Under 'Your Experience' on the WW homepage members can let the team know if publishers they contact are helpful or not.
I used this facility once a long time ago, and the publisher concerned has just seen it and is unhappy about what I wrote. At the time of writing I did feel some unease about it because it may have only been me who recieved this treatment from them, not other writers,.. you know, a fluke thing?

I wondered what people thought about the idea of WW having a page, if it's simple enough to set up and manage, in which different publishers are rated in terms of our combined experiences of them. That way if an unfortunate 'mistake' is made with one or two writers, but the majority had a good experience with them, it would reflect on them more fairly.
WW has got legs now, people are noticing us and what we write about publishers could well have clout.
There are other sites that have a similar function such as 'Predators and Editors', and Ralan's Webstravaganza, recently re-designed, that functions as a market tracker and has a page on response times of publishers. (Spicy Green Iguana is a useful site as well for Shorts writers by the way).
What do you think?
Becca.

Great idea. Although (donning my hat of impervious cynicism) opening up any area for public feedback on publishers opens it up to moles. The more 'noticed' this community is, the more likely we are to see plants from publishers dropping in to tell us how helpful and swift their experience was with publishers *a*, while publishers *b* aren't worth the time of day. Depends of course on having enough actual public feedback to dilute the plant activity, but ultimately such ratings are difficult to trust.

Do you think 'moles' are really going to bother- is it worth their while? I think on the whole, there is a huge benefit from keeping tabs on publishers, magazines etc in this way- it might help them stick to their own guidelines, and people have said genuine good things so far as well as bad.

If I ran a publishing house, I would be sure to have a dedicated PR office handling all forms of advertisement. The most effective of which is word of mouth, and that can be manipulated as detailed above. Perhaps I'm just too cynical and devious, but it seems an obvious opportunity to boost your profile without making the effort to actually provide a decent service.

I'm not saying that this is a bad idea, merely that it should be monitored closely if it is to be effective.

Well the only thing you need is just a layout that WW members can access and use, it'd work if enough of us are contacting the same people, and I get the impression that our writers send a awful lot of stuff out there.
Becca.

I think this is pretty much Directory territory- it seems to me it would be ideal there- and while I wouldn't dare to accuse IB or anyone of cynicism, it's more that I don't think publishers would bother- if they're legit they certainly wouldn't, and if they're dodgy, we'd get enough 'don't touch these' emails to know, no? anyway, as Becca says, there are so many WW-ers sending out all the time that this is an excellent way to start 'grading' people.

By the way, I should point out that the publisher Becca refers to are currently investigating her complaint and hopefully we will be able to let people know how that is resolved, so it is useful doing this stuff.

Yes, I'll be letting people know how it was resolved.
Becca.

I think this is a good idea in principle. Regarding moles, yes they are a possibility but they should be easy to spot thanks to the WW rating system. Genuine WWs should have a reasonable rating and it will be obvious from looking at their record page if they have uploaded work and contributed to forums and commented on others work etc.

In other words you will have to form a value judgement on how much weight you give to an individual comment based on the sunmitter's record. This is a bit like the ebay rating system where you can see how "trusted" a given buyer or seller is.

Simon

I think I contributed to 'Your Experience' a couple of times when I first started submitting my work to Agents and sent Richard feedback on their response. I have to admit that I did it on the assumption that my comment/feedback would be considered along with any other comments/feedback from other members (if any) and then a description incorporating all those comments (to give a balanced and fair judgment) added under the Agent's listing. I suppose if only one comment comes in (maybe that was the case in Becca's publisher) then there really isn't much choice except to provide that sole comment/experience. I think it's great that in this instance the publisher in question wants to 'investigate' and maybe put right whatever it is they are objecting to - but I think caution should've been and should be taken (in the interest of both writers and publishers/agents) when these comments - whether good or bad - are put together and used.

The final experience I did have with the publisher after she discovered my comment about them on WW, was one in which I reassured her and told her to keep up the good work,(because the mag in good, and long standing), and one in which she apologised for what had happened. Fair enough. I did say there were plenty of publishers out there, though, so what could it matter to me 3 years after the event.
Becca.

This could be a valuable tool. The only thing I'd suggest is that people's experiences are relayed as objectively as possible, e.g. date ms sent in; date replied to; actual comments made, etc. I've seen entries on the forums here where people express extremes of positivity or negativity at a response they've had, then when you look closer at what the publisher actually said, you realise it's simply a standard reply at a standard time interval.

Terry

Terry,
yes, that's the only way to make it work fairly all round, to have a straightforward, objective, no emotions list.
Happy C.
Becca.