Further to my last post about Lorna Page, mjlayman pointed out a thread on Making Light^[*] about the same topic. That lead me to this Guardian article, which is more or less the same as the Mail and Telegraph ones.

However, this time I cracked and wrote to the email address given at the bottom of the article. Amazingly, I got a very swift and positive response which began, "Thank you for your email. I worried about this while reading the paper at home," and concluded (after noting that it wasn't possible to prove that Mrs Lorna Page had received no money at all):

"Since we cannot firmly establish the facts it is difficult to do a correction but I aim to do a clarification this weekend (though space is extremely tight). "

I feel better now. My faith in the Guardian has been restored :)

On the other hand, my opinion of the Daily Mail has slid downwards another notch. Sally Zigmund says here in the comments to Victoria Strauss's blog post, "The Daily Mail's report seems the most inaccurate. It's also odd that I posted a polite, but incredulous comment on their website but it hasn't appeared." Yes, well, it seems that although the Daily Mail has a comment feature at the bottom of articles, these are vetted and only ones supporting the article are ever posted. My daughter reported this same problem when she attempted to put the record straight regarding a derogatory article the Mail had published about a friend of hers. Just so you know.

And I'll let the matter rest there and get on with something more useful...

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^[*] I don't normally read Making Light, there are only so many hours in the day and I already spend too many of them online. :)

Tags: 93 year-old author, self-publishing
Current Mood: vindicated

Really, I don't know what the press is coming too. Someone linked to this heartwarming story:

Author, 93, uses profits from first novel to buy massive house to spare friends misery of care home

Wow! I thought, there's hope for me yet. Fancy having a best seller at 93. You really are never too old to make it as a writer.

I read on, only to stop dead when I got to: She sent it to self-publishing firm AuthorHouse, who put the book on sale as a paperback for £14.95 and a hardcover for £16.95.

Uh, oh...

Now there are circumstances where self-publishing is a perfectly valid option and from their website, AuthorHouse seem perfectly genuine, they offer editorial advice and copy-editing as options, but as we all know, it's vanishingly rare for anyone to make any money as a self-published author and certainly not the £310,000 that the article implies. Quite the reverse, it will have cost the author money to have her book published. As it clearly says on the AuthorHouse website, "For a modest financial investment you can choose what you want for your book. Our products and services vary in price and can be tailored to your specific needs."

I really shouldn't be annoyed by the article, but I am. Firstly because it's hailing Lorna Page as a "published author" when all she's done is paid to have her novel published, secondly because it's promulgating the idea that first time authors get huge advances, when we all know that, except in very rare cases, they don't, and thirdly that headline is a definite untruth, she can't have sold enough copies in the 4 weeks since the book became available to buy a house.

Oh, well... But just don't believe anything you read in the Daily Mail, that's all. Not that the others are any better, the Telegraph carried much the same story and the BBC fails to mention that the publisher is just a self-publishing company and fudges the issue entirely.

*Wanders off shaking her head sadly*

Tags: 93 year-old author, self-publishing
Current Mood: aggravated