Thread 26 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL

Please see the OP of Thread 25 for all the links to The Observer's reporting and podcast series, our threads one to 24 and so on.

After 25,000 posts there are still new things to discuss:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so.

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items before posting. The Observer's excellent podcast series The Walkers (link in Thread 25) covers most things.
To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea: please do not engage with drive-by scolders who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. For over 8 months we have done amazingly well together for 25 very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

As ever, as we embark on our 26th thread riding the community charabanc, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5485730-thread-25-to-feel-disappointed-and-disgusted-and-vindicated-now-too-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

They should, now that it has been pointed out clearly, admit that the prize was awarded by mistake and that TSP should not have been an entry. Something, anything to show that they care about this, that it matters.

“When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it’s true, then everyone else will follow.”

Are you convinced?

The truth behind global bestseller The Salt Path is explored in new BBC Sounds podcast

I think it's difficult when the drama arises at such a remove of time. If we delved back into the history of many 'prize winning' and award winning books there may well be questions and eyebrows raised, but really, once the award is awarded and the year is over, the kudos dies down and it becomes less of a 'thing'.

I am still convinced that it ought to be made more public (and this was why I was so glad that the 'This Much Is True Crime' boys made a big thing of it), because I don't think it's physically possible to remove the prize money from Sal, and they won't go back and rejudge the competition but removing the award means that you lose a lot of publicity for the shortlist too, so it might (although unlikely) impact the other shortlisters.

But I do think they should take the 'prize winning' accolade off the books still for sale, make a statement about the award being in doubt because of eligibility and just generally make it more public that she entered under false pretences.

Yes, I completely agree.
It is current news however that this was not her first book and that it was not self published, so now is the best time to act on it and a statement acknowledging the error in which it was entered, rather than just saying that the rules were different then anyway, because that does not address the issue or make any amends. Of course the error was caused by Sal not being honest in the first place but she’s not going to do the right thing by donating her prize money to a CBD charity or the SWCP association or the homeless charities in the south west. She will keep her faux awards on her website too but I don’t see why her bio on Penguin should reference them. Those accolades on the book covers should definitely disappear as you so rightly say, if they are going to continue publishing this rubbish.

Absolutely. They don't have to go to the extent of shouting about the prize being withdrawn, just make it plain and obvious that it was wrongly awarded.

The whole 'previously self published' not being explicit on the CB entry is negated by Sal and Tim having started their own publishing company, and this SHOULD have been double checked with the awards committee. The fact that she didn't means that she thought if she just kept quiet about it, nobody would ever find out and that is a whole different ballgame from 'oh, we thought self publishing didn't count'. Because it didn't count as self published - that is easy to do without having to set up a company to do it.

I bet they hoped that 'Gangani' would have so many submissions it would make them a fortune. Right up until they realised what 'publishing a book' actually entails.

I wonder though whether they could make it into good publicity for them. I think that's where I would go. It would generate publicity, they've just got to make it positive.

Say how important it is that integrity is upheld because that is so important to them. Maybe do something like put back into the arena those that were shortlisted that way - have a public vote and a publicity filled extra prize giving.

It would hit the headlines and they could use the publicity to promote both themselves and the prize winners. They could make it a positive thing for themselves rather than a negative thing - they could even make out that they were sure Salray just hadn't realised that her first book hadn't counted and look gracious over that.

Heck, if Salray then donated the money back for the alternative prize winner then even she could come out looking not quite as bad.

Is there any evidence that Gangani was ever intended to do more than publish HNTDDD and handle the 'house raffle', though? I mean, were they ever actually starting a commercial publishing company?

Oh I doubt very much that they intended to publish anything else. However, it does beg the question - why start a whole publishing house rather than just self publish? There's far more money involved (well maybe not LOTS, I've never started a business but some) in starting a registered business and having all the paperwork. I'd guess they started Gangani to hide the whole real reason for having the 'raffle' and to make it look more official. But they could have self published without any of the bells and whistles.

And if they had had a wider reach and HNTDDD had taken off, I bet they would have published more books - probably all written by Sal under various names.

Yes, that's what I've wondered, why the faff of starting a publishing company rather than self-publishing?

Purely so they could say 'Here, buy a copy of this book, the inaugural publication of Gangani Publishing by exciting new author Izzy Wynn-Thomas, and enter a draw to win a house!' rather than 'Here, buy a copy of my self-published debut novel, which I have given the worst title in the long and inglorious history of terrible self-published novel titles, and enter a dubious-sounding raffle'?

Though I'm loving the idea of SW providing the entire output of Gangani, busily writing romantic fiction as Cressida Pettifer Feelyborough, police procedurals as Dirk T. Donegan, fantasy as Arianwen Lafontaine etc.

Do you suppose they would all contain 'pure souls', conniving businessmen, silver haired sex-gods, comedy ceilidhs, enigmatic encounters of lasagne, and lots of purple prose about nature, and her weird stylistic tic of rhetorical questions grouped in threes etc?

I think every single book would feature house loss, theft, long distance walking, various shenanigans, all perpetrated by people whose names seem to be unlikely anagrams of 'Sal and Tim'.

She can only write one storyline. This is why LL and TWS are strained to the limit. I'm almost curious about the contents of OWH, because she ran out of ideas two and a half books ago.

Yes, I will be fascinated to see how she wrings out the bone-dry dishcloth of her inspiration still further in OWH, if it ever happens!

If Jane Austen described her own fictional territory as 'a little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory', SW's is more like a version of one of those medieval theological wrangles about how many angels, or silver-haired cravat-wearers, you can fit on the head of a pin...

Absolutely, I think the company was set up as merely a front to seem official and legit. Cast one's mind back to what was written on the Accidental Smallholders forum by SalTim...something about it being a genuine, legal raffle. And iirc also a similar thing was written on the Gangani website. To me that suggests, counterintuitively on their part, they were worried about being perceived as not genuine and thus compensating for that fact in these statements. Forming a company and creating a fake author and company staff was a shield for SalTim to hide behind.

@YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree

'Forming a company and creating a fake author and company staff was a shield for SalTim to hide behind.'

And this is where I feel that they really shot themselves in the foot regarding the CB prize. I can just about believe that someone might seriously have believed that a totally self published book was a 'nothing' and could be disregarded. But a book published by a company - even if that company was set up by the author and their husband - that ought at least to have been worth an email to check eligibiity. Because either they considered it self-publishing (in which case it casts huge doubt on the legality of the whole 'raffle' thing) or it was properly published by a (very very small) indie publisher (in which case it was DEFINITELY ineligible for the CB prize).

Damn - now I need to go for ANOTHER lie down....

Perhaps the thinking was that, in The Unlikely Event of the raffle not being a roaring success (people asking for refunds, legal dilifficulties, or whatever), Gangani could be wound up and disappear. SW and TW could say "don't contact us, your dealings were with Gangani" (and possibly even repeat the statement that Gangani were merely "friends" of theirs, though that second bit wouldn't be very persuasive to anyone who knew to look on Companies House).

I think 'Gangani' was certainly a way of 'distancing' themselves from the process. Sal is very prone to that - witness her perpetual slipping into the passive voice and also using 'we' when she means 'I'. It's all her way of keeping everything at arm's length.

Oh yes, and the 'This Much is True Crime' podcast also points out that her constant changes of name point to problems with taking responsibility and wanting to run away from problems.

Not entirely convinced that this is the case here, pen names aren't completely unknown for authors, but the fact that she's had TWO pen names rather than just pick one and stick to it does indicate that she likes changing identity rather too often (or trying to hide from creditors, of course).

They had no intention of honouring a true raffle winner and would have rigged it for themselves. The realisation that they wouldn’t be able to get away with it was the reason they didn’t just sell raffle tickets for one pound and why they went to the trouble of writing a book, setting up a publishing company, using fake names and then supposedly withdrawing and refunding money, or said they had. It was a lie about putting copies into the local bookshop. They wanted control and anonymity at all times. If they put half as much effort into earning a living legitimately!

Everything about HNTDDD waa completely amateurish, from conception to execution. To coin a sordid colloquialism, Raymoth couldn't have organised a piss up in a brewery.

4 years later (when Sal's IG account goes live within 24 hrs of GMC's) we have a different playbook. A slick marketing campaign orchestrated by experienced pros which happens to coincide with a once in a lifetime event (Covid) when people are locked down and desperately looking for inspiration. Up pops TSP and, as the old saying goes, the rest is history.

Literary merit doesn't play a large role in this story imo. Being in the right place at the right time does.

I read TSP during lockdown and bought into the zeitgeist. It was a feel good book at a time when my critical reasoning powers were diminished.

To my eternal shame and embarassment I was hoodwinked into believing it was all true as advertised by PRH.

Re: BBC podcasts…. As an aside (if anyone is interested), I have had a couple of long car journeys recently and have been listening to the ‘Lady Swindlers’ series with Lucy Worsley. Highly recommend it!

Unfortunately most of the cases (all true) are historic eg Victorian and Edwardian era, but if the series producers ever decide to do some more contemporaneous cases, then we could probably put forward a suggestion…?!

I think Sal would probably love the notoriety! She is, after all, laughing all the way to the bank.

With regard to setting up the business, it's fairly easy to do and the paperwork isn't that extensive. Having a limited company also places a distance between the director's personal finances and any legal claims against the company. I had a side job of gardening and to avoid risking losing my house if I did something silly like hit a gas main or basically anything that I could be sued, I made a limited company. They would also have potentially been able to use it to 'claim expenses' avoiding paying tax on day to day items. Just a thought. Nice to actually contribute to the thread again!

Nice to see you back, Quirky!

Yes, I think I suspect that the 'business' was to put distance from their finances (which sound totally disastrous), but the fact that it was publishing and therefore not really liable to create a huge liability insurance claim (except from irate purchasers of HNTDDD) means it was unnecessary, unless there were likely to be a lot of claims made.

So did they start Gangani simply so they personally wouldn't be liable for people asking for their money back or trying to raise legal issues about the lottery? Because that implies a whole other layer of deceit, as if they already suspected that there might be legal problems.

One possible angle on the lottery / Gangani (there may be others):

IIRC, the charges on the cottage were a few hundred thousand pounds and the book price was about a tenner. (The Walkers would not receive the full tenner, because there would be some overheads eg printing costs, shipping costs, any booksellers' margins.) So they would have had to sell (at least) tens of thousands of copies just to cover the charges - round it down to 10,000 for the sake of example.* (And presumably they were hoping to do more than merely cover the charges and leave themselves homeless and with no equity.)

Say they were to come to the decision that "it was never going to work", and abandon the lottery, after selling 9,000 copies. That would potentially entail 9,000 people being entitled to a refund (of their full tenner - more than Gangani had actually received) and/or compaining. In that situation, it would be easier to wind up a company than have cross customers hammering on the door and having to hide from them under the stairs.

*PS: This ignores tax. Presumably VAT would need to be paid on the books (taking about £2 from the tenner). And other taxes would have to be paid by someone (the company and/or the individuals) on any profits made and/or money taken out of the company. I don't know how that affects the analysis, except that it means they needed to sell even more books to cover or exceed the charges.

Presumably VAT would need to be paid on the books (taking about £2 from the tenner).

In the UK books are zero rated for VAT which means none is payable on sale. This also means that if Gagani was registered for VAT they would be a net VAT recipient as they could reclaim all VAT paid on goods & services bought by the company.

@PrettyDamnCosmic : Quite right - good point. Sorry for overlooking that.