-
RichardB posted an update 3 years ago
Today, for the first time in my life, I was moved to write to a national newspaper. This was prompted, of all things, by an advert I saw in the Guardian. The letter ran as follows:
‘In the middle of today’s on-line article “Granta reveals its pick of future star British novelists” there is an advertisement that asks, “Looking for a publisher?” and goes on to say, “Send us your work. We’re accepting new submissions.” Since I’m well aware that legit publishers never advertise for submissions these days and, on the contrary, only accept submissions via agents, I smelled a rat. Clicking on the advert confirmed my suspicions, taking me to the website of Pegasus Publishers.
‘Pegasus are a notorious vanity publisher. These people will accept your submission, tell you how wonderful it is and how keen they are to publish it – and then ask you for a four-figure sum “to meet production costs.” Having invested so much time, effort and emotion into writing your novel, your dearest dream is to see it published. You are too excited to pause to seek the advice which would tell you that in reputable publishing money goes from the publisher to the author, never the other way round. You cough up. You will never see that money again.
‘They will keep to the letter of their side of the bargain. They will publish your book – with slipshod editing or none at all, and with hardly any effort at marketing. Sales will be minimal to non-existent. Worse, they will retain the rights, so that you can’t even take your book elsewhere.
‘While what Pegasus and other operations like theirs do may not be technically illegal, the morality of it is very questionable indeed. They are predators on people’s dreams. I suggest you have a good hard think about how running an advert for them fits in with the ethics of your newspaper.’
Skip to content
This research report shows more of the unpleasant truth of vanity publishing
https://societyofauthors.org/SOA/MediaLibrary/SOAWebsite/Documents-for-download/_REPORT-Is-it-a-steal.pdf
I read the Guardian seeing as it’s the only mainstream media outlet that even remotely approaches my political leanings, but I have to say that the approach is indeed often remote, and I’m not surprised to see them accept that advertisement. That said, they do make quite a big deal about promoting aspiring authors, and organise several courses and events with well-known names in the business. I suspect that accepting the ad and it’s placement on the web-page are down to a lack of scrutiny, and a surfeit of carelessness. If the page is built dynamically, then its placement in the article could be random, but that seems unlikely.
Libby, thanks for that link. It’s quite damning, and if I’d known about it I might have included it in my e-mail.
Ath, it never occurred to me that the placement of the ad might be random. It’s too much to ask of coincidence. I do hope that the acceptance of it was indeed due to lack of scrutiny. If I were to learn that they were at all aware of who Pegasus are and what they do, then my opinion of the Guardian would be dramatically lowered. It would be nice to think they’ll react to my communication, but I’m not holding my breath. At least I got it off my chest.
Just checked the article again, and I have to say that the ad-spot is a set of Google tags; Google is the Advertising Network managing this space, so it will be filled according to a set of priorities partly determined by your cookies. That’s why after checking Amazon for cat-toothpaste, every other page you visit wants to sell you the stuff. So Pegasus bought “x amount” of advertising through Google Adsense who then place their advertisements according to whatever criteria they use. When you visit a site with Google Adsense managed advertising, Google checks your cookies and tailors what ads it displays. I suspect that either you visited a site where Pegasus managed to place a Cookie on your computer (I imagine that almost any writer visiting writing sites might acquire one) or Google used some sort of content analysis to place the ad. Or both.
When I visit the Guardian article, I get a variety of ads including healthcare, job vacancies etc etc.
Cookies are generally innocuous, but can be a royal PITA. Opt in on a site’s cookie policies and you can easily find yourself seeing advertising that you really don’t want to see, unless the site is particularly careful regarding what is set. I bought my daughter sports socks as a little Christmas extra. Since then I’ve been plagued with ads for women’s underwear – and no, I don’t spend my days browsing underwear sites. After buying my mother a stair-lift some ten years ago, I have seen a plethora of online ads for them and for other disability/accessibility products and have only just managed to stop the company sending me their catalogue every couple of months. My mother passed away in 2016.
Ah, so the ad wasn’t actually down to the Guardian, then, and my writing to them was a waste of time. But I get so angry at these vanity publishers (though I gather that phrase is out of fashion now). The way they exploit and trample on the dreams of aspiring authors is downright cruelty, if you ask me.
Absolutely not a waste of time, Richard. The paper has controls that enable them to reject specific advertisers. Now you’ve brought it to their attention I would expect the least they can do is prevent it appearing again. It’s the Guardian’s choice to use this advertising system, and ultimately it’s their fault entirely.
Having read a bit more about how this works, you were “doomed” to see the Pegasus stuff. Google Adsense looks at the content in which it’s embedded (an article about writing and publishing) and at your interests as shown by stored cookies (writing and publishing) and then picks ads from a bundle deemed to be related. Had I not recently been looking into healthcare, I might well have had the same experience.
This kind of vanity-publishing posing as genuine, traditional publishing, is just appalling. I don’t know how people can do it. I read some posts by somebody who had worked for one of them and it was every bit as bad as you might imagine. Staff were, essentially, told to lie to customers. In the event that somebody queried lack of sales, the approach was to “double down” and claim that they couldn’t understand it and perhaps if the customer was prepared to pay just a bit more for some “market positioning” the breakthrough would come.
Re the appearance of ads of any kind, I don’t get any ads, not on the Guardian site or anywhere else. I have Microsoft Edge set to the highest privacy setting, I use DuckDuckGo for all searches unless the results aren’t extensive enough and only use Google for YouTube and maps. I clear cookies every few days and mostly disallow them where I can.
I’m fairly hopeless at tech and am not fully sure if ads aren’t appearing because of what I’m doing or because of what the tech companies are doing but it might be worth a try for the hope of ad-free reading.
It’s worth noting that the Guardian has form for taking money from vanity publishers. Back when I was first getting interested in writing ‘properly’, back in the mid-90s, I remember seeing ads for ‘Athena Press’ plastered all over anything to do with writing or fiction. Their MO was so similar to how you describe Pegasus, I find myself wondering if they are related