Raymond Fenech Gonzi

This company cannot improve because it specialises in ripping off people and when it is a pensioner and they stole BPS 1,200, that is gross! I was contacted by an Ex director of theirs, who read my comment that I was looking for a publisher. I had just published a book, but this one was not prose but poetry. I had the content ready with the index and introduction, as well as all the poems edited twice. I am 68 and besides editing my own literary magazine. I edited anthologies for the Canadian literary organisations. So, the book was editedtwice. First, I was contacted by a woman whose name I fogot, and she told me to enhance the book with photos. Professional poets do not use photos in their books, except their own because a good poet depicts his images in words. She kept insisting, and I sent her some photos. Then she sent me the contract which included editing and cover design which had been supplieed to me by a painter and friend of mine. I told her that the amount of money BPS 3000 was mor than double, I had agreed on LinkedIn with the director. Besides the book had everything ready and all it needed was launching on online bookshops. She took ages to answer and it was another colleague, who she said was her boss. I wondered how many bosses there are at British Book Publishing! Perhaps that's why the righthand does not know what the left hand is doing! He said he would send me a 'Revised' version of the content? But the book was already edited? The revised version consisted of many words in the MS which were capitalised and made bold? The words were so strong on their own they did not need to be bolding! I told him that I did say not to touch the MS. Weeks turned into months and when I saw that the only problem was that I was not going to spend any more money so that they could ruin my book. So, there was silence from their end and no reply. I asked for a full refund in the end and the guy said: "Too late for that!" As if the money had already been squandered. This company has a bad reputation and I remember it used to have five stars - now it's got four and as time goes by, and they continue swindling people, Trust Pilot will realise that even their membership fee, be what it may be, is not worth supporting thieves and ruining their own reputation. Become Writers' Guild Members and make sure you have a good lawyer. There are more frauds and scams than actual genuine publishers. I was an investgative crime reporter with The Times and BBP should know they will continue to be pursued, until I see their company close its doors. I managed to close De La Salle Univrsity in the 90s in the USA, using US journalists who were colleagues of mine and I will do same again.

First and foremost, my book took me seven years to write. Besides, it consisted of the memoirs of one of the Pope's top ten exorcist priests, the exorcist was one who travelled the world performing his work, so it took time for him to pass me information by means of a digital recorder. The book was 450 pages long and required research and loads of correspondence with other authors pertaining to the subject to quote extracts which, backed Fr Elias's experiences. The Manhattan Awards tempted me to try and acquire appreciation that I believed Fr Elias deserved. The exorcist died two years before the book went on the market, so he only saw it as a manuscript.

I am entirely segregated in Malta because I write in English not in Maltese. I prefer this option from as early as when I was 17 years old, because there are no poetry or literary magazines here. Only 500,000 people read in Maltese and most of them still prefer English. The real big market is in over 270 countries whose first language is English. So when I won the Bronze Award, it means much more than winning the local Book Club prize. I always thought that being a big fish in a small pond does not determine how good a writer one is. In the long run every competition I won was among some of the greatest writers. Thank you Minstirmedia for creating this award. It suffices to say that the news media ignored this book completely. But who needs the local media anyway when you can shine abroad.

Excellent Experience throughout the publishing phases. There are some things that you can do to improve your services. I believe that if you enter your best books for book prizes like "The Pushcart Prize", "The Booker Prize" and there are other prizes for books which are collections of poetry it would encourage more writers to publish with you. even a nomination for a prize is an accolade and if one book wins that prize your reputation, not only of the author would soar. Book signings could also be held at book exhibitions like ExpoAmerica. It's great for an author to meet people and sign their books and see them on the Shelves. If he wants to do the signing there, it means he would need a stand which in 2018 was $1000. But if he is willing to pay for it, why not. He can do book signings in one of your stores as well. It is not only traditional publishers that nominate the best books for the prizes. An author needs his publisher to do it for him. He cannot nominate himself. This will up grade your standards and reputation as publishers. In the past, self-publishing companies were not even allowed to take part in book exhibitions but now, all publishers can.

This is not the first time I have enrolled in a parapsychology course so I can compare and contrast. This course covers a lot of themes which in other courses were missing, It was enjoyable and challenging and gave me the space to express my opinions on such an important scientific research which is often taken very lightly or ignored. The thesis at the end open to any theme of my choice gave me the opportunity t o express my personal opinion on psychics which other colleges do not seem to give priority to despite there are many psychics used by the police to unravel cold cases of missing persons. Congrats to Open College UK for being so open minded.

I think this company can improve by not wasting writers' time. First and foremost it is part of another publisher The Book Guild Publishers. So if you submit your book to both publishers, you might think they will respond differently. No, they don't they even send you a photocopy reject note. The problem is they do not realise that when writers submit their work to two publishers, they would think one might come up with a different decision. Just be sure you do not waste time waiting for a different answer if one or the other reject your book. If you check you can see they operate from the same offices with the same address and contact details. It's time publishers become time- conscious, because not all writers are spring chickens. Some might be in their seventies and have no time to waste. Why operate under two different names if the opinion will always be the same from both publishers? It only wastes precious time, especially when a book has taken a writer seven years of his life to write, research and market.

Nothing, I never published with them because they ask you to invest thousands of dollars without even having seen the book!
Does that even make sense? The questions they asked me were how much did I intend to invest? The cheapest cost was: less than $10,000? and then the costs continue to climb up to I believe $100,000>
With that sum of money, I would get better service and adverts on advertising boards by a Hollywood star in Times Square!
I'll leave it to the reader to make his own deductions about Green Leaf Publishers.

I think the first thing is to distinguish between the authors who submitted a publication query, or a MS to which you replied; "we do not publish Catholic Authors" which is in itself discriminatory, and those who you bothered to read the Ms before you actually turned it down.

The MS is now in the hands of one of the biggest publishers in the UK and as always when bad things happen, it means something better will always turn up. That day was during this year not 2023.

I am not going to waste my time here arguing that what they said here is completely made up. They had the MS and never read it. That being said I read other reviews about them and there have been case they did not pay writers their royalties and I quote

29 Jan 2014 — They've broken contracts and failed to pay out royalties earned, and they've got the gall to charge nearly $400 to the people they've already ...
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I've been marketing my work for a very long time, 47 years to be exact. Every time I submitted work, I hardly can count the times an editor would answer my submission with a rejection or an acceptance slips within less than 24 hours. Not only, I lost count how many hundreds of my submissions over the years actually were never acknowledged and to date, I have no idea whether these were even read at all or simply binned.

Fenechty broke the record because my work was read within less than 24 hours, and it's appearing in one of their anthologies. I've always argued that IT technology, and email should have facilitated communication, but truth be told, now we have publishers, not only forgetting all about ethics but totally disrespecting authors by having the gall to tell them ahead in the submission guidelines that they will only write back to them, IF and that a big IF, they intend to publish their work. To add insult to injury, authors are not permitted to submit this work anywhere else and a long wait of six months is now the new fashion adopted by many.

I am a publisher of a literary magazine myself, I answer all emails with an acknowledgement, write to contributors with a rejection or acceptance slip and do this within one or two weeks. Well for a one-man run operation, I guess next to the above mentioned publishers who treat authors like their door mats, I can say I am better than they are on all fronts.

Fenechty are among the publishers, that are humane, respectful to authors, even to me who am Maltese not even English. Hence why I will be submitting my work to them on regular basis because at least they treat writers with the respect they deserve.

Well done to these publishers, please keep up the excellent work and thank you for being there at such difficult times.