WIBU to tell a friend the truth about Little Riddlers/Young Writers

[QuestaVecchiaCasa]

Just seen a friend post on FB about her son's creative writing genius. I am wondering whether it would be kind to message her to let her know the truth about this vanity publishing s̶c̶a̶m̶ scheme?

Would you prefer to have known before you had shelled out for the expensive badly published book?

I've never heard of this scam/scheme. What exactly does it entail?

I can’t believe people actually fall for it. Our nursery sent round contracts, accompanied by a poem my then 3 year old had apparently written. When I contacted the manager to say we weren’t prepared for it to be published as it wasn’t his work, her response was ‘as I understand the children write them thenselves’. Someone is making a lot of money from this! I’d tell.

The variant we had was a pre written schmalzy poem with a few gaps in it which the child had been asked to fill in.

Our neighbours were new comers from a war torn country and their dc despite having very little english managed to get rather elaborate poems published. The teacher was really bigging this up and the parents were so delighted and made a party for the achievement. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the majority of the class had 'achieved' this or that it was not an indicator that their dc would get a place in oxford like they thought.

The Young Writers company gets schools to enter children into a "competition" and surprise surprise "high achieving" children's writing is r̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶e̶d̶ chosen to be published (provided the parents pay a fee of c£15.00 per book).

In that case, I would try and have a discrete word with your friend.

You don't pay a fee to be published, my DD had a poem published in this too, all in her class did, she was chuffed it is what it is, I didn't feel the need to buy the book, the publisher sent a specially printed copy to my DD.

I saw rather a lot of "so proud of my DC getting published!!" on fb a couple of months ago... They ALL get published ffs! I bought DD one of the books last year, reduced, because I think it'll be nice for her to have one to keep- but she knows very well that everyone that submitted something was published. I didn't buy this years!

There's a huge amount of money made by these schemes, and it's not good.

The schools could produce their own anthologies at a fraction of the cost.

They're horrendously overpriced. It's true that you're not strictly paying to be published, but as the publishers concerned make their money by selling to the authors, and their families, rather than selling the books to the general public they are vanity publishers.

If you know people at the school concerned tell them they can do it themselves for a much lower cost: they should look at Amazon's CreateSpace service, and at Lulu.com.

Oh I had a poem I wrote published in ‘spellbound’ when I was at school. Mum
Bought a copy of the book. Guess we were conned! Oh well, it was rather a good poem so nice to have it :-)

Definitely tell them. At some point they will be embarrassed when they find out its a scam.

My severely dyslexic son had his published aged 8 with not a spelling mistake in sight!! Hmm

Also you give up the copyright to the work too I think.

I didn't give permission to print or buy the book.

Well well well, a rather up herself smug cvnt on my FB was gushing about her son being published twice now.

I'd like to post a link to this thread but I won't, in the interest of family harmony.

I knew nothing about this scheme before this thread.

Holly no experience to share with you unfortunately, but good to see a DM reporter on here being so open and honest for a change!