I don't appreciate being told to get over myself when I am protecting the interests of my industry and of my children. It is wrong to tell children that this is "being published", and all other writers in education I have spoken to are in agreement with me on this.
The message I got back from the company is reproduced here, for fairness. Apart from removing names it is produced word-for-word. There are pieces of jaw-dropping arrogance in it, which I don't have time to comment on now - I shall come back and do so later.
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Dear [my name]
Thank you for your email.
I can assure you that the process of selecting poems is a highly subjective one. Each editor ensures that at least one or more of the following criteria is met when evaluating a poem, although as you can appreciate individual editors may have different preferences where themes and styles are concerned, so to maintain a level of fairness we feel poems should:
Show confident use of grammar and vocabulary
Offer an imaginative or fresh insight into a subject
Explore feelings and opinions
Be of interest to readers
Attempt creativity in discussion and description.
We also take into consideration the ages of the young writers, it cannot be anticipated that the work of a seven-year-old will equate to that of a ten-year-old, and we do not expect accomplished works of poetry from children so young. Also we take into account any learning difficulties we are made aware of. We read every single entry that is submitted to us, which over the course of a year can be over 100,000. We do not put every poem received into a book and thousands of children?s poems are returned during the academic year.
We endeavour to include as many children where possible; it is not an elitist competition as we feel this applies unnecessary and unfair pressure on children so young. We hope to be able to offer a lot of children places in our anthologies, as 16 years? experience editing primary school children?s poetry has taught us that they enjoy sharing their ideas and working together which very often leads to us receiving high numbers of poems based around the same themes and ideas. With this in mind we will not return any work on the basis that our acceptance figures may cause concern, as we would much rather justify our policies than go against our ethos of encouraging the reading, writing and enjoyment of poetry, that we have so often been told comes as a result of the children seeing their first works in print.
With regards to our book prices: the books are priced after taking in to account our overheads: editorial time, design time, free gifts and the actual cost of producing the book. The books we produce can contain anywhere between 100 to 300 pages of poems. The size depends on how many parents sign and return the permission form to us, so we are able to include the poems in the book. The book is a unique title, full of unknown children?s poetry, it usually contains their first published piece of work and has a personal value to the children published, as well as to their parents and school. The books are all ISBN registered, this means they have a barcode on the book so can be bought from a bookshop, such as Waterstones or online retailer such as Amazon.
Although all bookshops are aware of our titles very few stock them, therefore while the market for selling the books is so small, our books cost more to produce. If the book sold in its millions like a Harry Potter or a Jacqueline Wilson book, we could charge £5.99 for a book, as it would cost 2 or 3 pence to produce on that scale. The print run for the book [your daughter] has been accepted for is still to be confirmed, we can estimate at the average of 300 copies (of which many of these are free copies under the 3 for 2 offer and includes the complimentary copies for schools). We simply cannot afford to charge any less. This is also the reason why we cannot give free copies or pay all the children who are selected: it would financially ruin the company. However, we do give a free copy to every school who enters, so all the children involved have the chance to see their work. We will also award over £7,000 in prize money to pupils and schools. A national competition does take a while to judge, but the winners will start to be selected in approximately a year?s time. You do have to be in the final edition to be considered for a prize and winners are announced once they have been chosen.
Moving on to your concerns regarding our approach to encouraging parents to purchase our products, we do all we can to ensure that children can participate without any costs. We don?t charge entry fees, ordering isn?t a condition of publication, we provide free copies to all participating schools and we don?t use visual marketing for the book, such as flyers to avoid ?I want one of those Mum? situations. We appreciate parents feel under pressure to buy their child the latest toy or computer game, and pay for trips and clubs etc, and we feel we give them every opportunity to have their child included for the price of a stamp. We also address the letters to the parents so they have the choice whether to tell their child and whether to include them. I am sure you can agree we do not have an aggressive marketing campaign or hidden costs: you can purchase a book or not, if you don?t we?ll still include the poem if the consent form is signed. Finally all children published retain their own copyright, so they are free to have the work published elsewhere if they choose. In the Teacher Information, supplied with the competition pack to the schools it does clearly state that parents will be contacted by letter, asked to give permission and invited to order.
We do appreciate that parents may have questions upon receiving the letter, which is why in the correspondence we invite them to contact us directly with any questions or concerns. Our intention is never to upset or disappoint the children, neither to anger or frustrate the parents.
I hope this letter has answered your questions and eliminated your concerns. If you remain unsatisfied and do not wish [your daughter] to be included in the edition simply do not sign and return the permission form. A reminder form is automatically issued if there is no reply by a certain date, if you wish to have [your daughter]'s poem withdrawn now please let me know. (Please also provide your customer reference number, located on the orange copyright form.)
Yours sincerely etc.