Our experiences with the UK media - so far.

Today is the official publication date for Venus: The Dark Side following the name change.

Has it made any difference for the print media? Not a jot. An editor from the Sunday Telegraph wrote to say "This is a can of worms we are not prepared to open'. When I received an email from a young woman who had read the book to say she 'LOVED' it, we corresponded a bit - I'll include her story (or more accurately her 24 year old brother's story) in a separate posting - but when I explained how the UK media have not been prepared to bring the very real issues we deal with in this book, she suggested I contact Femail at The Daily Mail and Marie Claire Magazine because they write intelligent articles affecting women. She was not impressed when I forwarded a response from one of Marie Claire's commissioning editors which basically said 'We are a woman's magazine and only publish positive women's stories - we feel this would alienate our readers, therefore we are not interested.'

The Daily Mail is a saga all of its own. For non-UK readers, The Daily Mail has a daily circulation of 2.4 million copies. It is read by middle/high income people with a significant proportion of female readers. Their "Femail" section is devoted to women's issues. Being written about in the Daily Mail would provide this book with the biggest publicity we could get for the exact type of potential reader for this book - men and women.

We notified them about the forthcoming publication of this book. While on business in Cape Town late last year I received a call from The Daily Mail - they had seen the book, loved it and wanted to buy the serialisation rights. This means they would extract up to about 2,500 words from the book and turn it into a 2 page spread. You cannot pay for such publicity. We signed contracts. They engaged a reporter to 'gut' the book by finding the bits they wanted to use. Then nothing appeared in the UK. Although, independently of all this, a piece did run in the Irish version of The Daily Mail.

Then Heather Mills made her now infamous TV tirades around the world. I spoke with Andrew Morrod an editor at Femail. He commissioned me to write 2,000 words (a two page spread) about what Heather Mills had done and how it had tied in so perfectly with what we had already written about the women who are prepared to lie, cheat, make false allegations and claim victimhood when they are in fact being the aggressor. I submitted the piece on-time to Andrew. He liked what I had to say but had an issue with my writing style - it wasn't in keeping with the style of writing at Femail. So he commissioned a female features writer to interview me and create a piece blending what I'd already written. When I was told her name, I Googled her and saw a catalogue of articles she'd written in which women were invariably the victim while men were the 'baddies'. I was somewhat disheartened. I had what is know as 'copy-approval' but newspapers are famous for not complying with various contractual agreements. Any way, she wrote the piece.

I wish to commend Amanda Cable - you did a REALLY good job on it. Thank you. Everything was set to run - the next Thursday. At 4pm ish on the Wednesday Andrew Morrod got in touch to say he really liked the piece and could I add a few hundred words more to flesh out a couple of points I'd made. The pressure was on. But together we did it.

Nothing ever ran.

No one has returned my calls or emails since. My faith in the professionalism and integrity of The Daily Mail has been somewhat dented.

And this was reinforced more recently when I emailled everyone I had had contact with at The Daily Mail to share the story of the young guy I mentioned earlier. According to his sister who is really worried about him, he is about to marry a nasty woman who has already got herself pregnant by him and seems to exhibit all the behaviour traits of the women we write about in our book - not one person at The Daily Mail responded to this story - even though my email system informed me that everyone 'opened' the email I sent.

Then there was the female reporter who contacted me for an interview for The Guardian Online - a pro-woman, and some would say anti-male left wing newspaper. She actually gave me hell on the phone. I was fine about it though. At the end I asked if she was still going to write a 'knocking piece'? She then promised me that she would write a fair piece because I had made a number of very valid points. A few days later she emailled me to say she had indeed written a fair piece - so fair in fact that her features edior had 'spiked it'. It never ran.

Then there was Jessica Brinton, features editor for Style Magazine at The Sunday Times. She wrote insisting on an exclusive to run a piece about the book on a particular date. Because it was 'exclusive' we stopped promoting the book. The piece never appeared on that date or since! Ms Brinton has never responded to follow up emails or calls!

Thank goodness for BBC local radio I say. Later today I am taking part in a phone-in on BBC Radio Leeds - a female producer and a female presenter. A few weeks ago they ran a piece on domestic abuse - it was predominantly female victim/male aggressor. In the interests of fairness and journalistic integrity they are keen to discuss the other side of the story. Good for them. BBC Bristol, BBC Cumbria, BBC Tees, BBC Belfast and BBC Manchester have all done the same. Thank you.

Its a shame Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show weren't interested. Although by a very strange coincidence in the weeks after they received an advance copy of our book, they ran a series of discussions on quite a few issues we deal with in the book - but never a call for us to take part!!

We were in contact with TV's "Richard and Judy" show - another awesome publicity opportunity for "Venus: The Dark Side". They showed lots of interest but eventually cried off saying their lawyers had advised them not to tackle the subject!

In Ireland "The Late Late Show" is a phenomenon. They were interested but wanted men to come forward to tell their stories - they won't, for a variety of reasons as we discuss in the book. I then offered to tell my own experiences. The researcher then moved the goalposts by saying "We only want Irish men." Like they've never featured non-Irish guests before!

And it goes on.