and orphans; to check that the internal titles and headings have appeared as you intended. Even if all books are submitted to YWO/Legend as PDF files (and how many of us own PDF editing software?), errors will still creep in and need to be rectified.

YWO is proposing to put 5,000 books through a similar process in time for Christmas: as the deadline for submissions is October 31, they’ll have about six weeks to get all the work done--four weeks in November, and two in December. They're going to have to process 830 books per week at that rate, or 167 every working day. Let’s say they’re much better than I am at this, and can process one book in just 30 minutes (and at that rate, they’re not going to have any time left to check for errors): one person, working an eight-hour day, with one hour off for lunch, coffee and comfort breaks (I love that phrase), will be able to process 14 books a day, or 420 books in the six weeks. There’s no way Ted will be able to download 5,000 books alone in the time available. So he's going to have to hire people in to do this for him: if they also can download 14 books a day, he’ll need to hire in eleven people (I’m assuming that he’ll be working alongside them), working full-time, in the run-up to Christmas, with no time allowed for error-checking or quality-control, in order to get these books to print. That’s an awful lot of work that he’ll be doing for free.

However, if people take the £39.95 option then, at around 50p per ISBN, and the UK's minimum wage of £5.52 per hour, assuming all the hired help downloads the books at the unlikely rate of two per hour, YWO will be making £73.38 per hour, which is a much more appealing proposition. At least for the people who will be keeping the cash. For the authors of the books concerned, I think it's going to lead to disappointment and the loss of the first publication rights to their books (and for why that's a much greater loss than might first appear, I'd suggest you read Priceless1's views on the subject--if you go to my blog here, you'll find a trail that will lead you to the right place).

As someone who flirted with the idea of accepting their offer (but only for five minutes) I thank you all for your input.

As someone who, as some of you may remember, got seriously burned fingers from that other encounter with Libros International, you would have expected me to know better than to even contemplate that route.

So I live to write another day which means keeping on believing that sometime a bona fide agent will pick up my work because they like it.

Old Hack:
I searched the Arts Council website and eventually found that YWO had received over £63,000 from the AC since it started.

I have grave reservations about the Arts Council funding an organisation that offers a vanity publishing service.

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Apparently the Arts Council funding is solely in respect of the peer review forums and they don't appear to be familiar with the self-publishing arm of the site (not that the YWO site itself gives people that impression).

I was particularly sickened to see this "offer" get a small plug in the Book Review section of The Times on Saturday. You'd think that someone there would have spent a little time researching it.

MM

It got a positive mention in the Telegraph too

Momento Mori said:

I was particularly sickened to see this "offer" get a small plug in the Book Review section of The Times on Saturday. You'd think that someone there would have spent a little time researching it.

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It was discussed at the Southern California Writer's Conference this weekend, and I was all too happy to explain this "deal" to the folks sitting in on my seminar.

I've posted about it on a couple of writing forums today, linking people to Victoria's blog post. I shall do more. This makes me MAD.

I've just cobbled together a blog post about this, which will go up tomorrow morning at 9AM GMT. If anyone wants to quote it in full or in part on their blog they're welcome to, so long as they link back to my original post.

Link to my blog post about YWO.

- Victoria

Lovely post, Victoria. I've linked to it in my blog post, and at a couple of writers' forums here in the UK.