Editor’s note: Chris James is absent, recovering from another bout of the highly infectious disease, FailedWriteritis. In his place, for this edition of Indie News Beat we are pleased to welcome some very special guests: former Monty Python stars Jon Cleaze and Erik Idol!
Jon Cleaze: Hello everyone! I’m here today to tell you about a wonderful new opportunity for all of you sad, little self-publishing authors out there whose books no-one’s ever heard of. Oh dear! Did I say ‘sad’?! Oh my, please forgive me! Ha, ha! Of course I meant to say ‘pathetic’. Oh well [claps hands], the news is this: The Guardian newspaper has begun a new, monthly competition to find the very best self-published books. Marvelous, isn’t it? Yes, I thought you’d like it. So now, you’ll be able to submit your tawdry self-published book to The Guardian and find out if it really is any good at all. Oh dear! Did I say ‘tawdry’?! Ha, ha! Of course I meant to say ‘crap’.
Erik Idol [tapping Cleaze on shoulder]: Er, excuse me.
Jon Cleaze: Yes? What do you want?
Erik Idol: Well, I was wondering…
Jon Cleaze: Yes?! Come on, spit it out! I haven’t got all day!
Erik Idol: I’d like to submit my novel to The Guardian Self-Publishing competition.
Jon Cleaze: Well go on then! All you have to do is email a copy to the email address they give you. Is that so difficult?
Erik Idol: But I live in America now.
Jon Cleaze: Ah, well, of course you can’t enter your pointless little opus unless you live in Great Britain.
Erik Idol: Why?
Jon Cleaze: What?
Erik Idol: Why?
Jon Cleaze: Well… because… because you just can’t! You’ve got to live in Great Britain. Isn’t it obvious?! Even to a cretinous, amoeba author like you?!
Erik Idol: So, if I live in America, I can’t enter?
Jon Cleaze: No, you can’t. Now sod off.
Erik Idol: What about if I lived in Canada?
Jon Cleaze: No.
Erik Idol: Australia?
Jon Cleaze: No.
Erik Idol: New Zealand?
Jon Cleaze: No!
Erik Idol: China?
Jon Cleaze: NO! The competition is only open to hopeless hacks who live in Great Britain. Now go away you annoying little nobody, and take those 300 pages of toilet paper you call a book with you.
Erik Idol: So why did they announce it on their website, then? I mean, the last time I checked, the internet could be accessed by anyone in the whole world. And the population of Great Britain accounts for less than 1% of the world’s population.
Jon Cleaze: Of course The Guardian announced the competition on its website so as many people as possible would hear about it. I would’ve thought that was obvious, even to a single-celled, sewer-dwelling organism like you, who probably doesn’t know the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’.
Erik Idol: So they announced it to the world, even though over 99% of people in the world wouldn’t be able to enter? Sounds a bit stupid to me.
Jon Cleaze: Well it would, wouldn’t it? I mean, really. Call yourself an author and you don’t even know that Great Britain is a hermetically sealed island? Ha, ha! I don’t know why The Guardian is even bothering to waste its time on those of you vocabulary-challenged, pigswill-eating bookwrights who do live in Great Britain.
Erik Idol: I read a blog post which said it’s just another scam. The Guardian are running their competition with an outfit called Legend Press. Turns out Legend Press is a holding company and one of its subsidiaries is called New Generation Publishing, which sells self-publishing “packages” that cost up to £1,699, and most of what they offer I can find out how to do here on Indies Unlimited for free.
Jon Cleaze: Ha, ha! Well done, matey! Congratulations, me old mucker! It seems you’re not the dim-witted, knuckle-dragging failed little scribe you’ve been making out to be!
Erik Idol: No, I’m just trying to find some readers.
Jon Cleaze: And so is everybody else… Really, what is the matter with you people?! Do you think anyone cares about your hopeless opus?! Companies only want to bleed as much money out of you as they can… Look, let me put this in language you’ll understand [Cleaze punches Idol in the face. Idol collapses.] There, that’s better! [Claps hands.] Right! And incidentally, here’s an interesting piece of trivia that not many people know: Amazon actually got the idea for KDP Select when they watched our Spanish Inquisition sketch, because they knew that none of you pathetic self-publishing authors would ever expect to have to give away millions of free copies of your books when you were writing them! Ha, ha! Ha, ha!
[Cleaze gets squashed flat by a large weight which falls from the sky and has ‘10 tons’ written on the side of it.]
Disclaimer: This post is intended as a decongestant for those readers suffering from an excess production of bile. No actual pythons were harmed during its production, nor indeed approached, consulted, or in any other way involved.
Love 😀
I so miss those guys.
Thank you for the laugh Chris
Ha! Thank you. 😀
Umm … I hate to mention it, but that should be a 16-ton weight…
Love it Chris!
Excellent!
You’re a splash of bright sunshine on an otherwise rainy Friday! Thanks!
A fun read! Thank you.
Timeless humour! Well done, Chris. I think you nailed this one.
What if I brought them a shrubbery? Would they let me enter then? 😉
Great stuff, Chris.
I’m all for calling out a scam, but I think it’s unfair to suggest we shouldn’t use the internet if we’re not in or selling to the USA. The internet is a global tool, not a North American one, and not everything on it has to be applicable to every single user.
This was just wonderful—you’ve captured the very essence. I could imagine them both in this scene. Please inject this somewhere in a book.
-giggles- I read about that competition too! And then went ‘awwww….’ But maybe if the Guardian effort is a success, others will jump on the bandwagon. We can dream, right?
Haha, definitely sounds Monty Pythonese to me.
Nice one.
May we assume you have vetted the terms and conditions of this Competition? I find them…uh…interesting. They can publish non-exclusively and royalty free your winning entry?
I’ve been known to misread things.
Hey Tim,
A lot of people complained and The Guardian changed that bit of the rules to make it clear they’ll only use the book in connection with the competition. But the fact that entrants must be UK resident drives me nuts, and makes the whole competition a joke.
Thanks for all your positive comments, guys! If you thought this post was funny, why not check out my hilarious comedy/picture book, called The B Team and Me, or how five adorable puppies-
[Chris James gets squashed flat by a large weight which falls from the sky, etc. etc.]