I was only gone for a week, but wow, the writing drama that I’ve seen this week while I was gone. Oh my god. At first things first, Lauren K, I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had with authors that are established on this platform about how predatory her practices are. In fact, in June of 2023, Lauren K actually sent me a DM. She’d emphasized on one of her videos that she was interested in potentially teaching a course to author. So naturally I chimed in and said that I had taught a similar course back in August of 2022. I taught two courses that year. Actually. The first one was a month long class on discord about how to get traditionally public English. And the second one was a month long class on discord about how to structure your novel. The stuff that I taught in that second class actually did become the book, the five sentence method that I wrote last year. I never taught the traditionally published class again because I felt like it was more important to focus on the benefits of either indie or traditional. After all, India is a really good option for some authors. And I wanted to make sure that if I ever did a class like that again, I was showing both sides.
Lauren Kay reached out to me because she wanted to know what exactly my course entail. I told her that I had done 30 days with 30 students, and I charged them $99 each over the course of those 30 days. We had four weeks of module. I worked with the dean of the college at my master’s degree to develop this course in a college format. So I literally had graded assignments, assigned readings and coordinated discussion all hosted on discord for people who could join virtually. Lauren Kee’s response at the time was, wow, that’s a lot of work considering that you are grading 30 people’s assignments. And then her follow up was, I can’t believe you only charge $99 for that. And that was the moment that red flag started going off in my head.
Because I really do believe that there are a lot of people out there that truly have a teacher’s spirit. And I also believe that things should not come for free. However, there’s a big difference between someone with a teacher’s spirit trying to get information out to people for $99 over 30 days with graded assignments, modules and assigned reading. And someone who is charging $500 for a query critique class in an industry that is largely based in luck, especially a white woman who doesn’t really quite understand how marginalized authors are affected by that luck hint. It’s not good.
And I think that this is why I continually get on my channel and talk about this kind of stuff. I talk about the predators in the spaces because there are a lot of scam artists who come in and realize how much money people will pay to pursue their dreams if you offer them a quick shortcut through the field and say, you’ll get struck by lightning if you just take my core. I’m building a better lightning rod. I will teach you. It’s still a question of whether or not that lightning strikes that rod. It doesn’t really matter if you make it slightly taller than all the other rods in the field, because you took this one class for 500 dollar, lightning could still strike the rod 3 feet away.
One other thing that I always wanna bring up is that authors make money off of their writing. Really good, accomplished authors do not need to sell courses because they make money off of their books. When I first taught that class in August 2022, I did not have any books out that were making any money. The next month, I publish can’t Spell Treason without tea. I hosted one more class in October and then I said, okay, I’m done. Because guess what? Treason was making enough money.
I come on now and I offer options for free because I don’t really feel like you need to do more. Full disclosure, I did have to open up consulting simply because I was getting so many emails in my inbox that I physically could not handle them all. But that does not mean that I want to do consulting. I still say no to consulting because I would rather be writing because writing is where I’m making my money. I come on TikTok to talk about this stuff because this is my passion, not because I’m looking to make a quick buck. And that is the difference between the people who are trying to sell you something and the people who genuinely wanna help.
I also think it’s important to remember that not everybody who comes into this industry knows what the hell is going on in it. I have been involved in the traditional publishing space for 10+ years now. I have a Masters in Popular fiction writing and publishing. I am a USA Today bestseller. When I tell you something about the industry, it comes from 10 years of experience and hundreds of hours of networking. Lauren and Kay did not even show up on the scene until about 2021. And she got really lucky right out the gate and then assumed that was standard.
So all I’m saying here is that when you start looking at these experts who come in and start charging you money for courses on how to do something that you really wanna do, start to think about whether or not they have the credentials behind them. What right do they have to talk about that stuff? Keeping in mind that even literary agents do not have to go through any formal education to get that credential, keeping in mind that anybody can open a small press and claim themselves as a publisher, keeping in mind that anybody can open an editing business and say that they have all of these years of experience editing behind them. The world is full of scam artists who are trying to take your money. Be aware, be alert and stay focused. You don’t need to spend $500 to have a successful query. Stay vigilant, stay aware. And if it sounds too good to be true, it is because the world doesn’t work that way. I hope that this helps.