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Over the past week or so, I've gotten a number of questions about a brand new contest/award that is advertising itself heavily across the Internet: the Next Generation Indie Book Awards . Open to English-language books produced by independent authors and publishers anywhere in the world, the contest offers 70 different entry categories and cash prizes totaling $3,500 . Other benefits for finalists and winners include a listing in a catalog that will be distributed at BEA 2008, a listing on the awards' website, the opportunity for winners and finalists to purchase gold award stickers for their books, and review of the top 70 books for possible representation by established literary agent Marilyn Allen of Allen O'Shea Literary Agency. Money, exposure, literary agency review--what's not to like? For one thing, the entry fee. Entrants must pay $75 per title , plus an additional $50 per category if they want to enter their book in more than one category. That's steep. F...

One of the knocks against the car industry is deceptive advertising. You know, the ads in the paper that advertise a hot new car or a really nice used car for a low price. They are counting on you seeing the ad or hearing it on the radio and rushing out to pick it up while it's still available. This is called the bait. However, you have to really check out the fine print. From personal experience, I've noted the ads have the words, "This offer only valid on model XXXXXX , similar vehicles may or may not be available." They're counting on you showing up with buying on the mind. When you get there, it seems they've "unfortunately sold that particular vehicle,” but they just happen to have this other model that they'd love to show you. And like most people, once you've got buying on your mind, it's hard to make yourself stop and think, wait, that's not the car (or the price) I wanted. Let's come back later. They're counting...

Ann's last post got me thinking about expectations. Writer Beware's mission is described (pretty clearly, I think) on our About Writer Beware page. We maintain the Writer Beware website and blog, providing the most up-to-date information on the many schemes, scams, and pitfalls that lie in wait for writers. We maintain an enormous database of complaints and documentation, which allows us to offer a free research service for writers with questions about agents, publishers, and others. We constantly research the problems we discuss, and keep current with issues and changes in the publishing industry. We assist law enforcement agencies with investigations of literary fraud. Last but not least, we help build public awareness of literary fraud by writing articles, appearing at writers' conventions, conducting workshops and classes, and participating in online writers' discussion groups and message boards. That's what Writer Beware does. Of course, there are also many th...

Everyone knows that all of us at Writer Beware are saints. This is a given. We unstintingly give of our time to help others, with no expectation of remuneration. We're unfailingly kind to writers, and only snarl and snap at scammers. (And if it's a good day, we do worse than that, just ask Martha Ivery, Melanie Mills, George Titsworth and Janet Kay.) Saints. There is no doubt. Excuse me if I remove my halo for a second, here. I'm going to blog about something that is a growing trend among aspiring writers, and I'm probably going to sound like Oscar the Grouch. So be it. I spend a lot of time over on Writers.net. I "patrol" there, looking for posts from hapless aspiring writers who ask questions like, "Why not sign the contract I've been sent by WL Literary Agency? Paying a fee for a critique doesn't sound so bad," or, "I just signed a contract with PublishAmerica and they're paying me a whole dollar as an advance! Now I see...

A while back, I blogged about BookWise , a multilevel marketing scheme focusing on books. (That post earned me some nasty comments from BookWise Associates. I daresay what follows will earn me a few more.) BookWise, now a little over a year old, has just launched BookWise Publishing, which offers a program for aspiring writers called WriteWise. "Do you have a book in you? Have you dreamed of becoming a published author?" asks the WriteWise brochure . "Realize your aspiration of writing, publishing, and marketing a bestselling book through WriteWise from BookWise Publishing." How does it work? Here's a list of program benefits , from the website of one of the BookWise Associates who is offering to sign writers up for the program (there are numerous similar WriteWise websites , many of which employ identical templates). These include a variety of mentoring services (including a two-day "intense" seminar --the qualifications of the seminar staff ar...

Things that piqued my interest last week... Again, In-Store Publishing About a thousand years ago in digital time (i.e., around 2000), a company called Sprout produced a stir by partnering with Borders and a consortium of independent booksellers to initiate an in-store publishing program, using Sprout's print on demand equpiment to print and bind books while customers waited. In 2004, a company called InstaBook installed its digital printing machinery in a bookstore in Ridgewood, N.J. With 10,000 digitized titles available for printing, as well as the capacity to produce bound books from author-provided disks, InstaBook offered booksellers the option of turning themselves into bookseller-publishers. Well, the Sprout deals fell through, and Bookends' special website for its InstaBook service is defunct--but the in-store publishing idea refuses to die. According to last Monday's Publisher's Lunch , Ingram recently presented an experimental program that would make it p...

Like brand-new agents building a client list, brand-new publishers looking for manuscripts can seem like a very attractive prospect, especially to authors who are burned-out on the agent hunt, or have decided to skip it altogether. However, like new agents , not all new publishers are created equal. The advent of epublishing and the cheapness of print-on-demand technology has made it extremely easy for just about anyone to set themselves up in business as a publisher, whether or not they have any qualifications for doing so. Inexperienced new publishers may not have the skill or resources to acquire, edit, and design books. They may offer terrible, nonstandard contracts. They may have a poor understanding of marketing and distribution, and their small budgets may severely limit any publicity efforts they do make. The consequence for authors: tiny sales, minimal exposure, and, most likely, no professional credit. There's another risk as well. The attrition rate for new publishers is...