It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened 11530 Replies latest watchtower scandals

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  DerekMoors

  he took his wife and daughter and all the transportation and incidentals such as hotels and restaurants were crowdfunded by local exJWs.

  I don't know which is worse, that he's been spending his whole life with his chubby hand out or that so many xJWs have been funding his lifestyle for so long. Seriously, WTF? I had no idea it was that bad. Hey guys, don't worry about feeding your own kids or putting away for your retirement when the CO is on his way into town! Remember, Jehovah Lloyd loves a cheerful giver! Be sure to honor him with all your valuable things.

  Talk about taking people out of the cult but not the cult out of the people.

  P.S. I hope you enjoyed it Lloyd because the gravy train is over and you have nothing to fall back on. Sure you have some stragglers but forget about enjoying that lifestyle ever again.

  Wife even glanced at his YT channel for some reason this morning and quickly compared views over the years. She said it's definitely on a decline and esp. in the last year since all this came out (she didn't give specifics but she's very analytical so I take her word for it).
  
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  JeffT

  Side note - since when does a publisher give a random former JW elder an “advance”? Advances are given to celebrities or prominent people for their memoirs.

  Advances aren't just for celebrities. Unless you're dealing with a really small Indie publisher an advance of some sort is typical. Five hundred dollars would be a big advance for a first time author. Lloyd's big problem with publishing "The Reluctant Apostate" is that the thing is 200,000 words/800 pages long. The publishers know that NOBODY wants to wade through that to learn the story of some guy stuck in goofy cult.

  Edited to add, I just looked up industry standards. A typical memoir runs 60,000 to 80,000 words.
  

  So to people who say "but his videos help so much jw to get out of the cult" I say OH HELL NO!

  It's been pointed out before, and his worth mentioning again, a person who is watching anti-watchtower You Tubes is already on their way out, even if they don't know it. My wife and I left the WTBS years before the internet became a thing. The information has always been out there, you just needed the nerve to go look at it.
• 

  Toblerone5

  She said it's definitely on a decline ...

  May 2021 broadcast video rebuttal had 86,047 views. 2.1k likes,and 1,007 coments.

  May 2022 broadcast video rebuttal had 35,121 views . 1.1k likes and 320 comments...
  
  
• 

  Las Malvinas son Argentinas

  Five hundred dollars would be a big advance for a first time author.

  Lloyd expected much more. It's all there on his "I've started writing my Book" thread.

  I've started writing my book... (jehovahs-witness.com)

  (Can't resist, here are some choice excerpts..)

  I really do appreciate your careful thought regarding my project. I think I will stick with plan A (the book proposal) for now, and if that fails I can always resort to plan B (writing the book anyway, and maybe going down the self-publishing route). If I go with plan B, I may well choose a pen name and forget the whole "disclosure" idea. My idea to go out with a bang would only really work if I achieve decent circulation, which is why I'm giving this project everything to make the book as attractive as possible for a potential publisher.

  I intend to write a chapter on the JW approach to sex, marriage and morality, and how Society doctrines in this regard have impacted on me personally

  Interviews may well play some part, depending on circumstances. If I get a decent advance, I may well invest some of it in visiting a few individuals in person!

  Well, this is the furthest I've ever made it in a book-writing attempt so far - 23 pages and still going strong. Instead of doing just one sample chapter for the book proposal, I'm doing two.

  $500 wouldn't have even covered one plane ticket outside of a Zagreb-UK shuttle. He was talking about getting an advance big enough to fly all over the world and interview exJWs. He also wanted enough to fly into the annual Tahoe Apostafest.

  Seriously read through that thread. It's only 9 pages long.
• 

  DerekMoors

  I will bet that the neck beard probably failed to realize that an advance is just that; an advance on future royalties, not an added payment.

  In other words, even if a publisher paid him a $1000 advance, he wouldn't receive any royalties until that $1000 was earned from sales (and kept by the publisher to repay the advance).

  This page explains it:

  https://publishdrive.com/what-are-book-advances-how-book-advances-and-royalties-work

  "Royalties are what you get after publishing the book and meeting the advance. So you won't earn any royalties until a book's sales are equal to their advance. This is also called earning out your advance. ... So, let’s say you get $10,000. This means that the book, after publication, will have to make a $10,000 profit. And only after that can the author expect to receive additional income or royalties."
• 

  TonusOH

  200,000 words is insane. If I am remembering correctly, most genres are expected to come in at somewhere between 60,000 and 120,000 words, and it's generally more towards the former than the latter. Any publisher who would be willing to advance him a payment would almost certainly have assigned him an editor and made it clear that the manuscript would need to be pared down significantly before the editor took a look. Wasting their time with a massive eruption of text is a non-starter.

  Self-publishing was his only realistic option anyway. He would not have worked well with an editor.
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  slimboyfat

  Judging by his Amazon page he has clearly sold a large number of books and, even allowing for the probability that he has worked hard to remove negative reviews, he has a lot of positive reviews from readers. The only XJW books with more reviews (he has 403 reviews), as far as I can tell, are Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Franz (692) and Leaving the Witness by Amber Scorah. (483) That’s not bad going. I would call that success, even if there is no accounting for taste on the part of his readership.

  As for length, for example try telling Robert Caro how long the typical biography should be and he’ll triple it for you, and them some, and his readers love it. I’m not comparing LE’s work to Robert Caro by the way! I’m just saying I don’t believe in set lengths for genres.
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  JeffT

  SBF Caro writes biographies. What Evans wrote was a memoir of sorts, although the reviews sounds like he blurred the boundaries between genres, another no-no in the publishing world. I think his whole approach probably screamed "unprofessional" at whoever he was sending proposals to.
  
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  smiddy3

  Vintage ,

  Do you, smiddy3, believe that what Evans has done is morally unacceptable?

  Yes of course I do ,it just amazes me that at 609 pages it doesnt look like its going to close anytime soon.
  
  
• 

  Vintage

  JeffT said,

  ”t's been pointed out before, and his worth mentioning again, a person who is watching anti-watchtower You Tubes is already on their way out, even if they don't know it.“

  That was true of my experience. Before waking up, I’d been aware of the existence of “apostate” forums. But I didn’t linger on those forums, because that would be “wrong”. Fast forward to August 2018. I wanted “friends”, but not JW condescension. I read Ray Franz’ books. By January 2019, I was avidly searching the web and YouTube to discover the world of exjws.

  JeffT, I admire that you and your wife did research when waking up together from Watchtower. My awakening was less impressive than yours from an “erudite” perspective. But however it is precipitated, when the awakening happens, it HAPPENS,.. like a tempest striking. So, yes, I agree,... people watching anti-Watchtower YouTubes are already on their way out. How wonderful that we have found freedom, whatever our age or our material circumstances.