Just the fax, ma'am

The following is a message sent to Premier Gordon Campbell, with copies to several members of his cabinet, as well as to my local MLA.

I hope you will do what you can to speak out about this horror.

To Premier Gordon Campbell:

This isn’t a matter of party lines. It’s a matter of promises made to the people of the province – promises broken and ground underfoot.

It’s a matter of commitments. And it’s a matter of tossing those commitments aside and delivering the message with a phone call that says you’re toast.

It’s a failure to live up to the groundwork that’s been laid over years, groundwork that has helped BC’s publishing industry grow into what it is today.

What used to be a faint western echo to publishing in Toronto has become a force to be reckoned with. Just look at the names of all those BC authors and publishers on the current list of finalists for prizes across the country, including the most esteemed of all, the Governor General’s Awards.

Government is quick to say that business is the basis of our economy. Publishing is a business, a business that represents our province in a powerful way. So, why should the agencies fostering and promoting this business have their funding yanked away?

The current situation is simply unacceptable.

Restore full funding to BC Bookworld, to the Association of Book Publishers of BC and to the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers. The work these groups do is vital to the health of the publishing industry in our province – and vital to the cause of literacy and to ensuring British Columbians can read the stories that matter most to us.

Heidi Greco

cc: Kit Krueger
Rich Coleman
Colin Hansen
Gordon Hogg

Further tales, hypocrisy squared

It's a hurry-up day, but I can't let it go by without venting about the latest round of government cuts to the arts.

This time, it's BC's publishing industry. This is an industry our premier has praised for its accomplishments on the provincial front, in the country, and on the world's stage.

One of the hardest hit is a magazine that's available to everyone in our province, as it's distributed in bookstores, and even on BC Ferries. BC Bookworld has been publishing for over 20 years. Its promotional service to BC readers, writers and publishers has served as an examplar to similar publications in other provinces.

But it's more than a magazine. It's affiliated with an online database of over 9,000 BC writers, a website that's accessed by users anywhere in the world.

Similarly, the Association of Publishers of BC has also had its operating budget slashed. It's always been a bare-bones operation, so it's difficult to imagine what might be left to cut. They've accomplished amazing feats; there's even a beta-version of digitalized BC books set to go online in January.

For a province that's poised to host the world for the 2010 Winter Olympics, it's looking as though their promises to showcase our cultural accomplishments (part of the basis of Vancouver's 'winning' the games) mean nothing.

Brags by our premier about the importance of literacy mean little in the face of such contradictory behaviours.

You can bet there'll be more to come on this topic. But for more information, follow the publishers' alliance here.

Publishing, the perils of

This morning I met with a man who is serious about wanting to get published. He’s 83 and frankly admits to feeling a certain urgency.

Sadly, his desire has led him into a deal with a publisher who’s not as squeaky-scrupulous as we’d like the world to be.

We talked about what he’d done and what he’d committed to by signing their more-complicated-than-necessary contract. Turns out they hold exclusive copyright on his work for the next seven years.

Chances are, when it comes to my friend’s poems, this doesn’t mean a huge whole lot. However, there are people for who it could have meant the difference between sweet diddly-squat and a fortune.

Consider The Celestine Prophecy. Anyone who’s made it through its 200-some pages probably won’t proclaim it great literature. It ain’t. But the message it contains is one that millions of people apparently needed to hear, as it sold and sold and sold.

Its author, James Redfield, self-published the book. By word of mouth and assorted networked ripples, the book caught the imagination of enough people that a commercial publisher decided it would be a worthwhile investment. As it turns out, the book sold millions and was even made it into a feature film.

Had James Redfield self-published through the company my friend’s dealing with, he’d have been out of luck when the big publisher took notice and wanted to buy his manuscript. That seven-year clause would have meant the shall-remain-unnamed publisher would have been the one to make the fortune that should have rightfully gone to the author.

Not all self-publishing companies operate this way. Many are legitimate enterprises that respect their authors and don't take advantage of them. The photo on today's post shows a number of self-published books in my collection. They range from the very professional (inside and out) Sixty-Five Sunsets to a couple of spiral-bound productions to the tiny, purposefully homemade look of books I bought from a street busker in San Francisco. And oh yes, The Joy of Cooking. Like James Redfield's book, it too was originally self-published.

Nor are all poetry ‘contests’ scams. But there sure are a lot of miserable characters out there who prey on unsuspecting writers who believe it when they're told their poem is going to win the Nobel Prize or their book is going to be the next bestseller on the New York Times list.

Good information about publishers and publishing is available. Here are three good links. The first is specifically for poetry, the links page at the League of Canadian Poets’ website. Explore the links there to find out about contests and other publishing information.

The Federation of BC Writers also offers links to an extensive list of markets and legitimate contests.

And a great site that lists questions to ask yourself if a publishing offer sounds too good to be true (it probably is) is one presented by Writer’s Digest.

But don’t put that pencil (pen/keyboard) down. Happy writing!