Young Writers con

laurel7172

KittyLady wrote: »

My daughter had this about five years ago. We bought a couple of copies and told her how great she was. Yes, it's a total con money wise really, but for her it's encouraged her to work hard at her writing and she's top of her class in English still.

Yup. I swallowed the scam and told dd how great she was and she never noticed that half her class had mini sagas in the same volume...

The vanity publisher involved, though, was a local one, which has gone out of business now. It seems that the same business model lives on...

trumpton

Lol. I guess Mr Dan tipped you off. What a huge load of spam in my opinion. Once again I refer MSE readers to the article in the Daily Mail. Now I don't believe everything I read in the newspapers so I suggest prospective customers read it for themselves and make their own decision:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1354015/The-Peoples-Publisher-went-bust-let-thousands-children--back.html

"Forward Press, based in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, has shrugged off its £1.6 million debts, and its bosses - who have kept their fortunes despite the company collapse - are free to start cashing in again.

Despite the economic downturn, the Young Writers literary competitions brought in more than £2 million in the first nine months of 2010. But sales were no longer enough to cover Forward Press's mounting debts and the luxurious lifestyles of its owners, founder Ian Walton, 59, who, together with other family members drew £430,000 in directors salaries in 2008. Son Chris is manager.

Just three days later, he (Walton) used a third party for his other firm, Bonacia, to buy back the Young Writers cash cow for £1 while ditching the taxman's £470,000 bill and the money and books it owes to disappointed clients and creditors.

"The deal left more than 70 people out of work at a minute's notice and £214,000 of unpaid redundancy claims."

Perhaps your 'dedicated customer care team' can help the people who paid for books and never received them (according to the Mail), the unpaid creditors, or the people who were made redundant without redundancy pay?

More info from the web about Mr Walton, his arrest, and his plans for Spain and France:

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/01/31/forward-into-europe/

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2011/03/10/%E2%80%98i%E2%80%99m-innocent%E2%80%99-says-publisher-after-arrest-in-malaga/

punkpink

YoungWriters wrote: »

As a company we do like to keep up to date with any press about the company and ‘Mr Dan’ has no connection with the company that we are aware of. Believe it or not there are people out there who support what we at Young Writers do.

We are not ashamed to admit that we did have a bad patch during the recession, as did many businesses. Bonacia have fulfilled all orders that Forward Press took payments for but could not fulfil. On top of that all competition prizes that were owed Bonacia paid.

As I am sure you can appreciate not all information published in newspapers is correct. A lot of the information was fabricated. For example: Chris Walton had a sports car bought by his father (Ian Walton) – he actually drives an ‘M’ reg Mazda which he purchased for £800! We did start a case against the Daily Mail but the cost to continue this would have damaged the new company’s cash flow being a new business and the damage had already been caused so no great gain would have come out of it.

I apologies that you do not agree with our business model, however many will disagree with you; our aim is to encourage children to enjoy creative writing and we do this well. I would also like to point out that we do provide a keep-sake for parents, a snapshot of their child at that point in life. I can only compare this to school photos which can cost anything from £12 to £70 depending on the type of package that is offered. Some photographers will only offer a package which could cost you £40 starting price. I don’t believe they are exploiting parents...

Maybe you should look at the English Curriculum yourself? Then perhaps you would not make simple English errors? :cool:

trumpton

So you shut Forward Press due to the recession, not because the Inland Revenue (ie. we the taxpayers) wanted their unpaid £470k? Going into voluntary liquidation allowed you to escape paying that bill and any redundancy money.

If the recession caused the company to fold why have you started up in exactly the same business of vanity publishing? There is still a recession on. I suppose being able to buy back the company for £1 without taking on it's liabilities didn't have anything to do with that.

The Mail added a correction about the allegation that Ian Walton bought Chris Walton a sports car, which suggest they are willing to correct factual errors. They haven't changed anything else in the article so I am inclined to believe the article to be factually correct. Whether Chris Walton drives an old Mazda is neither here nor there. The directors drew salaries of £430k in 2008, so I suppose he can drive what he likes.

As for school photographs - we all know they are overpriced, but if the photographer said, "Your child has won a competition to have their photo taken ...", well then that would be a totally different kind of greedy exploitation, wouldn't it?

Your aim is not, in my opinion, to "encourage children to enjoy creating writing". It is a business model based on, in my view, misleading schools, parents and children into thinking they have won a competition and are having their work published.

Just admit that you are vanity publishers and be done with it.

ashleypride

YoungWriters wrote: »

I apologise that you do not agree with our business model, however many will disagree with you

The only people who disagree is the ones that profit from your greed. As previously said by many others this has nothing to do with the cost you charge, it's the lack of transparency in the way you operate. You know exactly what you do is immoral, but don't let that get in the way of making a quick buck.

peter_the_piper

YoungWriters wrote: »

Young Writers has been working with schools for the past two decades and although there has been negative press about the company our aim is still very much the same... to encourage children from across the world in their creative writing.

We provide schools with a pack full of ideas, lesson plans and key points taken from the national curriculum to develop and encourage the imagination of each child, whether they have a keen interest in poetry and story writing or struggle to understand the concept. By creating their unique creative writing pieces it is proven to boost children’s confidence in school and later life.

The feedback we have received over the past 20 years is that our packs are a useful tool within the classroom and that the themes and ideas behind them encourage the children to express themselves. The schools are made aware of what criteria is needed for a child to be accepted for publication and although from the comments on here we sense that parents are lead to believe that their child is only one of thousands, our intention was not to mislead anyone. From our research over the years we have been informed that a child seeing their work published is an achievement in itself and not because they have been chosen to win.

We always welcome feedback about our services and we are keen to make changes to the letter we send to parents to make them aware of their child’s work being published. We would like to reassure teachers and parents that we are not a scam.

Each publication is available to purchase as a keepsake. We are aware that not all parents are interested in purchasing and therefore we provide the school with the free copy so the children do not miss out on seeing their poem or short story in print. The British Library holds a copy of all our titles produced in their national archive.

The books have been priced at £15.99 and although this does seem expensive for a book the price reflects the amount of work which goes into producing each book. All poems/short stories received are read by one of our editors and then goes on to be typed, corrected and formatted before a proof is sent out to the parents. Once we have received the permission forms back we have to make any changes that have been requested and then our design team will create each publication before our in-house printers produce the small print runs. We are a relatively small family-run business and do not make huge profits from running each competition. Our aim is promote and introduce poetry and story writing to young children.

Our dedicated customer services team are available to talk to between 8am-5pm Monday to Friday. We are aware that throughout the day the line can be engaged which does become frustrating to parents. The reason for this is because we do work with thousands of schools from across the world and we tend to communicate with them in school opening times. We have added a new line recently to help, the telephone number is 01733 898110. We can only apologise for past issues and we will continue to try and improve our communication services.

If you are having problems with reaching us on the telephone please email us (email address can be found on our site) , we will aim to call you back within 24hrs.

For each competition that is created and sent to schools we offer a prize to the best schools and on most occasions prizes for a selection of children. The prizes range from £1000 to the school with the best set of entries to a £10 book token for the child with the best poem from their anthology. These prizes are aimed to be paid after the final book has been printed and despatched from the series. Please visit our winners page to see the all winners from past competitions. I am sure each listed school would be happy to inform you if they have received their prize.

I would also like to mention at this time that you are able to order a copy of the book through the school who will receive the order on an invoice basis, this would put your mind at rest and no payment would need to be made until the product has been received.

If you would like to contact us about any concerns you have please feel free to call us on 01733 890066.

Have you asked the site for permission to post as you are directly connected with the company.

mountainofdebt

But surely the point is, is that the letter the Young Writers send to the parents in the first instance suggests that the pupil has achieved some sort of unique standard when in fact its usually the case that the work of the whole class is included in the book.

In fact I'm surprised that Baldrick's poem 'Boom Boom Boom' hasn't been included.

I'm surprised that Young Writers have even dared to compare it to school photographs - yes they too are a rip off but at least you're not lead to believe something which isn't true.

However given all the complaints about Young Writers, its surprising that any school wants to be associated with them .....do they get a percentage of sales per chance?

antrobus

YoungWriters wrote: »

We did start a case against the Daily Mail but the cost to continue this would have damaged the new company’s cash flow being a new business and the damage had already been caused so no great gain would have come out of it.

That's good to know. At least I assume that Martin Lewis may well be grateful for the knowledge that you can't actually afford to take legal action. Or indeed anyone else for that matter.

YoungWriters

I can confirm that Forward Press’ Directors did not take total salaries of 430k in 2008. This is another fabrication made by the newspaper.

As stated in a previous post we welcome all feedback and do try to act on most of it as much as possible, this includes changes to the letter which seems to have misled parents. It was never our intention to mislead any parent and we can only apologise once again for this.

Although we did not continue with the case against the newspaper we are lead to believe now that would have helped put some parents’ minds at rest. We believed at the time once fulfilling all orders and paying all competitions promised by Forward Press that parents and teachers would understand the information featured was untrue.

We value your feedback that you have given here and welcome any further feedback you have to offer.

Valli

@ Young writers - you have already BEEN asked if you have permission to post.

At the moment it appears not, and site rules are being broken.