Part 2
Point 2 from part 1: Building a strong support network plays a crucial role. Genuine support from your network proves essential through both highs and lows.
While it was charming for Liz to express gratitude to her supporters, it’s disheartening to see these businesses, individuals and groups capitalising on Liz’s success when they can see money making opportunities from her enterprise, only to disappear when challenges arise.
Entities like The Bookseller, BBC Local Radio Cambridge and Oxford, The Missing Bean, Gulp Books, Tap Social, London Book Fair, Oxford Literary Festival, The Society of Young Publishers (SYP) Oxford, her village of friends, her parents and adult children have remained notably silent.
Rather than allowing Liz’s business to collapse, they could unite, lifting Liz up and creating a community-driven enterprise—a true demonstration of feminism in action.
This emphasises the need for solidarity, support and empowerment in the Oxford and wider business community to:
1. Empower women entrepreneurs like Liz with equal opportunities.
2. Encourage women to cultivate supportive communities and collaborations.
3. Challenge stereotypes by highlighting the value of collaboration over self-reliance.
4. Amplify women’s voices, ensuring they aren’t left alone during challenging times.
Regrettably, when challenges arise for Liz, many consistently choose to stand back, allowing her to be criticised by those who disagree with her and to flounder along in the world, alone.
These individuals, along with the anonymous sycophants on various platforms, pose a more significant threat to Liz, as they refrain from encouraging her to think critically before acting.
None of these sycophants pointed out that her business model lacked robustness or that promoting a mere germ of an idea is poor practice.
When seeking funding, objectives, targets, timelines, submission guidelines, codes of practice, draft contracts and a clear payment model are essential. It remains unclear who should be compensating whom in this venture—Edgeway Press or the writers. Both models are viable in publishing, yet none of these concerns were addressed.
These individuals allowed Liz to venture blindly into a situation she couldn’t manage. Establishing a business is challenging under the best circumstances and it becomes nearly impossible when one lacks experience. Liz lacks experience.
Liz’s vulnerability is well-known to those around her, considering her fragile mental and physical health. She perpetually finds herself in conflict with someone or something.
Where was the supportive community, friends and family when Liz needed them most? Their presence was most crucial when she initially introduced an idea that came to her, quite literally, in the bath.
Where are they ever? No one should go to hospital alone. Spend their birthday alone. Liz requires a physical not virtual community to protect her from herself.
Although her mother may possess more physical fitness than most students, Liz needs her mother to be even stronger in empathy—one who sits down with her, offering the love and attention she so desperately craves, eliminating the need to seek it from strangers.
This really is a desperately sat situation.