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Most of us are familiar with inspirational series like Chicken Soup for the Soul , A Cup of Comfort , and Chocolate . Along with articles by celebrities and established writers, many of these series actively solicit articles and stories by unknowns. Take, for instance, the Wake Up...Live the Life You Love series, compiled by Steven E. and Lee Beard. According to Amazon , there are currently eleven books in the series, the most recent of which came out this summer. They cover subjects like Giving Gratitude, Finding Personal Freedom, and A Search for Purpose , and include contributions from such luminaries as Dr. Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, and Deepak Chopra. Unknown writers are also encouraged to submit and become "co-authors." Proclaims the website: "You have a story to tell and here is your chance to get your message to the world!" There are a few jarring notes, however. For one thing, many of the Wake Up books have Amazon sales rankings of 1 million and higher......

Blogs by and about literary agents are legion. Another one seems to pop up every week. Take, for example, the brand-new Literary Agent News , which launched in October. According to its little self-description, Literary Agent News provides "Literary Agent profiles, industry news, top agents for every fiction and non-fiction category." The blogger is anonymous--his or her profile reveals only that s/he is in the publishing industry and located in New York--but that's not terribly unusual. The agent "profiles" featured on the blog provide names and addresses, but little other useful information--but hey, bloggers come in all shapes and sizes, including those who pad their blogs with puffery as a method of self-promotion. And some self-promotion can be pretty sneaky. In Literary Agent News's October archive , there's a series of Top Agent lists. Young adult novels, business books, memoirs, mysteries, romance--there's a Top Agent list for them all. While...

Hi, Friends: Well, it's been a difficult year for me, but I have one thing to be very thankful for--we have a new Writer Beware team member! His name is Richard White, and he's a SFWA member. He's spent the last six months or so "apprenticing" and getting up to speed on Writer Beware matters, and he's now ready to fly solo, I assure you. Rich will be helping out when Victoria and I are unavailable, and we're still trying to think of ways to transfer some of the email volume to him. In addition, he'll be available to answer questions from folks here on the blog, and on message boards. He'll be taking on projects of his own as they crop up. And, no doubt, he'll soon win the ultimate "accolade" for a Writer Beware team member--having some agent get foaming at the mouth mad at him, and bluster online. Fun and games! Seriously, it's great to have another team member. Rich will also be helping us by serving on panels at s.f. and fant...

The media loves self-publishing success stories. They make excellent human interest articles, feeding as they do into the American dream of entrepreneurial achievement, the rags-to-riches certainty that you can come from nothing and yet attain everything. A recent example: the $2.5 million sale of Brunonia Barry's self-pubbed debut novel to William Morrow, which has garnered a lot of press and spawned a flurry of blog posts. (Scratch a self-publishing success story, though, and you usually find a special circumstance of some sort-- this article enumerates some of the advantages Barry had that most self-pubbed authors don't.) Self-publishing advocates love self-publishing success stories too, because they appear to support the advocates' view that self-publishing is a viable alternative to "traditional" publishing. There's a long list of such stories at John Kremer's Self-Publishing Hall of Fame . However, some of the stories are apocryphal--like the myth...

Hi, Folks: I went to see the film made from David Gerrold's story "The Martian Child" last week. As I'm a diehard John Cusack fan, I enjoyed it. I also have known David for years, so I was curious about how his story would translate to film. The story itself translated pretty well, I thought. But Hollyweird did its usual number in presenting the main character's life as a writer, and his relationship with his agent and publisher. (In a word: unrealistic.) As Michael and I left the theater, it suddenly occurred to me that Hollywood is at least partially to blame for the inordinate numbers of aspiring writers that are scammed by literary agents and publishers these days. The agents and publishers shown on the silver screen bear little to no resemblance to the way it really is, and that helps create a lot of confusion in the public perception. In "The Martian Child," the writer, "David Gordon," has a close personal relationship with his literary ...

I've blogged several times about vanity publisher/author "marketing" service/uber-spammer Airleaf Publishing and Book Selling (formerly Bookman Marketing): in July 2006, about its silly and factually inaccurate response to criticism by watchdog groups such as Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors; in January 2007 about its overpriced author cruise ; and in August 2007 about its American Author Contest , an amateurish attempt to cash in on the current fad for American Idol-style writing contests. This post also takes a look at Airleaf's filmmaking "partner," Lite Stone Entertainment , all of whose supposed movie projects trace back to Airleaf's book-to-film program. Over the years, Writer Beware has received complaints and advisories about Airleaf from writers annoyed by its relentless spamming, dissatisfied with its "marketing" services (I put "marketing" in quotes, because most of the services Airleaf offers are ineffective or...