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Leaf Books, Ltd. / Root Creations / The Leaf Writers' Magazine

Momento Mori

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I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has been published by Leaf Books. I know that they've got a link with the University of Glamorgan and they hold a number of competitions each year for short stories and poetry but they don't seem to have much of a distribution in place for their books (a few bookshops and coffee shops) and whilst first prize winners get cash and a copy of the final anthology, runners up just seem to get their choice of books previously published (nothing inherently wrong with that but I'd be interested to see what people think of it).

I'm not trying to slag off the operation, which is very open and seems to me to be genuinely dedicated to helping writers and promoting the short story, but it seems to be v. small in scope.
 
CaoPaux

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Now offering critique and self-publishing services (Root Creations).
 
HapiSofi

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Criminently Christmas. From the newsletter:
Through an error on my part I accidentally erased all files associated with Leaf Writers’ Magazine issue 5 and at that point we had not invested in a back-up solution to cover such a situation.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, in January 2012, within days of completing the task, started in June, of sorting through 6 years of Leaf’s records and computerised files the primary office computer suffered a catastrophic malfunction and everything – all of the organised files, the print-ready issue 5 of the magazine recreated from scratch, all of the Leaf and Deadstar work we’d done since June 2011 – was lost.

What’s worse is that we had looked into the cost of a networked back-up storage device the day before the computer failure and agreed within the team to purchase one.
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I've known organizations that have had serious data disasters: floods, servers catching fire, multiple hard drives failing in quick succession, a lightning strike that took out all the electronics in the building, et cetera.

That's not the same thing as "Our organization had talked about someday setting up an automated backup system, but we hadn't gotten around to it, and in the meantime we hadn't made partial or periodic backups of any of our data."

Did the first disaster with Issue #5 not teach them anything?
 
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LindaJeanne

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I'm amazed they made it FIVE FULL YEARS without the sort of data disaster that make backups a necessity.

I learned the importance of backups the hard way -- in the FOURTH GRADE (for those not familiar with the US school system: age 11). How do you stay in business for five years without backing up at least your most important files?

They weren't unlucky to lose the data now -- they were insanely lucky not to have lost it before now. You can only tempt fate so far.

Edited to add: a University in the town where I grew up had, in their computer lab, a mangled floppy disc -- yes I know this dates me -- stapled to a sign that read "This used to be someone's doctoral thesis. BACK UP YOUR WORK!"
 
HapiSofi

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I'd comment further on the matters discussed in their newsletter, but it's no longer accessible via the link we've been using, and it isn't listed as being among the contents of their newly revised website.
 
James D. Macdonald

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CaoPaux said:
Newsletter is up again: http://ymlp.com/zE0n5x

No further news/activity, however; on site or Tw/FB.
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That newsletter, dated April 2013, ends like this:

If, within three months, on inspection of the public reaction to this announcement and our financial situation, Leaf is found not to be sustainable or profitable for the future then I will start the process of winding things down – but I will ensure that anybody who has ordered a book, or a magazine, or has entered a competition will receive their money’s worth before that happens.
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Three months have come and gone.

I think we know how it all turned out.
 
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