This for anyone writing a book. The main reason I have written so little here lately is that for the last 2 years I have been working on a "future fiction" project. It looks at several different ways in which the next 80 odd years might pan out. All of them involve a major decrease in human numbers. It's by no means all doom and gloom though. One of the possibilities is a catastrophic event which reduces the population by a third and leaves the survivors with a surplus of materials but a shortage of skills. These are good conditions to recreate a more sustainable society.
The book began life as a series of fictitious documents strung together as the journals of an ageless figure who lives right through the century. However, more characters made their appearance and I found myself being drawn into their worlds, filling in the details and making them more real. In the process I began to be aware of all the problems of writing readable fiction. The book is now in three parts, 100,000 words and still growing, and I am determined to teach myself how to write a big story covering several generations. I'm now on what I think is my fourth major re-write, but after the previous one I decided to try some agents and publishers. I sent the usual sample material to half a dozen agents and one or two publishers.
As the first of the rejection notes began to arrive I was surprised to have a friendly email from "Pegasus Publishers" asking me to send the whole typescript when it was finished. Well, this was good news. I was off the slush pile and in with a chance. Of course I wasn't born yesterday (or even the day before) so I checked them out. The website looked OK: http://www.pegasuspublishers.com/ Next I did a search on "are Pegasus vanity publishers?" One answer said yes they were, but another said the opposite and led to this: http://www.pegasusbooks.net/about-us/frequently-asked-questions/ It was quite clear that they were genuine. Unfortunately I saw what I wanted to see and didn't scroll down far enough. If I had I would have seen this:We are in no way affiliated with Pegasus Publishing out of Cambridge, England.
So I was happy to have achieved "the final selection process which takes about 4 weeks", and didn't mind waiting. I noted the date in my diary and when I had not heard anything after exactly 4 weeks send a short note asking if they had any news for me. There was no reply, but 2 days later a large package arrived from Pegasus with two copies of a contract to publish! This seemed too easy - how had I, who had never written a book before, managed to get a publishing contract so quickly? Then I saw clause 15: "author's contribution to costs: £2500". At first, to my shame, I thought, "well, perhaps it is worth it if the book is marketed well." Then I did a bit more research on self-publishing and realised that Pegasus were not committing themselves to any print run and that you can get a few hundred copies of any normal sized book printed for less than £1000. At last the awful truth sank in: they had not read my typescript. Why should they bother when all their costs and profits were met out of the so-called "author's contribution"? The 4 week wait was just part of the scam. They probably know that many of us old 'uns have savings so could probably afford to lay out 2.5k to see their book in print.
I wrote a fairly polite reply declining their offer and telling them what I suspected. The reply from them was equally polite: a brief "thank you for letting us know and we wish you luck with your project" - a clear admission that it was a totally cynical way of making money out of gullible people. I was not to downhearted. I had suppressed my initial suspicions because I wanted their interest to be genuine, but I had used the time to do a lot more writing. I enjoy it, I'm still learning and I'm more than ever determined to produce something which will be fun to read but will also stand as my contribution to the debate on how to deal with global warming. If I can't get a proper publishing deal then I shall issue it as an ebook.
