The overall ethos of the group involves is a "minimally-viable-product" model. In essence, you write something up as fast as you can, giving it the least amount of quality that you can get by with while still being able to sell it. And do it again and again, a million times. This is commonplace practice now, but publishing changes fast, and at the time, it was the hot new thing.
No, this isn't true.
Yes they advocate rapid release, but they also stress as good a quality as possible.
Anderle and Martelle started 20Booksto50k after being hounded out of Kboards for spouting radical ideas. The stupid thing is, they worked. Anderle is 7 figures a year now, and Martelle is 6. Anderle hasn't left the top 10 of SF&F since he got there the first time. His first series is 21 books long, and the sequel series just continued on just as strong. There is no doubting the quality of both their writing.
Both of them run their writing like a business. They get their words out each day no matter what else is going on. Anderle is more of a publisher now, but he still gets his words written. He advocates building a universe, and then letting co-authors play in it, and he IS the master of this now.
I joined 20Books group while I was wide and floundering, trying to get help. They gave it. I went to the 20Books London event early this year, and it completely turned me around.
I'm not in the group anymore. But not because of the message and help. Because they dont have a moderator or a moderation policy I can live with. The moderators are all 'tone' based. They will ban you because they didn't like the tone of your post, even when they are the only ones who can see the tone. I suggested in a private message the mod had misunderstood a locked post, and found myself banned for a week. I argued the case with Craig Martelle, and he didnt like my 'tone' either, and left it stand. I told him to make it permanent, since I would not be putting myself under that kind of moderation, since it amounted to walking in a minefield and never knowing which post would get you banned again.
No beef with the aims of the group, just the people doing the moderation, and how they moderate. IMO none of them should be moderating. They simply are incapable of being detached enough to do the job properly. And with 25,000+ members posting constantly, they are making their own work worse than it needs to be.
MSE was a member of the group when I was there, but didn't post much. As far as I can tell, he was just a hanger-on, leeching ideas like most in there. He certainly had no influence there, and was no part of the organizers. Anyone can join, so probably all the scammer group are in there.
Hopkins was a moderator there, and one of the speakers at several of the 20Books events. After she went troppo with the trademark thing, she left the group. She was never part of the organization of the group, but was tapped for her expertise for the events.
The trademark thing started with 20Books inadvertently. Anderle has several trademarks, and he brought in a trademark lawyer to talk at the Vegas event in 2017. Anderle's trademarks are on made up words. What I think happened (I wasn't there) was not enough distinction was made about trademarking made up words, with general words. Hopkins obviously took this away, and ran with it. From what I've pieced together, pretty well everyone Hopkins asked about trademarking told her not to do it, including a lot of the 20Books people. She went ahead anyway. I've talked to Anderle about trademarking, and he is adamant about not doing it, because of the sheer cost of defending it. He had to, to protect his made up names, but his are the exceptions now. I think Hopkins misunderstood what the trademark presentation was about, and run off on a tangent she should have listened to everyone telling her not to do it. Rest is history, as they say.
The problem 20Books had at the time was, they told her not to do it, she did it. But she was one of theirs, and they were not going to turn their backs on her. They didn't support her, but they also didn't allow people to attack her in their space. Rock and a hard place. They did what Kboards do, and banned the subject from the group.
Here's the thing. If something like this happens here in the future, the topic will not be banned, but I will not allow anyone to be attacked as she was. Facts are the main thing, and originally all of the attacking was emotional. Attacking here gets you zombified, and thus removed from the discussion. But you cant do this on FB, because the groups are primitive, and the mod tools basic. At worst, any such thing here ends up in the opt-in Prison, which is why I created the area in the first place. If it never gets used much, well and good.
I have no problem with the 20Books people coming back to the community here. They have useful insights for newbies, and their FB group is way too large now to even control properly. But they probably wont. Once burned and all that.
As far as joining the 20Books FB group, go for it.
The thing is though, there are enough ex-20Books people around in here to give you the same information here as you'll get in there. Its just a matter of asking the right question.
Anderle had some really radical ideas back in 2015. He proved them. Its that simple. The first thing he said to me when I met him face to face in London, was WTF did you leave KU for? He was right, I should never have left, in spite of the bug ravaging my reads numbers at the time. What I took away from London has changed everything for me.
