A LORD’S LIFE OR AN OVAL VIEW? LOOK NO FURTHER FOR THE PERFECT LONDON BARGAIN
Warren Buffett, an American investment entrepreneur, once said “Price is what you pay – value is what you get”. In an age of austerity, a thing of value is a thing of beauty. And so the occasional unforeseen bargain is indeed a cause to rejoice; particularly one so close to the heart of the capital city.
It is not hard to construct a case why joining Surrey County Cricket Club is a must-do for anyone with even a vague connection with cricket or, for that matter, with London. In fact, even forget cricket. Richie Benaud, the former Australian Test player and well-respected commentator, once described a cricket ground thus: “A cricket ground is a flat piece of earth with some buildings around it”. A bit bland, that one Richie, but there’s nothing bland about the buildings surrounding the KIA Oval in Kennington.
As I sit on the sun-bathed top tier of the members’ Pavilion balcony on a glorious May evening, I have an unrivalled view of the London skyline. To my left, beyond cover point, the mighty Battersea power station’s twin towers. And dead ahead, lurking behind the Harleyford Road OCS Stand, the Spooks building - home to MI5, those saviours of the universe. To the left of the gas-holders are the Houses of Parliament, and next to them, beyond fine leg: Big Ben. The London Eye dominates the sky-scape beyond backward square-leg. And last but not least, to my right beyond the deep mid-wicket boundary, is the Post Office Tower.
Two hundred feet below me, Mark Ramprakash elegantly cover drives Glamorgan’s Will Owen through extra cover to the boundary to bring up his 35,000th run in first class cricket. This is acknowledged by a ripple of applause from the 450 or so spectators in the 22,500 capacity ground - (I did have a go at counting them, but one or two kept moving). Swiftly the business of post-luncheon somnolence or subdued discourse resumes. Some read the paper, some score and I even note one or two souls for whom the accurate drawing of the batsman’s scoring “cartwheel” seems to be the mark of a good day out.
I need a drink. And so I wander inside to the adjacent “100th Hundred” restaurant and bar on the top level of the Pavilion. My companions and I had earlier lunched here on sausage and mash, onions and gravy with perfectly cooked fresh vegetables, followed by coffee and a Mars bar for £8.50 a head. Compare that to my breakfast, purchased from the marquee outside the Pavilion: an egg sandwich on white bread, bottle of water and a coffee for £9.70.
Even the smart blazer-attired young man who had rushed to serve me was staggered.
“Wow! That’s expensive,” he’d proclaimed. There was of course, at those prices, no one else to serve.
‘Daylight robbery’, I’d replied, conspiratorially, ‘Glad I beat the rush.’
I order two and a half pints of Marston’s Pedigree for my companions, and take a twenty pound note from my wallet.
‘That’s seven pounds, sir.’ Blimey – £2.80 a pint! In London! At the Oval! Gosh!
And that’s not all; annual membership of Surrey is a mere £165 - or £135 for country membership - if you can prove that your residence is more than fifty miles, as the crow flies, from the Oval. And for this you get entry to all LV County Championship, CB40 and T20 matches, in fact all matches other than internationals, and access to that wonderful Pavilion. Of course, the deal clincher is that a decent pint of beer will cost you, as a member, a mere £2.80, whereas non-members have to fork out a whopping £4.20 for a pint of Fosters.
I return to my seat to find my friend slumped sound asleep; so I sip my pint and wrestle with The Times crossword as Croft sets about trying to uproot the obstinate Davies from the crease.
Success, for both of us, is limited. Croft, wicket-less at the pavilion end, tosses the ball to Cosker, putting me in mind of a comment by the much-missed Brain Johnston on BBC Radio 4’sTest Match Special: “Ray Illingworth has just relieved himself at the pavilion end.” Folding my paper away, I turn to Iain Smythe, a Glamorgan supporting Surrey member, seated on my right.
I ask him if being a member of Surrey has the stigma of the impoverished country cousin when compared to Middlesex membership with access to the Lord’s Pavilion and all that that entails. Was it, I ask, a bit like driving a Porsche Boxster? Everyone knows that the car you really want is the 911, but you can’t quite afford one.
“Not in the least”, he replies, not at all put out by the directness of my question. “In fact, it’s actually slightly cheaper to become a member of Middlesex than Surrey and the benefits are pretty much the same as here. Other than the fact that the catering isn’t as good at Lord’s and the price of a pint is more expensive, I’d say there’s not much in it”. Our conversation is interrupted as Davies edges to Wright off the bowling of Owen and departs amid measured applause. Perhaps this reflects the membership’s puzzlement at the curiously timed but highly publicised “coming out” of Davis, the first openly-gay cricketer. Although for most, the question is “Who cares?”
So with the striking revelation that access to the “Home of Cricket” is equally good value, I just have to ask Iain: “Why Surrey? Both have a Long Room, both are steeped in history, both host at least one annual test match and both are in easily accessible areas of London. So why don’t you join Middlesex”.
“I think it’s just that it’s a little less stuffy here, less formal.”
“And it has comfortable seats, not those damned white slatted wooden benches”, my friend contributes, awakened from his pre-tea nap by the departure of Maynard, clean bowled by Owen.
There is certainly a more relaxed atmosphere at the Oval. I had visited Lord’s the previous week, coincidentally to watch Middlesex play Glamorgan in the LV County Championship, as the guest of a member. Lunchtime access from the pavilion, to inspect the pitch and to walk on the hallowed turf is only permitted provided that one retains one’s jacket. No jacket: no re-admission. And as for the removal of one’s tie – forget it. The Oval has a less rigid dress code: in fact, none at all, as far as I can see, although most members wear at least “smart casual”.
Both grounds have a vast army of day-glowed custodians of order, without which one must now assume, every public event would degenerate into complete anarchy. I counted almost 40 at the Oval; that’s roughly a ratio of one for every ten spectators. Quite how this is justified or what they’re supposed to do is beyond me. The day-glow vest-wearers appear to have replaced the peaked-cap wearers as a body of people wielding disproportionate power.
Speaking of power, on my next run to the bar, I notice that John Major has sat down three rows behind us. He is just another cricket lover, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he occasionally surreptitiously draws a batsman’s cartwheel.
Time to go. The last five Surrey wickets fall in a flurry, producing a mere 48 runs, just enough to avoid the follow-on but Glamorgan have a first innings lead of 135 so the game is theirs to lose. They have a well-crafted twenty-five boundary double century by Petersen to thank for this. Without this, the Glamorgan scorecard would have looked as scant as the queue for coffee and sandwiches at the marquee.
I would love to have spent the next two days languishing in the sun, eating reasonably priced sausage and mash, drinking the cheapest beer in town and maybe chatting to John Major about Norma’s love of garden peas; I can think of nothing more appealing than casually watching the drama of this low-key contest unfold, doing the crossword and dozing in the sun, but sadly, work gets in the way.
Harold Pinter once said: “I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either”.
Even if you don’t share his view on cricket; come to think of it – even if you hate cricket, membership of Surrey or Middlesex County Cricket Clubs - either of these great British institutions - makes sound sense. For this is the best value view in town. DRIVING TO SPAIN? HOW TO TELL THE COPS FROM THE ROBBERS
It’s a glorious Sunday evening and I’m drifting along the M50 - the eastbound Madrid ring road - without a care in the world. I’ve just successfully navigated my way around the capital city, sans satellite assistance, and I’m on the road to Burgos; a shower, a beer and a decent meal.
The five lane-ed orbital artery is almost empty; so I’m suddenly aware of a black BMW following me. My transport is an ancient Jeep Wrangler - a left hooker with damaged side-panels, no off-side indicators or brake lights, bearing British trade-plates; I’m returning this heap to the UK for a mate.
Next thing the BMW is alongside. Two guys up front: the passenger wears aviator glasses, both have slicked-back hair and leather jackets, and there’s one lumpy bloke in the rear. Aviator lowers his window and flourishes what looks like a warrant badge. My heart beats faster. We do, after all, have unmarked cop cars and plain clothes officers back home - and I am driving a vehicle which almost begs to be investigated. However, there’s something not quite right here; maybe it’s the fat guy in the back, or maybe the absence of a blue light, so I put my foot down.
Thirty seconds later, they’re alongside again; more warrant card waving and finger-pointing. I shake my head; I’m not stopping. Then Aviator pulls out a gun and motions me towards the hard shoulder. My heart-rate maxes out as I pathetically raise the side window as if it were bullet-proof. A voice inside my head screams that plain-clothed cops just don’t pull guns for traffic offences, while another voice quietly enquires if I have the slightest idea just what colourful past this vehicle might have had.
And so I do the only thing that I can think of; unless, of course, they’re really going to use the gun: I pull out my phone and snap off a few shots of Aviator and his mates, put my foot to the floor and urge the 4L V8 to break the laws of physics. It works; they hang back and half an hour later my heart rate returns to normal.
With the holiday season almost upon us and the annual exodus to Spain, unwary motorists are sure to provide rich pickings for Spain’s “Highway Pirates” who seek out the vulnerable, the unfortunate, or the just plain stupid. The problem has reached such proportions that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have seen fit to issue advice, via their website, for motorists planning to drive through Spain. With an economy that has shrunk by 3.6% since 2007, car-jacking is Spain’s only growth industry; but not one that’s going to set the maracas clacking in the exchequer. An unnamed source at the FCO told me that last year there were 111 reported cases of road-side robbery involving British nationals; crimes in which the drivers had pulled over at the behest of the criminals. There were a further 43 incidents of attempted robbery which were reported to the Spanish police and relayed to the FCO.
The black BMW which almost fooled me has been reported to the Spanish police on no less than seven occasions, but its occupants have only once managed to steal anything.
Diego Pronso of the Spanish transportation police, V.G.T, told me that many attempts at car-jacking are not reported. “Many more attempts fail due to the vigilance of the targets, and sometimes the bogus cops are not so convincing”.
But bogus cops are not the only MO of the “car jackers”. Last August, Robert Williams, from Cardiff, was driving to the Costa Blanca in his beloved “Scoobie”. His wife was at the wheel and he was dozing in the passenger seat. ‘I noticed a Silver Audi A8 4.2 going past...a couple of minutes later, I saw another one (or so I thought, but it was the same one). Then, a minute or two later, there was a huge loud bang, which jolted me upright! I immediately thought that the engine had blown up and if we stay on the motorway, the car will come to a stop and we will be dead very quickly.’ The Silver A8 came past with the passenger waving for him to stop, as there appeared to be something wrong with the car. ‘The missus wasn’t happy, but I insisted that we get off the carriageway immediately and pull over, right behind where the Audi parked, on the hard shoulder’. The Audi passenger came running over and motioned Robert’s wife to get out and have a look.
‘The guy had looked totally inoffensive,’ said Robert. ‘Middle-aged, slightly rotund; cap with glasses. Then I got out of the car and he legged it.’ Robert is 6’7” and weighs 18 stones. ‘Turns out they had used a stone fired from a catapult to strike the car and make the noise to get us to pull over’
When Williams reported the incident to the local Police, they enquired if it was an Audi A6 before he gave details of the car. ‘I said it was an A8, and I pointed out some fella in their photo id book, as resembling our man and that was it.’
‘The guy had looked totally inoffensive,’ said Robert. ‘Middle-aged, slightly rotund; cap with glasses. Then I got out of the car and he legged it.’ Robert is 6’7” and weighs 18 stones. ‘Turns out they had used a stone fired from a catapult to strike the car and make the noise to get us to pull over’
When Williams reported the incident to the local Police, they enquired if it was an Audi A6 before he gave details of the car. ‘I said it was an A8, and I pointed out some fella in their photo id book, as resembling our man and that was it.’
But John and Amanda Hart, from Londonderry, were not so lucky. Travelling from Barcelona to Santander, they left their car and caravan in the car park of a motorway services while they ate lunch. ‘I even put a wheel clamp on one of the van’s wheels’, said John, 67, a retired security consultant, ‘and I put a crook-lock on the steering wheel. I’d heard about people having their ‘vans towed away at rest areas’. John needn’t have bothered; the highway pirates punctured one of his car’s rear tyres, followed at a discreet distance when John and Amanda left, and waved them over as John became aware that he had a tyre problem. ‘Thinking about it now, it was quite obvious, but at the time you just focus on the problem with the vehicle’. John and Amanda were left standing on the hard shoulder thirty miles from Logrono, while the thieves drove off with their money, passports, and phones; and, of course, their caravan. Their car was later recovered near Logrono but police were unable to trace the caravan.
Pronso believes that most car-jackers aren’t interested in the vehicles. ‘There are two types of MO for this crime,’ he said, ‘most are after the contents: passports, money, phones – anything of value they can readily sell. And then there are the organised gangs. They are mostly Romanian or Bulgarian, sometimes Arabs; they move the cars quickly to Eastern Europe and sell them through a network for cash. If the theft is reported to us rapidly, we sometimes catch them, but the problem occurs when the victims are abandoned on empty stretches of road with no phones.’
Leading criminologist Professor Allan Brimicombe, Head of the Centre for Geo-Information Studies at the University of East London, has been tracking the rise of Spanish car-jacking for some time. He concurred with Pronso’s findings: ‘The organised gangs tend to be Romanians and Bulgarians - in fact Roma with networks for the disposal of the cars back home, and elsewhere in Europe. One needs a method of disposing of the vehicles for money abroad or else the authorities would notice the number plate or change of ownership.’ He added: ‘Both the organised gangs and those operating in isolation tend to be opportunistic. They target elderly couples, or single men, and frequently operate around ports or airports, following their targets until they find a quiet stretch of road. Hire cars are a common target.’ Whilst car-jacking may cause huge inconvenience and distress to the victims, Brimicombe pointed out that - thus far - no one has actually been hurt. ‘It would appear’, he said, ‘that if the victim stands up to them, or the choreographing of the crime takes too long, the perpetrators will back off. Just like any scam, the victim must believe that they are all singing from the hymn sheet until they’re onto the last chorus.’
I asked him about the gun which Aviator pointed at me: ‘…almost certainly a replica’, he replied, ‘armed robbery in Spain still carries a sufficiently lengthy sentence to deter all but the most hardened of criminals. That’s one of the few positive legacies of the Franco era.’
But for how long will this remain the case? With rising unemployment and little prospect of a reversal of its shrinking economic growth, those who turn to car crime in Spain for a living are getting more and more desperate. Add to this the slashing of prison sentences, as Brussels continues to place the Human Rights of criminals above those of their victims, and surely it is only a matter of time before road-side piracy ends in tragedy?
Gordon Maitland is the Madrid-based European manager of Datawatch, a company which analyses political, social and economic trends. ‘Unemployment hit 20.7% in Spain last month – easily the highest rate in Europe, and 40% of those are aged under 25. There are a huge number of immigrants who came to work but now have none (many from Bulgaria and Romania) and the police are not always too active. There is little hope of imminent economic recovery. All this means that people are becoming desperate and three square meals and a bed in prison isn’t such a bad prospect to many.’
Maitland added that Spain is not a violent country and pointed to data presented by the UN – the United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (CTS), 2010, which placed Spain outside the top ten of European countries. ‘Per 100,000 of population, crime – and here I refer to crimes of violence, theft and burglary – Spain is one of the lowest with fewer than 500 incidences.’ And guess who is top of that ‘league of shame’? Give up? Britain of course, with a staggering 2,034 per 100,000 residents and over one million violent crimes reported each year compared to fewer than 320,000 in Spain. Cobb added: ‘It’s not so much the frequency… [of car-jacking]… – thankfully they still have a fairly low strike rate - as the nature of the crime. It’s really unpleasant to be stuck on a highway with nothing but the clothes you stand up in. But it is preventable.’
And this is why the FCO have published advice on their website: http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/europe/spain.
When driving, be wary of approaches by bogus police officers in plain clothes travelling in unmarked cars. In all traffic-related matters, police officers will be in uniform. Unmarked police vehicles have a flashing electronic sign on the rear window which reads Policía (Police) or Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), and normally have blue flashing lights which they will activate when they stop you. In non-related traffic matters, police officers may be in plain clothes but you have the right to ask them to identify themselves. The Civil Guard or Police will only ask you to show them your documents and will not ask for your bag or wallet/purse. Should the police ask for ID, show your passport, driving licence or any other photographic ID.
If in any doubt, you should talk through the car window and contact the Civil Guard on 062 or Police on 112 and ask them to confirm that the registration number of the vehicle corresponds to an official police vehicle.
Be aware of 'highway pirates' who target foreign-registered and hire cars, especially those towing caravans. Some will (forcefully) try to make you stop, claiming there is something wrong with your car or that you have damaged theirs. If you decide to stop to check the condition of your/their vehicle, stop in an area with lights/people, e.g. a service station, and be extremely wary of anyone offering help.
If in any doubt, you should talk through the car window and contact the Civil Guard on 062 or Police on 112 and ask them to confirm that the registration number of the vehicle corresponds to an official police vehicle.
Be aware of 'highway pirates' who target foreign-registered and hire cars, especially those towing caravans. Some will (forcefully) try to make you stop, claiming there is something wrong with your car or that you have damaged theirs. If you decide to stop to check the condition of your/their vehicle, stop in an area with lights/people, e.g. a service station, and be extremely wary of anyone offering help.
And so this year, if you’re off to sunny Spain, not catching the Costa Brava plane; to meet senoritas by the score, or even, perhaps a matador…keep your wits about you and practice what is usually second nature to us British: treating all foreigners with the upmost suspicion.
IT’S PUBLISHING, JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT.
There is, according to novelist, journalist and broadcaster, Julia Stephenson, a case to be made for the banning of books. Not, of course, all books; just books which are, as yet, either unwritten or unpublished. Furthermore, she would ban literary competitions, such as the ‘National Novel-Writing Month’.
‘It’s unkind to encourage people to write when there are too many unwanted books in the world already’, said Stephenson. And she should know – some of them are hers; her first book Chalet Tiara sold over 35,000 copies. Her second barely returned her advance, and her third book bombed completely. She is one of a growing army of writers, disenchanted with the established world of mainstream publishing, who have embraced the internet as a production, marketing and self-promotional tool.
These are curious times in book publishing; it is now easier than ever before, thanks to technological advances, to get your book published, but it is harder than ever before, to get anyone to buy it.
Yet Stephenson’s ambivalence - perhaps cynicism - towards the hedonistic pursuit of publication is not entirely tainted with the aroma of over-fermented grape. She has a point: ‘Novelists should be given a subsidy not to write any more, so readers could catch up the millions of perfectly good unread books that are already out there.’ In much the same way, she told me, as farmers have been given subsidies not to grow food, novelists should be subsidised not to write. I sense the presence of tongue in Ms. Stephenson’s delightfully aquiline cheek here: after all, irrespective of her declining sales figures, she is a published author, and you and I may have a masterpiece in the pipeline, but nothing with an ISBN slapped on it. This would render us…well, subsidy-less. Remember that undignified scramble for subsidies in the good old days of ‘set-aside’?
The road to publication is, at present, one without clear signposts, no matter how brilliant you are. I remember starting a particularly vitriolic debate at a dinner party some years ago by suggesting that William Shakespeare and Jane Austin were only considered to be brilliant writers of their time because they had little or no opposition. To resolve this argument, which almost had me ejected before the cheese course, I suggested it would be necessary to conduct a comparative study to on how a book got published in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how a book gets published today.
I spoke to Martin Toseland. As a writer, publisher and agent, with eleven years’ experience at Penguin and two at Harper Collins, Toseland knows as much about the current state of publishing as anyone. He told me that last year, in the UK alone, 133,000 books were published. If you include new editions of previously published books, this figure rises to a staggering 221,180. Of these, 26,452 were classed as fiction. He then showed me the bureaucratic procedure by which a commissioning editor weighs the worth of a book; an A4 spreadsheet so full of columns I had to turn it round several times before I could be sure I held it the right way up. But the only column which really matters is the one entitled: ‘NET PROFIT % TO REVENUE’. He handed me another sheet which I found equally staggering. The column headings were: ‘Target Market’, ‘The Author’, ‘Benefit’, ‘Competition’, ‘Brand Values’, ‘Selling Points’ – and the most daunting: ‘PREVIOUS/COMPETITIVE TITLES – LIFETIME SALES’. This implies that to get published, an author has to have been published; not only that, she has to demonstrate how well her proposal is going to sell, and how little risk a commissioning editor is taking by acquiring the rights.
And then, when you’ve finally convinced an editor to take a punt on your tome, there is the subject of what you might get out of it. Toseland explained: ‘Advances work like this: you receive an advance payment based on sales that the publisher believes that the book will achieve. You can expect to receive anywhere between 5-10% of the royalties, depending on negotiation and your genre. Say, for example, the projected revenue from sales of your book during year one are £34,236, from which the net profit is £9,156, you would receive an advance of £5,000. One third of this is paid on acceptance, one third on completion and the final third on publication’.
‘Let’s see if I’ve got this straight, Martin,’ I said, ‘If my book is priced at, say, £9.99, it would need to sell more than 3,500 copies before I add to my advance of £5,000, paid in three lots of £1666?’
‘Correct’.
So, if my book takes a year to write, working on it for around four hours per day, five days a week, and 44 weeks per year (I used to be a teacher and still need the holidays) that would represent a return of £5.60 an hour, before deduction of any expenses, of course. This is well below the minimum wage; hardly an enticing proposition.
Once upon a time, way back in the mid ‘90s when giving a mobile number as your point of contact confirmed your status as a criminal, there was something called ‘vanity publishing’. In 1996, I had a book published. It took a year to write, and I was so sick of it, I didn’t even bother to re-read it, let alone have it properly edited. Surprisingly, it damned near got accepted by a major publisher: I still have the rejection letter from the commissioning editor at Aurum Press who positively glowed about it but…well, you can guess the rest. An agent did suggest a bit of a re-write, but I couldn’t be bothered, so eventually I got Minerva Press to pick it up. I paid £5000 and got 1500 copies of The Last Latrine into print. For this I got some editorial comment– well, quite a bit actually – and they marketed it well enough to get it into most of the major retailers: Dillons, Waterstones, and WH Smith, and all 1500 copies sold within a year. I made nearly £10,000 and was extremely happy. Sadly I was unable to take up the offer of the 2nd edition at half price as they went bust.
There were, of course, some horror stories about Minerva Press; but I can only sing their praises. The rejection slips I received were a fair indicator that I hadn’t penned a bestseller, and so vanity publishing seemed the best compromise for me. But vanity publishing still had a certain stigma – when asked who my publisher was, I would conveniently slur the ‘Press’ after Minerva, in deference to that other well respected mainstream outfit; a bit like saying you went to ‘Oxford’ when you actually went to ‘Oxford Poly’ – sorry – ‘Oxford Brookes’.
But fifteen years later this has all changed. In the old days you sent your manuscript to a publisher with a covering letter. Of course you did a bit of research in the “Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook” just to check that your work of erotic fiction didn’t land on the desk of a publisher who specialised in gardening. You would repeat this around fifty times, by which time you got either got lucky or you gave up; or vanity published. Publishers would have a huge “slush pile”; a mountain of hurriedly scanned manuscripts going nowhere, and yours, without return postage, would be placed on top of it. You may have approached an agent, but they were even less likely to share your enthusiasm than a publisher.
Nowadays, it is pointless going anywhere near a publisher, unless he is your dad or your lover. To sell your book, you need an agent, and one who will believe in you. And to do this, you must convince him, not only is your book the next blockbuster, but that you can actually produce evidence that it will sell well enough to make it worth his while.
And this is how you do it: first, you put your book out there, where anyone can read it. You do this through websites such as Authonomy (promoted by Harper Collins) Completelynovel.com, Lulu.com or Createspace.com. Here, you can receive feedback from the general public – albeit unqualified, and have a chance of being spotted by a publisher. Secondly, you promote it on social networking sites such as Twitter (best for the middle class and middle aged) or Facebook (best for voyeuristic self-obsessed commentary-giving youngsters). You can start your own blog or website and link it to these sites to promote it. With enough persistence, you can establish a fan base: an army of followers committed to your book, which will get the attention of an agent and persuade him to take you on.
This has worked for authors such as Tim Hawken whose book Hellbound was posted on Anthonomy and was taken up by publishers: Dangerous Little Books, and Miranda Dickinson, whose work Welcome to My World was spotted by Harper Collins, again through Authonomy.
And so, while Julia Stephenson’s plan to subsidise non-writing authors is novel – pardon the pun – my advice to those who think they have a book in them is to get it out there; there is no such thing as ‘vanity publishing’ any more, and you never know, some day there may just be a book shortage. So write, even if it pays less than the minimum wage.
