Jack Monroe #170 Outrageous grifting dirtbag

[MancBee]

Did she ever follow up the missing royalties? With 100% success rate in legal challenges, I would have though she would have no problem taking her former agent to court.

Her lack of any further comment on the subject is rather odd. It is almost as if she was mistaken with her assumption that she was owed in the region of 50K.

I am damned sure that if anyone owed me 50K I couldn't afford to just forget about it.

 

[blurstoftimes]

Her first agent allegedly stole several years of royalties from her first two books. She talks about it here but I strongly recommend Ctrl+F for "agent" because this is, even by Jack standards, unreadably self-pitying:

Poverty lingers a septic wound, choleric, stenching, bursting rancid all over your Sunday best.

You jest at scars, that never felt a wound, I muttered to my phone screen as an avatar of a sneering man stared back, his grainy face positioned just to the left of his barbed jab about why a ‘best…

cookingonabootstrap.com

ETA: I don't like to go into conspiracy theories but it's worth noting that she had already left her first agent (the alleged thief) by the time her second book came out. Could be a contractual thing but always struck me as odd that this person stole her royalties from a book she had published while represented by someone else.

This has got to be the worst thing she has ever written...all ending in a beg of course. Was Lord Jesus Christ her girlfriend at this time?

 

[Eurgh]

‘I read all my emails’ Hahahahahahahaha

 

[Emmapism]

Cheap weekend in Paris? Is that possible ?

No

I treated a mate of mine to a weekend in Paris because she had a really really crappy year about 7 years ago. I think it cost about 600-700 and that was as cheap as I could get it without it being depressing.

 

[Cookiecookie]

Spoiler: Inappropriate books

when I was about 12 I read a book called Christiana F and it was a true story about a girl living in Germany, she got on to heroin along with her boyfriend as a young teen and one day she came home got caught him selling himself to an old man to fund his habit when this spured her on to becoming clean. The harrowing life they had on drugs and the in depth experience she wrote about going cold turkey really made an impression in me as a young teen.

It's a really interesting book. The film is fantastic too.

 

[bowiethesdmn]

Her first agent allegedly stole several years of royalties from her first two books. She talks about it here but I strongly recommend Ctrl+F for "agent" because this is, even by Jack standards, unreadably self-pitying:

Poverty lingers a septic wound, choleric, stenching, bursting rancid all over your Sunday best.

You jest at scars, that never felt a wound, I muttered to my phone screen as an avatar of a sneering man stared back, his grainy face positioned just to the left of his barbed jab about why a ‘best…

cookingonabootstrap.com

ETA: I don't like to go into conspiracy theories but it's worth noting that she had already left her first agent (the alleged thief) by the time her second book came out. Could be a contractual thing but always struck me as odd that this person stole her royalties from a book she had published while represented by someone else.

Oh my good lord I couldn't even get past the first sentence holy tit. I picture her performing this in an overwrought Shakespearean style

 

[girolle]

This reminds me of a recent experience during homeschool for my youngest.
he used the word seduce in the correct context but the teacher decided to change it to entice as seduce wasn’t appropriate for school / his age (he’s 9 year 5 )

OT: This reminds me of when I was around that age in school and we had to do a creative writing task. It was something or other to do with water but, the point being, I used the phrase '...and if that doesn't float your boat...' as some kind of transition in my writing. The teacher was aghast but, to this day, I still don't think it was that bad! My mum still tells the story of my reception teacher asking me how I felt at the end of my first school day with me replying 'I'm knackered!' Lord only knows what the teachers at the school must have thought of me

 

[Joan of Narc]

Good morning to this post from January 2019. I’m doom scrolling because I’m trapped on the sofa with baby on me.

If she thought it was chaotic him being off school for two days pre-Covid then my goodness she had no idea what was about to hit her!

Which was it Jack? Was it just a ‘tactical vom’ or was he a ‘sick patient’ that needed carried around?

View attachment 500025

Spoiler: Talk of being sick

I don't have kids so happy to be corrected by frauen with more experience in this area but, but it seems to me really unlikely that an 8- year old child would overeat to the extent of making themselves sick. Or if they did it would be a worrying indication of some wider issue with food or an ED? When I was sick when I was younger it was always due to a virus or something.. I was never sick from overeating and I don't remember that happening to anyone I knew. Being sick at school would be really embarrassing as other kids would be likely to take the piss, so it seems unlikely that he would do a 'tactical vom'..it's not like he was a teenager who had drunk too much cheap vodka but didn't want to end their night out, which is the circumstance where that phrase is more commonly used. I hate to think that he was genuinely ill and got zero sympathy or got treated like a naughty boy or a massive inconvenience.

 

[colouredlines]

Did she ever follow up the missing royalties? With 100% success rate in legal challenges, I would have though she would have no problem taking her former agent to court.

Her lack of any further comment on the subject is rather odd. It is almost as if she was mistaken with her assumption that she was owed in the region of 50K.

I am damned sure that if anyone owed me 50K I couldn't afford to just forget about it.

From Potatoes:

The timeline of this incident is very questionable.

 

[Eurgh]

Imagine your own mother complaining on social media about what a chore it was to look after you when you were ill and basically saying she doesn’t believe you.

 

[Flibbertigibbet]

Spoiler: Inappropriate books

when I was about 12 I read a book called Christiana F and it was a true story about a girl living in Germany, she got on to heroin along with her boyfriend as a young teen and one day she came home got caught him selling himself to an old man to fund his habit when this spured her on to becoming clean. The harrowing life they had on drugs and the in depth experience she wrote about going cold turkey really made an impression in me as a young teen.

Spoiler: Inappropriate book and David Bowie

This was made into a film, Die Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo", with a cameo appearance by David Bowie - a scene was filmed at a concert. I love the scene in this clip - it's a relief from the harrowing stuff to see kids messing around.

 

[Saint_clemmie]

Spoiler: Talk of being sick

I don't have kids so happy to be corrected by frauen with more experience in this area but, but it seems to me really unlikely that an 8- year old child would overeat to the extent of making themselves sick. Or if they did it would be a worrying indication of some wider issue with food or an ED? When I was sick when I was younger it was always due to a virus or something.. I was never sick from overeating and I don't remember that happening to anyone I knew. Being sick at school would be really embarrassing as other kids would be likely to take the piss, so it seems unlikely that he would do a 'tactical vom'..it's not like he was a teenager who had drunk too much cheap vodka but didn't want to end their night out, which is the circumstance where that phrase is more commonly used. I hate to think that he was genuinely ill and got zero sympathy or got treated like a naughty boy or a massive inconvenience.

Weird to me, someone that’s had two 8-year-olds. When was this from, because in one of her lives last week she said his primary doesn’t have a kitchen?

edit: 2019. So unless he’s moved schools since then she said he has packed lunches, as school has no kitchen to provide hot meals. Weird.

 

[HotesTilaire]

Interesting that the first receipt from 2018 said she didn’t receive any royalties after 2015 - that could suggest the contract didn’t pay ongoing royalties, in fact she might have just entered into a tit contract/ one that paid a lot up front but naff all into the future.
Also, she didn’t realise at first that she was due any money until she looked into it, so what about the other money she earned from appearances, tv, Sainsburys partnerships, writing books 2, 3 etc is she trying to suggest that’s all just pocket money that wouldn’t be enough to live on, except it was enough until she became aware she was underpaid?
Sounds like bollocks.

 

[Carmina-Piranha]

I really hope our favourite Southend smol pixie slop jockey is not included in this!
(I'm sure the viggles will have something to say about it!) X

 

[Malkiavelli]

The timeline of this incident is very questionable.

She's a wannabe novelist chopping and changing her imagined masterpiece, never quite satisfied enough to put the pen down...

 

[DinosaurSenior]

I do hate to be a ...Chard Truther...but it's not a perennial so it only lasts a couple of years. So having it for ten years is odd.

I'm in the office today so will amuse myself with a rummage around in the Jack court stuff. Always a nice reminder of just how close she came to having the whole case go totally the other way...

 

[Hefflen]

She writes for pretty big publishers, I think. Generally you don't have to pay royalties back if a book doesn't earn out. But people are right to say it makes publishers reluctant to contract you again. Plenty of writers have written book 1 in a fiction series to a good advance, then sales have been low so the rest never came out or there was no new contract. Book stores won't 'order in' large quantities of a book if a previous one didn't sell well. They'll reduce orders a bit each time until it's pointless to print it!

However 3,000 sales isn't necessarily awful. It depends on the category, how expensive the book was to print, the royalty they gave her, the forecasting they did. I know many fiction books sell around that amount (but are presumably much cheaper to publish). But I would say a well-established food writer with a large social media background could easily do better than this.

Edited to add: Pinch of Nom sold over a million copies: https://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/free-article/food-and-drink-book-sales-in-the-uk/

You can tell how much she's valued by the quality of her books. Where are the full colour photos, for example?

(nb I don't work in publishing but years and years ago I did briefly work in bookselling and then book publishing)

 

[Shawads]

I hope when Jack is dusty (in restaurant parlance) no one carries on her body of work.

Oh I think someone from here could do a fantastic job. Could be a tattle collab with profits to charities in a transparent way

 

[bowiethesdmn]

OT: This reminds me of when I was around that age in school and we had to do a creative writing task. It was something or other to do with water but, the point being, I used the phrase '...and if that doesn't float your boat...' as some kind of transition in my writing. The teacher was aghast but, to this day, I still don't think it was that bad! My mum still tells the story of my reception teacher asking me how I felt at the end of my first school day with me replying 'I'm knackered!' Lord only knows what the teachers at the school must have thought of me

Are you me? I remember being told off for saying I was knackered at primary school On the flip side I remember the English teacher I got on really well with in Year 5 or 6 showing me another pupil's work on the quiet because he had repeatedly spelled burger as bugger.

 

[Shawads]

Her first agent allegedly stole several years of royalties from her first two books. She talks about it here but I strongly recommend Ctrl+F for "agent" because this is, even by Jack standards, unreadably self-pitying:

Poverty lingers a septic wound, choleric, stenching, bursting rancid all over your Sunday best.

You jest at scars, that never felt a wound, I muttered to my phone screen as an avatar of a sneering man stared back, his grainy face positioned just to the left of his barbed jab about why a ‘best…

cookingonabootstrap.com

ETA: I don't like to go into conspiracy theories but it's worth noting that she had already left her first agent (the alleged thief) by the time her second book came out. Could be a contractual thing but always struck me as odd that this person stole her royalties from a book she had published while represented by someone else.

I couldn't even finish that diatribe of self pity. I'm a faithful grunka coming late to this party but even I have my limits.