Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Options
Young Writers question to parents
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
Just a quick google, and it seems this has been going on for years by one name or another....
here's one from five years ago
Mumsnet also has old posts relating to the tutoring scams I mentioned earlier.
It really is disgraceful.
If they have written the poem they should be paid royalties for every book that's sold.
Shush Rickster
I guess that the "permission slip" is their get-out.
Genuine publication only works one of three ways:
1. The publishing house takes you on and gives you a contract or a commission. They pay you, you don't pay them (although you might have to give your agent a share of the fee).
2. You win a competition and your work is published. All the terms and conditions including copyright stuff is in the terms and conditions of entry (in other worlds you know what you're signing up to before you sign up to it).
3. You self-publish. As you would expect, you make the financial input but you have control over the whole process from printing to marketing.
Anything else is a scam.
@ Tenjiso, thanks for that link I used part of it to send an email to youngwriters and yes that permission slip is the get out.
The problem I have is that I don't want to send it in but if he is the only one not included then he is going to be disapointed.
Ah but that's how they get you isn't it Grendel? Blatant manipulation.
Is the lad old enough that you can explain any of this to him?
He's 10 but quite a mature 10 so can explain it to him. If I can get the book on Amazon at some point I will just so he has a copy but not at the price they are charging.
I do really appreciate the feedback I got from this post so thanks everyone -
Fuck me, that's shocking!
Here's a poem to enter and see if it get published....
A poetry competition in schools
Was really no more than a tool
To scam those kids parents
Who lacked enough sense
To see they are taken as fools.
(I grant my permission to use this
)
does the school have a face book page.i would start a protest on it .as its exploitation of the kids and parents...........
its teaching the kids to be takern in by scams.....
so they can all pay for a beauty portfolio next .i will take several photos to make them all a portfolio so that they can all make it in the model industry........I'm sure that they will all feel brilliant about having a successful portfolio
I personally think the school is well out of order.£16.
I fear that Wilkie has had a meltdown.
Put the poem on your own facebook page. More people will read it there than ever read the book. Even the parents that buy it aren't going to look beyond checking that little johnny's poem is there.
I didn't get past the first line before the top of my head blew off!
Leverage the power of children. If you can get him angry enough about this to get his mates involved, and spread the word online, you could destroy the vanity publishing industry by the weekend.
She's probably popped over to mumsnet to compare outrage levels.
Also, pokemon are awesome.
She's back!
Tenjiso - if you send me a cheque for £15.99 I will forwad that poem for inclusion!!!
No Facebook page unfortunately -
Bargain! At last, the literary recognition I deserve!
Me neither Grendel, but I'm sure someone here will volunteer to publish your son's poem for you on their FB page. Or film him reading it out and stick it on youtube - if you can get an animal to do something amusing while he's reading it you'll have a hit on your hands.
I can't quite believe this....
My kids have just brought home a leaflet about an upcoming 45-minute "motivational assembly" in school, which is just a glorified advert for branded yo-yo's
. I think this idea must come from America, because I remember a piss-take about it on "The Simpsons" from at least ten years ago!
Apparently, buying these yo-yo's, boomerangs, strings and instructional DVD's will teach kids to "Never Give Up" (otherwise they have toys that are worthless), "Encourage Others" (to part with their cash) and "Do Your Best" (to pester your parents to buy the merchandising).
They have a website: thenedshow.com
However, it's probably more prudent to google "thenedshow scam"
So all schools are at it then!!!!!
Will watch out for that one at school!!!
Yes, apparently American schools have been been associating themselves with brands for sone time now. It starts with branded vending machines and from there it's a slippery slope.
Similarly, what started with product placement in films has ended up with "The Internship" which is a giant advert for Google.
All very worrying.
I am stunned by this - as everyone here has already said, this seems like the most disgusting exploitation of children and their parents by a publishing organisation that is interested only in making money and, worst of all, does not know the difference between 'there' and 'their' (god only knows what they'd make of 'they're'!). This hasn't surfaced at my kids' school yet, but I shall keep them peeled. My eyes, not the kids.
The school photo one is an interesting one. They do these at our school and, yes, they get them into all sorts of bizarre poses, but the photographer is one of the mothers and is an excellent professional. We occasionally buy them. What I DO prefer is the group photos of a class or a year or the whole school - they're the sort of pictures the kids would probably like to look back on as adults. But, yes, most people these days can take as many photos as they like one way or another, so this sort of thing might die out one day.
We've also had the skipping people come in and do a motivational assembly! They then flog slipping ropes to parents for about 10 quid if I remember rightly. I think the schools need to be a bit more selective in terms of who they let come in and do assemblies.
That yo-yo episode of "The Simpsons" was on this evening funnily enough.
I'm not a parent but if I was I don't think I'd let any of my kids attend one of these "motivational assemblies"
The yo-yo and skipping thing is an interesting one - our school had a sponsored football penalty competition a couple of years ago - where kids were encouraged to get sponsorship - different levels of sponsorship got a different award - £35 was rewarded with a football - we did actually manage to rasie the £35 but it took over 4 months and a lot of phone calls and stuff on the football companies facebook page to get a ball I could have got from Sportsdirect for a fiver!!!!.
Damn - wish I had known that epsisode of the Simpsons was on. Spooky coincidence. That episode is about 20 years old! (Bart hasn't aged a bit
).
What is clever about the likes of the ned show is that they are handed a captive audience of their target market (children aged 5-9) for a 45 minute advert - for free! The school agrees to have the "free" show in exchange for peddling the merchandise on behalf of the company for five days following the show. So the school secretary becomes an unpaid salesperson of that company for a school week. Genius.
Time to work on my frisbee skills...
Time to lobby your Board of Governors - better still, see if there's a place going free.
Everyone is fixated on success at all costs, much of this down to aspirational programming by the BBC et al. And that goes for our children at school. Unfortunately our state schools now have to compete with private schools and academy schools and with funding being cut all the time we're going to see more of this.