Young Writers Dazzle Publisher (Mom and Dad)
Sara Jorde for The New York Times
Ben Heckmann, 14, wrote two books about a fictional band.
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: March 31, 2012
The television news feature about Ben Heckmann, an eighth grader from Farmington, Minn., was breathless in its praise. “At 14 years old, he has accomplished something many adults can’t achieve,” the reporter said. “Ben is a twice-published author.”
Sara Jorde for The New York Times
Ben reading from one of his books at his school in Farmington, Minn.
As the camera rolled, Ben described how “the first time I held my own book, it was just this amazing feeling.” Then he shared a lesson for others his age, saying, “You can basically do anything if you put your mind to it.”
But his two “Velvet Black” books, depicting the antics of a fictional rock band, were not plucked from a pile of manuscripts by an eagle-eyed publisher. They were self-published, at a cost to Ben’s parents of $400 — money they have more than made up by selling 700 copies.
I like his shirt.
ReplyDeleteThe more I read about how people younger than me are raised, the more I feel like I was just barely in front of a tidal wave of crap. I wonder if every generation feels this way.
ReplyDeleteThe tidal wave of crap started in the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, it's amazing how rich kids can pretend they have talent.
When I read your comment, the first thing that popped into my head, God help me, was Jewel's book of "poetry" that came out when I was working at Cody's Books in Berkeley in the late '90s. It was SO AWFUL and the only reason it got published was due to the fact that Jewel was famous. As I stocked the shelves with myriad copies, all I could think about were the fabulous poets I worked with in my program who would never make ANY money from their work...
DeleteThis is just a whole new tidal wave of crap coming at us (H/t to ^SS).
So that's why I'm seeing all these ads in the margin for Jewel's book. I was wondering what googlebot popped that one up.
DeleteThe tidal wave is here. I just turned back a bunch of term-paper first drafts from my gen-ed course on physick for hamsters, and the writing majors in particular were indignant that I had actually criticized their writing.
ReplyDeleteToo many folks have told these idiots that their shit don't stink.
Lest we (already) forget, Rebecca Black!
ReplyDeleteFriday (shudder).
At it appears on Amazon.com: "Ben Heckmann is eleven years old. He lives in Minnesota with his family and two dogs, and is a huge fan of Guns N Roses and Velvet Revolver. Ben owns his own Gold Top Les Paul, just like his character Vivi. Be [sic] loves music, and in his spare time plays his electric and acoustic guitars. Ben got the idea for this book from a band he created in his spare time. This is his first book in a series about Vivi, Reco, Vince, and Jake. Look for his next book in this series coming soon!"
ReplyDeleteSuper. How in a few years we get to grade this prodigy's prose. If it's anything like the freshman writing I read over the weekend it has erratic capitalization (but that word is so important!), random use of apostrophes and other grammatical marks, and was proofread in the dark by a rhesus monkey. With apologies to Jim Mora, "Argument? Don't talk to me about argument? You kidding me? ARGUMENT?" I wonder who copy edits at a vanity press?
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago, I ordered a book from Amazon.com about Frankenstein. It was HORRIBLE.
DeleteI was expecting a collection of scholarly essays on the book. What arrived was a joke. It was a vanity press public domain printing of the text--and the "essays" were not even close to being worthy of the term. None had any kind of citations at all. I sent it back and emailed Amazon about the fact that the part that was "written" by the other "author" was full of errors, but never got a reply. Surprise.
What bothers me is that there is no quality control at all. The book had WRONG information in several spots, but it's still for sale on Amazon. The fact that the ass who "published" it can make money off of Mary Shelley's masterpiece really does burn my chrome. But hey, that's publishing these days--anyone can do it!
The proliferation of low-quality reprints of anything that's out of copyright (i.e. pretty much any piece of literature that dates from the 19th century or before) on Amazon is getting to be a real problem. I've spent more time than I'd like wading through innumerable printed-from-microfilm "editions" to find the couple of actual scholarly editions from reputable publishers available. The search results make absolutely no distinction between the two. And even when I've been glad to find a rare book available in reprint form, the edition has often turned out to be not only expensive, but of awful quality: pages too fuzzy to read, missing, skewed, etc. Google book scans are almost always of better quality, and can be inspected in advance of printing. And the increasing number of book stores and libraries with an Espresso book-making machine are often be willing to make a nice little bound volume out of pretty much any PDF, including a google book scan, at a reasonable price.
DeleteUgh, CC, I am so with you! I ordered what I thought was a paperback copy of Freud's Totem and Taboo and got this godawful print-on-demand thing.
DeleteI see some good about this. It's no worse than other ways to reward kids and at least the activity rewards a valuable skill like writing. Kids get accolades for all kinds of sports activities but there are fewer ways to reward students interested in academic work. Rich kids can spend a week learning to throw a football at Peyton Manning's summer camp too. I don't think this is much different. The budding sports star didn't get to meet Peyton because the kid is such a football prodigy. He got the chance because his parents are rich. Same thing here. Maybe the lesson that kids will learn is that rich people have more opportunities because they are rich.
ReplyDeleteSelf-publishing is today's equivalent of making your own website in the 1990s. It sounds cool at first, then you realize how easy it is. Everybody does it and then everybody realizes that most of the results are shit because a WYSIWYG editor doesn't help you choose good color pallets or write the content. The final stage is that being able to make your own web site becomes kind of a joke. "Oh, you have your own website? Well, la dee da. You must know Bill Gates."
I see a better analogy being his parents buying him a trophy. Looks the same on the shelf but the significance behind it is much less than one awarded legitimately.
DeleteThere are literary prodigies--sort of. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. But I can't think of any other author who wrote something of such merit so early. Certainly not at 14. And this boy's book is terrible.
ReplyDeleteI kind of feel sorry for him. The whole thing is so ludicrous. He's already getting laughed at. The tone of the Times story makes that obvious.
What I really want to know is who bought those 700 copies?
Clients and employees of the parents. It's the equivalent of the 99%'s askingcolleagues to buy your daughter's girl scout cookies.
DeleteThat was my thought too, Ben.
DeleteThis kid's parents a probably a sort of higher-brow version of pageant parents, living vicariously through the "brilliance" and the "successes" of their pampered offspring. And, like with the "Toddlers and Tiaras" set, there's probably a fair amount of parental bullying involved in keeping the kid's nose to the grindstone.
Call for papers:
ReplyDeleteThe international journal of hamsterology and related rodentia is accepting original manuscripts for publication in a special issue. Articles will be Beer-reviewed by the editor and his accomplices. Reprints are available by hitting " P" or the tiny printer icon on your computer. Articles accepted for publication can be used for promotion and tenure but are void where rejected by local tenure and review committees. The journal and its affiliates are not responsible for charges of incompetence or misconduct leading to demotion, dismissal, or public humiliation.
I'll help with the beer-reviewing.
DeleteThe poor kid's own parents don't even realize that they are setting him up for ridicule. However, there is probably an entire market of kids his age or younger that don't care about good writing who would love his books as long as they told a story they could identify with. Something similar happened with Amanda Hocking: her writing is bad, but there are lots of teenagers who love vampire romances.
ReplyDeleteAt 250 bucks a pop (according to the full article), I can see this becoming a thing for middle class kids as well. Most video game consoles cost more than that now, and those certainly aren't a rich-kids-only item.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's good to foster a kid's interest in writing, I think it does no good to reward mediocre or even bad writing with vanity pubs. Sure, some kids could not even be bothered writing a full story, but to reward those who do with a book is setting them up with some mighty unrealistic expectations.
I agree with Ben though, that once the fad spreads and people realize that vanity press publications are based on money, these parent-published kids will stop being considered newsworthy.
Good luck to those of you who may have to be the first to tell some these young novelists they can't write. I can hear it now... "I know how to write. I've published four novels! How many novels do you have?"
Wasn't that ridiculous Eragon originally published in a similar fashion (before eventually being picked up by a professional publisher, because someone thought it was good or something – god knows how that could have happened…)?
ReplyDeletea reader send this in:
ReplyDeleteThis is not meant as a criticism of your page or contributors and I'm not intending to compare the kid in the article to any successful author, as I've never read his book; but I wanted to point out that Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was 15 (the first draft, followed by a year of re-writing).
His parents self-published it the following year, and he went across the country to promote the book. While it was criticized by some reviewers as being derivative (especially of works such as Lord of the Rings), it was the first book in a fairly popular four-book YA Fantasy series. It came to wider notice when the author Carl Hiassen read the book and brought it to the attention of his publisher.
My point, as I'm sure you figured out, is that not all stories like this turn out to be indulgent over-parenting. I don't know how Heckmann will be judged, but it's just a different point of view from the dog-pile rushing at him now.
And Eragon sucks.
DeleteIs that the weird kid from Dino Dan?
ReplyDeleteI have a girl in one class who brought me a published copy of her poetry on the first day. She REALLY wanted to know what I thought, but once I got into a series of poems of adventures her cat had had, I told her I was more of a fiction lover.
ReplyDeleteI've had some experience reading students' personal writing, and it was even worse than MINE was back in my own youth. I generally cringe with utter revulsion whenever students want me to read their personal crap. Like I don't have ENOUGH FUCKING PAPERS TO READ/GRADE ALREADY? It's just fucking rude and thoughtless.
ReplyDeleteI finished writing my first novel when I was fifteen or so, and vowed at the time to never self-publish (since why would I pay someone to publish it when, if it was good enough, I could get it published elsewhere at no cost and actually have the publication mean something?). Reading this article, I definitely don't regret my decision, and would make the same one again. My parents have always encouraged my writing, but they've never suggested I self-publish- if anything, they've been against it for the same reasons I was. Also, if I had self-published my first novel at fifteen, I'd be so worried about people finding it now. It was a piece of crap that, since I was so young, I didn't know was a piece of crap. I wouldn't want it getting around and screwing with my current resume.
DeleteVanity publishing is nothing new. A great-aunt of mine published a gauzy look back at the Old South, of which she had direct, if not, apparently, particularly accurate, memories, c. 100 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI think one difference may be that it's now possible to put a vanity-press volume up on Amazon, which makes it seem somehow "real." But in the pre-Amazon age, filing for copyright served some of the same purposes, especially since many people believed (and probably still do believe) that doing so led to the automatic deposit of a copy on the Library of Congress.
Did anyone else catch that he's not only writing, but also teaching other kids to write?
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty scary. I have seen the results of peer review of poor writers by worse writers: "Wow, what a great piece!"
DeleteBarf.
With my educational background in exactly these things...and my teaching experience in exactly these things...I can't begin to describe how much this disturbs me. I have to get out while I can, because when these kids hit college I'll go postal.
ReplyDeleteWhat a smug little shit!
ReplyDeleteFrom an anonymous new reader:
ReplyDeletehave only been reading CM a short time, which may explain why
I'm not yet hard-bitten enough to respond to this story with
harsh ridicule for the kid.
The teenaged daughter of an acquaintance recently had a novel
published by an outfit whose website quite tidily obscured
their business model: it calls itself a "mainline publishing
organization" and further boasts: "We do not require any money
from any of our authors for any aspect of production" - a very
clever locution. In the excitement of having your submission accepted
you do get a contract setting out how much to pay them, but it's
all accounted to things other than "production," you see.
The author is a sweet, poised, apparently thoughtful young person
whom I first remember meeting when she was perhaps 10 and absorbed
in a Morgan Forster novel. I am loath to question her interest in
writing or her perhaps latent potential. But bless my soul, clearly
no influential adult set any expectation that she manifest any of
that potential in this book.
The publisher touts the professional editing that your book will
receive, and indeed someone named in this book's acknowledgments has
the title "developmental editor" on the publisher's website, but the
book shows no sign that this editor was even breathing.
Most glaring, perhaps, are the author's attempts to achieve
an elevated diction by mining a thesaurus for alternatives to
words she actually knew, then using ones that she didn't, and
that don't mean what she thought. A typical page has more than
one or two examples. A promotional interview even has her saying
that she's concerned about modern culture's erosion of vocabulary
and sees herself as a preserving force. From the sound, she must
have been encouraged to think so, rather than sat down and urged
to look up what the words meant. Where was the editor?
I feel nothing but heartbreak for this young woman. If she does
keep writing and get good, it's a whale of a hangover she'll
feel looking back on this book, and there's nothing to be done
about it. A wagging finger could perhaps be pointed at her mom,
but ultimately they were both had by a publisher that markets
heavily to their demographic, has a spiel just slick enough
to sound plausible, and laughs all the way to the bank.
Most glaring, perhaps, are the author's attempts to achieve
ReplyDeletean elevated diction by mining a thesaurus for alternatives to
words she actually knew, then using ones that she didn't, and
that don't mean what she thought.
I think I've had her, under various names, in a number of my classes over the years.