http://www.claire-king.com/2010/12/03/too-good-to-be-true/

Emma

Cripes, I was planning to enter the competition run by the same outfit, think I'll give it a miss after this. Had my doubts, as they are not upfront about how the prize money is divided up, this has decided me.

Thanks, Emma.

Jan

There is something deeply unsavoury about the way Brit Writers is run. I know they have links with above-board organisations but the whole thing stinks. Not saying it's intentionally dodgy. Just feels like a beer fest set up by teetollaers. No idea how to go about the basics and no respect whatsoever for authors.

I've read somewhere on here that they've also done away with a final date for entries to their competition, the cut-off point is now 20,000 entries, whenever that happens. I wonder if the cheques for 'late' entries will be destroyed or cashed anyway? I think I know what my bet would be.

Jan

Very strange. Vanity publishing by another name? What's your take on it, Emma?

Somewhere between vanity publishing and a very expensive self-publishing service. But the promise of publicity etc. pushes it towards vanity, I'd say.

If their competition last year is anything to go by, they're not very good at delivering what they promise. And promising the earth in return for lots of money is the classic mark of a vanity publisher.

I suspect, though, that they're terribly naive. Apparently they've now capped the number of MS they'll look at. I could have told them they had no idea just how many they'd get.

Emma

Had a quick look around all this and my head is hurting now - which I suspect is part of the intention: throw enough promises and flashy webpages at poor, confused authors and they'll sign up, if only in the hope it will all become clearer later.

The Brit Writer Awards looks fishy. Last year's winner appears to have self-published her book originally. After she won, it was published by a company called 'Infinite Ideas', but they seem to be mostly into business books; the only children's books they do are hers. Also, they offer a self-publishing service, which is not exactly what you expect from a 'top' publisher.

So, if their overall winner only gets a deal with a minor not-really-a children's publisher, you have to wonder what the 15 authors they are going to 'guarantee' publication for will get. Well, probably the same publisher.

I just can't imagine any genuine top publisher ever agreeing to publish a book unseen. From their point of view, the £1,795 is totally irrelevant. But it isn't to the author, of course. Besides, surely a lot of those things they say they'll provide are what a top publisher would provide anyway, e.g. 'production of the book and cover design'. Sounds much more like they're simply offering what Infinite Ideas offer for their self-publishing deal.

All in all, the Award and this 'offer' look like a scam to make money out of self-publishing services. There may well be a case here for Trading Standards. The key for illegal scamming is that the service-provider shouldn't promise something they can't actually deliver; and I would have thought 'Guaranteed to get your work published with a top publisher within 12 months' is undeliverable.

Also, as Claire King points out, 'completed fiction novels'? And these are the guys who are going to edit your book?

As for the entry fee: okay, £10.95 isn't much in itself. But they're only looking at the synopsis and first three chapters; and if that's just to select/reject for the next stage, they can do most ms in seconds (there's nothing I saw that says you get anything else for your money). If they've had 20,000 entries, that's getting on for £220,000, which is a nice little earner.

Terry

Good point about the reading fees, Terry - I wimped out of fighting my way that far into the T&Cs.

Of course they can offer a 'refund' if they don't get the contract. You wonder if they have any interest in trying to get that contract for the 'winners'. After all, they've made the money by then...

Emma, there's that old saying we all know, about how money should always flow to the writer. I guess the scammers are just finding new ways to stretch the exceptions to this rule. Those exceptions being where the writer pays for legitimate courses, workshops, coaching, etc, towards helping him improve his skills. Any schemes that require him to pay to be published should be well and truly avoided. So, a £10.95 reading fee doesn't sound like a scam, but essentially it's still a non-learning cost on the promise or hope of publication, and it contributes to a very large overall sum.

Not that this is always a clear-cut area. I still can't make up my mind, for instance, about short story magazines that charge an entry fee, or competitions which do the same. Normally, I avoid them but there are some heavyweight and respected institutions like Glimmertrain which charges an eighteen dollar reading fee.

Terry

Thanks Emma (and others). It's sad how many schemes are out there to take advantage of people's desire to be published.

A friend of mine was caught by a scheme which, to this day, I don't know if it was a scam or not, but I didn't like the sound of it! It purported to be a publisher putting together a short story anthology, but the publisher turned out to be a one-woman band, and marketing seemed to consist of those contributing to the anthology inviting their friends and family to the launch, for which we had to pay a fee, and then being persuaded to buy more than one copy (I bought only one, but they were pretty pushy). Additional sales only seemed to occur if any of the contributors managed to persuade a local outlet to take any copies - ie, nothing done by 'the company'.

It was basically a group self-publishing venture, but what I really disliked about it was that the woman who organised it was pretending to be a proper publisher and she wasn't honest with her contributors. Okay, so she did choose the entries, so there was some standard, but I don't know what % were chosen and rejected. And she did pay to get it printed, but presumably she'd worked out that she could make the money back from sales to the family and friends at the launch. A print on demand service would not have left her up a gum tree.

And she chose as the name of the 'publisher' the name of a real publisher, with whom she had no connection. All very dodgy IMO. If not an outright scam, at the very least playing on people's strong desire to get published.

Deb

I agree that it can be hard to tell - how high should the competition entry fee and how low the prize money before you should avoid it? And the decision isn't just about the amounts: I was asked by a worried new writer who'd been told they should never pay for anything, whether the entry fee for a certain hugely prestitigious pair of prizes for poetry and short fic, based in an arts centre in pretty bit of Dorset (Devon?) was a scam...

And the 'winner's' bill is serious money - all very well to say they'll refund, but what if they get you a crappy contract with a crappy self-publisher? There was a self-publishing outfit a while ago who offered prize of being published by them. I remember thinking at the time that it wasn't technically a scam - they didn't promise what they couldn't deliver - but even so and the 'winners' were terribly disappointed by how much they didn't get, that you'd expect from 'being published.'

Update here - Claire's had an answer (of sorts) from them:

http://www.claire-king.com/2010/12/03/too-good-to-be-true/

Emma

I got this email from BWA today too. I was tempted for a moment, until sanity (and a writing friend) brought clarity. All my internal alarms were blaring at the words 'guaranteed publication with a top publisher' and I sent off an email to them asking who this top publisher was, but (unsurprisingly) have not had an answer. I entered the Brit Writers Awards last year and will never do so again. The initial euphoria of getting through the first two stages of judging quickly died down when I realised that everybody I knew who'd entered had got through, including people who'd only just started writing. And the worst thing, from what I hear, is that the 'winner' of the whole thing arrived at the awards ceremony to find that her book had already been 'published' - without her knowledge. Don't like this set up. And I HATE the way everyone's jumping on the bandwaggon to 'assist' unpublished writers - BWA, Authonomy, YWO and The Faber Academy to name a few.
Susiex

It's a shame they weren't asked why writers are expected to pay such a huge sum upfront. Only self-/vanity publishing costs the author money. I'm not happy about the BWA as a whole, now, and wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. They seem to have come from nowhere and I think they'll disappear just as fast, possibly with a little prodding from Trading Standards or just when the stink gets round.

Jan

Emma, the place you refer to is in Dorset.

BWA's responses really have the whiff of spin about them. "Top publisher' has now become “The BWA works with a number of traditional publishers and many imprints. This will not be a self-publishing route.” Which is one way of avoiding naming names, I suppose. I'd also like to know what they mean by 'work with'. How many top publishes would work with such an operation? At the most, they may take a look at the winning books, but then they'd possibly do the same if the authors sent the books direct to them anyway.

Their answer to 2) makes no sense either. They're still claiming 12 months from the manuscript being complete (or even 'almost complete' but if they mean at their end, there will still be the publisher's editing stage to go through; and even if they mean complete for the publisher, there aren't that many book that get out there within a year these days. In short, they can't possibly 'guarantee' 12 months.

The sad fact is, there are now many thousands of people trying to get published. Lots if not all of them have at least some money to spare on their dream. So it doesn't take an Arthur Daley to see the vast potential for 'helping' them.

Terry

I entered their competition last year and, like Susie, won't be doing so again. I also went to the awards dinner which was flash and naff and shambolic. I still can't decide if they are scammers or simply incompetent. Either way they are in the business of making money out of our dreams of publication. Distasteful for sure.