Penguin SA in conjunction with getsmarter has launched a non-fiction story online short course and a creative writing online short course.
The creative writing course starts on 2 June 2016 and the non-fiction course starts on 3 November 2016. Both courses are being run ‘under the guiding hand …’ of Mike Nicol.
There is a saving of R1000 if registration takes place before 27 May 2016.
Having received news of of the courses via an email from marketing@penguinrandomhouse.co.za, to find out more I naturally went to penguinrandomhouse.co.za and this was the result :
Soon to be the new home of…
Then I tried penguinbooks.co.za (since the email was branded with the Penguin colophon [above]) and found nothing. Nada.
The clue, however, was in the first part of the urls from the ‘Download info pack’ links in the email I received :
http://rhs.getsmarter.co.za/rhs-write-a-non-fiction-short-course-online-hm/?utm_source=promo_mailer&utm_medium=promo_mailer&utm_campaign=week_14_penguin_random_house&utm_term=&utm_content=
and
http://rhs.getsmarter.co.za/rhs-creative-writing-short-course-hm/?utm_source=promo_mailer&utm_medium=promo_mailer&utm_campaign=week_14_penguin_random_house&utm_term=&utm_content=
where rhs means Random House Struik.
But there was nothing on the RHS home page referring to the courses.
Nope, I had to use my own initiative to find what I was looking for by clicking the ‘Manuscript Submissions’ link. And when I clicked the ‘Read more about this [course] link’ (see below), I am expected to provide PRH with my personal details up-front before I can download the most basic of information, such as cost, course content etc.
http://rhs.getsmarter.co.za/rhs-creative-writing-short-course/?utm_source=LG&utm_medium=external&utm_campaign=june_rhs_weblisting_CW
And when I clicked the photo link of Mike Nicol (expecting to read about him as an author), I got this :
http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/
PRH SA Marketing Dept is more than welcome to email Books Etc South Africa to help me understand this convoluted approach to selling these courses and correct any errors on my part.