Pay to Play by Debbie Bennett
These days, it’s still good advice – although there are occasions when it’s ok for an author to put his hand in his pocket. I’m not here to discuss vanity or even ‘hybrid’ publishing, and for the new writer just getting to grips with it all, I’ll only say to do your homework. Google. Look at reviews. Check out ALLI and Writers Beware before you part with a penny. And yes, it always has been perfectly ok to buy in editing and design skills if you don’t have them yourself. I’m a writer, not a designer, and while I can look at a bad cover and have an idea what doesn’t work and why, I couldn’t tell you what to do to fix it. My cover designer, on the other hand, can take my vague suggestions and ideas and turn them into passable covers. It’s a dark art.
But what about other places where you might be asked to pay money? Competitions for instance? Some people say you should never pay for anything but I’m not sure I agree with that. Many small writing competitions are great to cut your teeth on and to provide a ‘prize’ of sorts, cover admin costs and somebody relatively prestigious as a judge, there might often be a small entry fee. That’s not always bad and you should treat each individual competition on its own merits – look at what you actually get for your entry fee. Winning entries might get published in a magazine, which could get your work noticed by more people. You might also get feedback included (or available at extra cost). Feedback can be varied, but with a little experience, you’ll know instinctively whether or not it has merit. It's only one person's opinion, but it is a new set of eyes with no preconceptions.
Do not under any circumstances pay to enter the competitions that promise winners will be ‘published’ in a special book available for a ridiculous amount of money. They target these at schools and it infuriates me that they take advantage of proud parents who will buy expensive copies of cheaply-made books to give to grandparents etc. It’s a form of vanity publishing – there are no quality checks and no standards and the only real winner is the company who pockets 75% or more of the cost of each book sold. When they tried this at my daughter's school once, I did volunteer to produce an anthology of the children's work myself at a fraction of the cost!
I taught myself scriptwriting several years ago and adapted my own novel. Scriptwriting is a very different skillset from fiction and it wasn’t easy to do. It’s also very hard to get useful feedback. BBC Writers Room can be good, but I found the film festivals very useful. Film Freeway is a good starting point, but again, do your research! There are a lot of festivals which will accept script submissions; many have huge entry fees, and as a beginner you stand little chance of getting anywhere (if there is anywhere to get), so why waste your money? But some of the smaller ones do include feedback – and yes, I paid for it. It was worth every penny too. As a novice scriptwriter, but a reasonably-experienced writer, I can at least read feedback and know what it means. And every point they made, I could see exactly what they meant and how to fix it. There were good points too and that at least makes me feel I’m not wasting my time! So I’ll take it on board, do some editing and maybe try again.
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