The Very Tiny Man With The Big Chest of Medals - A Parable

If you're surfing around anyway, why not click on A Gauche Press, click here> What's New tab on my regular website for a little parable: The Very Tiny Man With The Big Chest of Medals. It even doubles as a children's story. Rated G.

“Do Y Chromosomes Make the Man?”

Barry’s got a guest blog gig on Mar. 2, 2011. Beginning at @ 10:00 a.m. he will be a guest at Four Strong Women. http://fourstrongwomen.blogspot.com/ The topic:

“Do Y Chromosomes Make the Man?” What the hell is that all about? There’s only one way to get an answer to that question. Check out the blog!

A Tangent.

Just wanted to give anyone who happens along a tip. I've got a couple of new posts on my regular website, A Gauche Press - What's New. They're free. One's fun, or ought to be if you have any affinity for a sense of humor as warped as mine. The other is more serious and political. I've been moved these last few weeks by the events in North Africa and Wisconsin. I feel that in some ways, these events are a distant progeny of the conflicts that I attempted to address in The Flight of the Sorceress. I am so inspired by the indomitable will and power of plain, ordinary peaceful people when they have just had enough of the oppression that envelopes their daily existence. I think of them as the unsung heroes and heroines of a human spirit that I attempted to evoke on Flight of the Sorceress. My heart and hopes go out to everyone in the streets.

A Reader Comments on Flight of the Sorceress

"I found the entire book thoroughly engaging.  … Your book gave this world a substance and point of view that made me want to read more and understand the change better.  And of course I felt the intellectual, religious constriction you depicted, believing it again to be happening today.  I did not really appreciate how much was lost as fundamental, doctrinaire Christianity asserted itself at the beginning of the 5^th c.  The central roles played in particular by Glenys, Aschi and Hypatia, revolved around each other to create a plot tension and foreboding that did really work." John Nash, Molokai, HI.

ONLY FIVE DAYS TO GO!

JUST A REMINDER: ONLY FIVE DAYS TO GO TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE TWO-FER ON FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS. BUY ONE DIRECTLY FROM WILD CHILD AND I'LL SEND YOU A GIFT CERTIFICATE FOR ANOTHER FOR FREE!

The Future of Publishing, Part 2 of 3

Modernization Puts an end to the Vanity Press and Rescues Booksellers

By Ransom Stephens, Ph.D.
In most quarters of publishing, the phrase “self published” equates to “trash.” Self-publishing used to require thousands of dollars and orders of magnitude more patience and sweat than working through the conventional publishing process. Of course self-published books, by and large, sucked. Why would anyone go through all that extra work unless they couldn’t find a publisher to buy in?
But now, clicking the “upload” icon to self-publish an ebook is free and easy. Within a few weeks anyone paying attention can see if the title has legs.
I fear that I self-published the electronic version of The God Patent. I admit it, I clicked the “upload” icon at Scribd.com. Call me a self-publisher, label it “vanity press” because I didn’t send 100 queries and indulge the 18 month conventional process. Call me crazy for investing the fraction of a calorie that it took to click the mouse. The manuscript had to be ready anyway and now that we’ve all grown up on Microsoft Word, formatting no longer calls on typesetters. Besides, the publisher Numina Press, LLC found it faster than if I’d gone the conventional route.
The label “vanity press” is a legacy concept. Is Scribd.com a vanity press? Smashwords? Amazon? Google? Throw the Six Sisters into a pool with these companies and ask yourself who is likely to survive the next decade. Interesting question isn’t it? Some of the new players won’t make it, neither will some of the old players.
The most common objection to self-publishing is that crucial components of the process are ignored. That without the copyediting and proofreading expertise of the legacy publishing industry we’ll face an artistic meltdown. There is a tradition of excellence in established publishing, but more and more authors are being called on to employ their own editors and fact checkers. At writing conferences it has become a cliche for editors from legacy publishing houses to complain that they have no time to actually “edit.”
Just as independent contractors in most fields must tend their own quality control, so must authors. They either hire brilliant copyeditors or do what Numina Press does: leverage the collective expertise of a community of writers. In San Francisco, writers congregate in workshops, grottos, and communities to share the burdens of “product development.” The God Patent was vetted by a dozen authors with bestseller credentials, an attorney, two particle physicists, a Baptist Preacher, a recovering Baptist Preacher, a retired English Teacher, and a New York City agent before I posted it on Scribd.com, long before it appeared in print. It’s not perfect, though the latest electronic version is close.
Ian McEwan’s book Solar has been through the legacy process: major author, major publisher, major process. Solar is about a Nobel Laureate physicist. The Dirac equation appears on page 42 incorrectly. It’s an egregious mistake for three reasons: first, the Dirac Equation is cited later in the book as an example of mathematical elegance; second, because if I mizpelled a French or Latin word in The God Patent the San Francisco literati would have been out on the porch with figurative torches and metaphorical pitchforks; and third, I paid $27 for it! Rest assured that both equations that appear in The God Patent are accurately portrayed (except on some ebook readers that bungle the symbol formats, but in that case you paid less than $10 for it so stop complaining).
The upshot is that, yes, many ebooks uploaded to places like Scribd and Smashwords don’t meet the minimum threshold of language mechanics and story clarity, much less the goal of editorial excellence, but if they take off, the revised versions will.
The whimsical and dramatic nature of art means that it is not easily categorized. The first question agents ask prospective authors is “Where should your title be shelved?” And the answer better not be “literary fiction, science, philosophy, and science fiction & fantasy.”
In the future, titles will be positioned by the people who know them best, their readers. At Amazon, Smashwords, Goodreads, Shelfari, etc, readers position books for other readers. The God Patent is a novel about a guy who makes bad decisions and must overcome them. It’s also, according to Numina Press, “a story with Nick Hornby characters in a Neal Stephenson plot seasoned with authentic and accessible Steven Hawking science.” Numina Press positioned it as literary fiction. Readers applied tags at Amazon and now it sits in or near the top 50 in both “science > physics > quantum theory” and “religion & spirituality > fiction > science fiction & fantasy.” You might say, “Aha, failure of the system!” But read the book first and I bet you’ll agree with the tags. In stores, The God Patent is shelved either in literature or thrillers.
Just as titles ought to appear in as many stores as possible, they should also be available in every salable format. In other words, formatted for every bookreader; paper or silicon. Some legacy publishers actually claim that it costs more to develop, maintain, and warehouse electronic books than dead-tree books. More. It’s one of these statements that begs either deception or incompetence. Anyone with a few years high tech experience can formulate and code up a system to reformat the files appropriately. Of course it’s easier to go to Smashwords.com, click on “upload” and let their meatgrinder program do it for you. The meatgrinder takes an MS Word file and spits out files formatted for every known bookreader. And it’s free. Seems a lot easier and cheaper than loading paper and toner in a big printer and then gluing cardboard and cloth to the piles of printed paper, packing up the results in boxes, labeling them and sending them out. And warehousing? My external hard drive cost $100 and can hold a million ebooks including cover art. It gets weirder, most legacy publishers offer smaller author royalties on ebooks than printed books.
(A quick parenthetical comment on electronic books: don’t call them “digital books.” The antonym of digital is analog. “Digital” means that the information is encoded in a discrete set of symbols, like an alphabet. Books that use a finite set of characters are by definition digital whether displayed on paper, liquid crystals or e-ink (e-ink is the technology used on the Sony Bookreader, Kindle, Nook, etc.) )
In the mid-1990s corporations moved to Enterprise Resource Processes (ERP) that automate inventory control. When the last product is sold or the second to last, or wherever the retailer sets the trigger point, the ERP system orders more. No phone calls, no human-to-human contact: automated inventory enables automated ordering. ERP works all the way down the food chain, too. Wherever possible, manufacturers build products to order.
ERP makes it possible for modern companies to warehouse as few products as possible. Warehousing means that money is sitting around doing nothing, it requires that inventory be performed, and it’s a tax liability. Legacy publishers make huge print runs and, due to their sub 25% success rate, must warehouse most of their stock until it becomes clear that it won’t be ordered. Then a strange thing happens: it either goes back to stores as “remainders” and is sold at wholesale prices or the books are recycled – in neither case does the author receive royalties.
Numina Press operates on a Publish on Demand (PoD) model where inventory is carefully controlled. Print runs are designed to meet immediate need and when stock is depleted orders come in and books go out. It typically takes three to five more days for PoD books to get out the door than it takes to ship warehoused books. The time lag will improve as more publishers adopt the practice. Plus, there are no remainders and, with no warehouse cost, there is no reason for a book to ever go out of print.
The technological disruption that changes the equation is automated setup. The economy of scale has historically front-loaded the cost of printing. That is, once the presses are set up it doesn’t cost much more to make 15,000 copies than it costs for 10,000. The disruption is that the front-end setup cost is now only incurred for the first run, even if the first run is one book. Including setup, the cost per unit plateaus around 3000 copies – the point that defines legacy publishing’s minimum cost-effective print run. In the PoD model, after the first run subsequent runs don’t require further setup reducing the minimum optimal print run to about 100 copies.
There is a new approach to stocking and inventory that Numina Press embraces but legacy publishers remain wary of: the Espresso Book Machine is about the size of a copy machine and can print and bind a trade paperback in about five minutes. All it requires is electronic access to the formatted file including cover art. Once legacy publishers enable their titles, the local bookstore can provide almost any book you want in a few minutes.
The Espresso Machine can solve a problem that publishers would cheerfully be rid of, but the end to which booksellers fear: Returns.
Books are one of the final remaining retail industries that operates on a consignment model. Books are provided to stores by publishers for free. Shipping is free and, should the bookseller decide a given book is taking up shelf space that could be better occupied by another title, the publisher pays to have the book returned. Before The Great War, pretty much every other retail industry had rejected consignment. Instead, manufacturers sell products to retailers at wholesale and those sales are final.
It may horrify booksellers, but it shouldn’t: the consignment model is finished. Numina Press does not accept returns. It is the only way that Numina can calculate and distribute royalties in real time. Legacy publishers can’t even calculate their royalties in time to do their taxes. The burden on the accounting department isn’t cheap.
Writers and readers love bookstores. We want them to survive! When stores have Espresso Book Machines, they won’t need to overstock titles because they can produce them as needed. Plus, every bookstore can have a complete inventory, can have every book “in stock,” with hardcopies on hand of just those books that the proprietor selects based on the tastes of her clientele.
Bookstores just might make it after all. But will legacy publishers? Some of them. Stay tuned.

The Future of Publishing, Part 1

A friend of mine and fellow author, Ransom Stephens, has written a very informative 3-part article on the Future of Publishing. He has given me permission to re-post it on this blog.  While it has very little to do with my novel, THE FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS, I know the issue is of deep concern to us all, and it does affect both what we write and how we write it. I will post one segment per week, and am happy to welcome discussion on this blog. Thank you.

The Future of Publishing, Part 1 of 3

By Ransom Stephens, Ph.D.

Is the bound pile of pages we call a book merely a souvenir from a mental vacation you took in a world created by an author? Does the publishing industry still possess the skills that writers and readers need to foster the exchange of stories and free time? If established publishers aren’t the conduit, then who? What will novels look like in a decade?
Some writers don’t need the publishing industry as it exists today and has existed for the last century, some still do. But the writers who need the publishing industry are not the writers who the publishing industry needs.
The publisher’s role is to connect readers to the books that they want. Independent of this role publishers have no valid reason to exist. Many business practices of the publishing industry have not been updated in half a century. They fail on time of delivery, don’t have current Enterprise Resource Processes (ERP), lack modern targeted marketing competence and waste resources. On the other hand, legacy publishing is still unsurpassed at putting authors in the media spotlight and handling the morass of details involved in book development, promotion and marketing. The problem is that most of the time they don’t use their prowess to support the clients or customers that are most important to their long term health. That said, they’re still making lots of money.
It is unlikely that any of the six large publishers, the so called Six Sisters of Publishing, will lead the way to the next paradigm. We can state this with confidence without even referring to a specific publisher or practice because, historically, the established players in any industry do not fare well through technological disruptions.
Every business is faced with four fundamental tasks: product development, manufacturing and distribution, records and administration and marketing and promotion. In this three part series, we’ll examine how each is performed in legacy publishing, in cutting edge publishing, and in the crystal ball of the future. For the former case, by “legacy,” I mean “those processes that are practiced because it has always been thus.” For the cutting edge case we’ll use the example of Numina Press, LLC, which by pure coincidence is the publisher of my novel, The God Patent (obviously, you should click www.TheGodPatent.com and get yourself a copy before continuing).
For the future case, we’ll do what all crystal ball gazers do: make it up as we go along.
Books are developed to the advanced prototype stage by independent contractors, (a.k.a., authors). In all but the rarest cases, fiction manuscripts are well past the beta stage before the publisher ever sees them. When proposals for nonfiction titles are acquired the author is expected to do at least 95% of the development (i.e., research, writing, editing, fact checking, etc.).
The first role of the publisher is title acquisition and the first line of defense against the manuscript onslaught is the gatekeeper.  The process itself is sometimes called the “cultural filter.” It’s an unfortunate term that rings of snobbery at best and censorship at worst, though the process does fit the definition of a filter.
With centuries of experience, legacy publishers are as good at selecting marketable titles as is possible for any small opinion sample. Individually, they are the best in the world. That what they attempt is impossible is reflected by the fact that far fewer than 25% of published titles are profitable. The fundamental problem is that art in general and literature in particular is quintessentially subjective. Above the basically objective thresholds of writing clarity and sentence and paragraph mechanics, the literary merit and marketability of a title by an unproven author is simply not discernible a priori. Literary merit can only be positively judged after a title has been in print for months, years or decades.
The acquisition process involves separate layers of filtering at the agent, the editor, and the selection committee. It is a probabilistic chain of subjective judgment. The probability of an agent judging a specific query intriguing multiplied by the probability that the first few pages of the manuscript hold that intrigue, then another probability for the complete work. More probabilities are multiplied as the process is repeated at the publishing house.
Given their sub 25% success rate, one wonders what the actual fraction of successful titles in the original pile could be. In other words, how efficient is the acquisition process at accepting titles that would be successful if they were published? Consider the extreme possibilities. A perfect cultural filter catches 100% of the profitable titles and the unprofitable titles that the filter admits are the minimum possible noise required to catch the signal in its entirety. At the opposite end of the spectrum, assuming the manuscripts surpass the threshold of mechanics and clarity, a truly random filter would yield the same ratio of profitable to unprofitable titles in the accepted stack as in the rejected stack.
Where in this spectrum does the legacy, plutocratic cultural filter sit?
What if a publisher could publish every manuscript that came over the transom? What if they could go back in time and choose only those titles for publication that the market will welcome? This is, in some sense, what Numina Press does.
Simulation is a trick used in high tech to make the product development process more efficient; without it, you couldn’t afford the instrument on which you’re reading right now. Using technology in these ways is old hat in Silicon Valley – which might be a hint of where the future of publishing lies.
Numina Press’s editor-in-chief, Yanina Gotsulsky, watched the performance of The God Patent as an e-novel at Scribd.com. When it spent 13 straight weeks in the Top 10 Most Read Fiction with over 10,000 people showing interest, Numina sent me an email asking for publishing rights.
Market testing a manuscript as an e-book provides a democratic cultural filter that gauges the market appeal of a title before it goes to print, before the publisher has spent a cent. In the case of Numina Press, there is a qualifier, the same as that of legacy publishing: Ms. Gotsulsky is a self-described literary snob who won’t publish something unless it meets her specifications.
The point is that, while professional acquisition editors are better at choosing worthy titles than anyone, they are not nearly as good as everyone.
Ransom Stephens, Ph.D., writer, physicist, and public speaker, has had a front row seat for three industry upheavals: the collapse of the established computer industry in the mid ‘80s; the transition of the World Wide Web from a physicists’ tool to an economic cornerstone in the early ‘90s; the introduction of 3G and 4G technologies in the mid 00’s; and sees established publishers making the same mistakes that killed other legacy institutions. The San Francisco Chronicle called Ransom’s novel, The God Patent, “the first debut novel to emerge from the new paradigm of online publishing.” (www.TheGodPatent.com).

MY LIFE AS A SPAMMER: What’s an author to do when accused of spamming?

 A while back, after my historical novel The Flight of the Sorceress was released, I commenced my amateurish attempts at marketing books. I didn’t think it would make good sense to spend large sums of money for public relations on my book, sums I was unlikely to recoup. But I suck at being shameless self-promoter. I think among my author colleagues this condition is not unique. But in the big leagues, or even the higher minor leagues, you’ve got to be able to both field and hit, not to mention run. I soon discovered that good writing is only one of many skills an author needs to get anywhere in the horrific world of book sales.

So what to do? I looked around. Found out what other authors were doing — and not doing. Began dipping my timid toes in icy water. Lo and behold! There are thousands of good, if not great, published authors out there all cast into the roiling seas of book promotion by their under-funded publishers and they are flailing about, fending off the circling sharks of costly promoters, gasping for breath while drowning in emails about “services”— promising 15 minutes of TV fame, magic mailing lists, snake-oily gimmicks. Shout all you like, your screams won’t be heard over the general din of the drowning masses. Yet shout you must. Shameless you must be, in the faint hope that your voice will be heard and deemed worthy of salvation.

And so I set out, trudging along the well-worn paths of those who had gone before, pretending to be heedless of the corpses that littered the wayside. I joined numerous Yahoo lists. I created a blog. I upgraded my website. I began social networking. I have gotten universally good reviews, which I touted. I’ve given away books. All in blind trust that there really is a “tipping point” out there, and that someday I will reach it…. And then I got accused of spamming!

SPAMMING! Jesus Christ! I don’t know where you come from but in my house, spam is a bad word. It’s worse than bad. It’s like calling someone a capitalist pig (or if you’re on the other side of the spectrum, a communist.) Goddamn it! Me, a spammer? No F*CKING WAY.

It got me to thinking. Is trying to create art or literature worth the trouble if, in the end, all you get is accused of being a spammer or a shameless self-promoter? Now, let’s be clear. I’m not in this writing thing for the money. I’ve been a lawyer for forty years. I’ve made more money in a billable hour than I can from a quarterly royalty check, or even a semi-annual one.  I know damn well who makes the money in the entertainment industry, including the book business, and it isn’t the artist or writer (unless the writer is writing contracts or legal papers — but that’s another story.) True financial success stories among authors, artists, performers, athletes are about as rare as there are habitable planets in the universe compared to the rest of the cosmos. So it’s not that. And the arts are not fields where one doesn’t need a thick skin, always confronting a shitload of criticism and/or rejection. That goes with the turf, believe me, I know. But to be accused of being an, ugh, spammer. That’s going too f*cking far.

What happened was that I sent a blurb of Flight of the Sorceress to five separate Amazon discussion groups. (Amazon has over 600 discussion groups.) Several groups specifically asked for authors to tell the group something about their works. Two did not, but both of these asked questions that seemed relevant to the topics in my book — heroines in historical fiction and Hypatia. Now these discussion groups had a few hundred participants in total over a period running back to 2009. But I recall that at least two had fewer than fifty and some posts were fairly old. Does this sound like some clever spamming tactic I had come up with? One day, five groups, one single book announcement going to five selected groups interested in ancient history, could this be spam? Not in my book. Ha ha. A few days later, I got a notice from Amazon. If I didn’t cease and desist, I was going to get thrown out of these discussion groups. I’d never again get to abuse this innocent bunch of readers by mentioning my book even though it might be of specific interest to them.

Then a blogger/reviewer posted on her blog that Amazon had found me guilty of spamming. As it turned out, she had a rather large following.  (When I found out, I wrote her, explained the circumstances and she graciously removed the accusation.)

Just what is spam, technically?

It boils down to this: spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. There are circumstances where spamming is illegal under federal law. There are private rights of action available against spammers. That is, people have rights to sue spammers.

Amazon’s guidelines for discussion groups describe spam as “Any form of ‘spam,’ including advertisements, contests, or other solicitations for other websites or companies; or any URL link that includes a "referrer" tag or affiliate code.” But there are other kinds of posts that are considered against Amazon’s guidelines than spam. The mere removal of an author’s post from an Amazon group discussion does not mean that Amazon, the arbiter of all things right and good in the book biz, has proclaimed it “spam.” Bloggers who consider a post’s removal from an Amazon discussion group to be proof of spamming are misleading their following. And they know it hurts the author’s reputation.

Other groups define spam differently. But spam has a technical, legal definition.  While a discussion group can call whatever they want “spam.” That doesn’t make it so. For example they could call sending any unsolicited email to their group “terrorism” if they wanted to, regardless of content. Amazon’s lawyers are obviously aware of the risks they run by accusing an author of being a spammer, and they know it could have serious legal consequences to their deep pockets. So they didn't say that to me. Amazon appears to be well-aware that we authors are at risk of having our reputations tarnished as spammers as we stumble and bumble through the brambles of self-promotion hell. But many bloggers and webmasters are not so savvy (and not so fearful of being sued because their pockets are no deeper than most authors.)

 “What can authors do to protect themselves from such an accusation in their promotional activities?” 

Send your posts to places where you reasonable can think the site has solicited information about your writing or the subject matter you are writing about. Different discussion groups may include different members. Send them on different days. Sending posts to more than one discussion group does not make the post indiscriminate or in bulk, particularly when it was solicited or the custom and practice of the group appears to welcome such information.

Are you sending out your promo indiscriminately? Well, not if you are selecting groups with a specific stated interest in your subject matter. If you sent a promo of your XXX, m/m/f hot kinky romance-of-the-zombie witches book to a site that caters to Christian gardening clubs, I think there’d be an argument that it met the “indiscriminate” test, but then it all depends of the kind of Christians inhabiting those clubs.

And if, for example, a writer posts to five groups, and his/her posts are found relevant in three of them, but not in two others that contain a total of fewer than say, 20 members, do the two posts, one to each group qualify as “bulk?” I doubt it. You may be breaking some group rules but that doesn’t make you a spammer.

What happens when a blogger assumes that the removal of an author’s post from a discussion group means the author has been spamming, and then the blogger publishes as fact that the author is a spammer?

No question such a publication is defamatory, if untrue. It connotes civil misconduct and/or possibly criminal behavior by the author. Such a blog, designed to reach a specific group of the author’s potential customers smears the author’s reputation. The blogger is implying that the author and/or his or her work should be discredited. The accusation is intended to injure an author in his or her occupation.

Now, a blogger certainly has a right to review a writer’s work and to say what he/she believes are its merits or demerits. That is clearly a matter of opinion and opinions are protected speech. No problem there. But it is not protected speech to accuse a person of committing an act that may be a crime or a civil violation and most certainly is defamatory. It is one thing for a discussion group member to register a complaint against a potential offender of guidelines, but it is quite another thing to separately publish in a blog or website as a fact that the author is a spammer. The blogger knows full well it can damage the reputation of the author.

So what is an author to do?

First, take a deep breath and ponder P.T. Barnum’s admonition that “there is no such thing as bad publicity.” Don’t freak out and write a nasty-gram. It’s always better to smooth feathers than to ruffle them. Second, write a friendly personal note to the blogger explaining what you were trying to do. Apologize for any unintended offense. Explain that you are the author and are proud of you work. Perhaps even offer the blogger a free copy. Explain that you made a good faith attempt to abide by the group’s rules and say that you thought that you did. But also explain that what you did was not spam under the law, or as it is commonly understood by the author’s and blogger’s potential readers. Explain that it is damaging to your reputation and that any reasonable person would view the accusation of spamming as derogatory. And then request that the blogger remove the statement from his/her blog or website because it is defamatory. Give them an opportunity to retract and keep a written record of the correspondence. Then, if they don’t remove the accusation and you feel your reputation is important to you and/or you feel you have been damaged as an author, you can consider taking more forceful action.

Fortunately for me, my letter worked.

TWO for ONE! February only.

This February Only!  
Buy a copy of FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS  from Wild Child Publishing. Email me proof of purchase at barrywilldorf@gmail.com, and I will have Wild Child send you a gift certificate for another copy that you can give to anybody. 

Flight of the Sorceress, Q&A Part 6: What happened afterward?

Q.        Several of your readers have expressed the desire for a sequel. Do you have one in mind?

A.        Not presently. In my first draft, Glenys returns to Britannia many years after the events in Sorceress. She is still a fugitive. And she is instrumental in waging a rebellion against the Vortigern (the Roman’s appointed surrogate after they abandoned the island) and his Saxon mercenaries. I have no specific plans to write a sequel but I have left several characters available to fill the bill, should I decide to do so. In addition to Glenys, there are Aschi, Brighid, Adam, and Bishop Ignatus.

Q.        What about Pelagius the heretic and Cealestius, his sidekick? 

A.        Them also. After Pelagius was kicked out of Tiberius where he attempted to help in the compilation of the Vulgate Bible, he was summoned to Rome to answer charges of heresy. The pope at the time was a  convert from Judaism named Zosimus. Pelagius convinced him that good works alone, without baptism, can still get you into heaven. When Augustine heard that Pelagius was beating the rap, and threatening to undermine his doctrine of Original Sin,  he arranged to bribe Zosimus with a herd of fancy white stallions. Pelagius was convicted and banished from Rome. People saw him leave the city but he was never seen or heard from after that. Cealestius, according to some accounts, went to Ireland. At some point he apparently reconciled with the Church.