Six-year-old Author Gets 23-book Contract? Sure, and Pigs Fly!

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The world press recently carried a story about a 6-year-old boy in Great Britain getting a lucrative contract to write 23 books from an American publisher. The story was a hoax.

Atlanta, GA, September 15, 2010 (PressReleasePoint) -- A number of worldwide newspapers and online news outlets, particularly in Great Britain, recently carried a story about a 6-year-old boy who was said to have been offered a 23-book deal with a U.S. publisher. The deal, worth thousands of dollars, supposedly was offered after the publisher liked his first book, Me and My Best Friend, about the boy and his dog.

According to Southern Review of Books editor Noel Griese, who has a story about the “contract” in the current issue of the online Southern Review of Books newsletter (http://tinyurl.com/7rmf2n), the story is a hoax.

Among the UK newspapers taken in whole cloth by the story were the Daily Mirror, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph. Among the many U.S. outlets falling for the fraudulent story was MediaBistro’s GalleyCat site – which has since retracted the story.

A story by reporter Paul Whyatt at the “This Is Derbyshire” Web site in the UK originated the worldwide media coverage.

According to the Derbyshire story, Leo’s mother, Jamie Hunter, a novelist who lives at Derby Road in Derbyshire, and writes under the pseudonym J.S. Huntlands, “gave her literary agency Leo’s tale, and they brought it to the attention of U.S. publisher Strategic Book Publishing,” which then offered the alleged 23-book deal.

As to Jamie Hunt’s author credentials, she wrote a novel about domestic violence, Nick: Twisted Minds, which she paid to publish with U.S. vanity press AuthorHouse.

According to TheCelebrityCafe.com Web site, Strategic Book Publishing liked Leo’s book so much that they agreed to a contract in which Leo will receive “20 percent from early sales of the 25-page books. But this will rise to 50 percent if more than 500 are sold.” Leo supposedly will write under the same pseudonym as his mother, J.S. Huntlands, to protect his privacy.

Trouble is, the story is a hoax. Mom Jamie paid Strategic to publish Me and My Best Friend in July 2009, when son Leo was only 4. In the introduction to the book, she writes, “Thank you to my son for the inspiration to write this series.”

As for a publishing deal, Robert Fletcher, the principal in Strategic Book Group, responding from China, where he attended the 2010 Beijing Book Fair, said there were no contracts at his company with Leo Hunter.

There’s a camp that believes publicity sells books, and that any publicity is good publicity. “Here we have a story that went around the world, in all probability resulting in millions of impressions,” noted editor Griese “Did all that publicity sell any books? On Sept. 5, after the publicity had played out, the paperback children’s book was languishing at #6,099,472 on Amazon.com, about as bad as an Amazon ranking can get, with no upward movement.”

If there’s another lesson to be learned, according to Griese, it’s that it's important for aspiring authors to remember that there are hundreds of hard-working publishers, large and small, who don’t charge to publish books. “If you can’t find a conventional publisher, do your due diligence research and don't fall for a seductive sales pitch that's too good to be true. Your hard work deserves better,” Griese said.
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