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You may recently have seen an announcement, such as this one in the UK's Telegraph , about a group called YouWriteOn that is promising to publish 5,000 writers for free. If you've wondered what the deal is, you aren't alone. A bit of background first. YouWriteOn is a UK-based writers' community. Similar to Authonomy , which I blogged about a couple of weeks back, YWO allows members to upload stories or book excerpts for reader critiques and ratings. Each month, the top-rated stories receive free critiques and feedback from a number of literary professionals who participate at the site (a list is here ). These professionals also select six Book of the Year Award winners, who can be published for free via YouWriteOn's POD self-publishing service. As a critique community, YWO seems to be helpful to its members. And, as with Authonomy, the chance for feedback from professional agents, editors, and writers is a terrific benefit. It's where YWO ventures into public...

According to Nolo , libel is "An untruthful statement about a person, published in writing or through broadcast media." Whoever publishes a defamatory statement is generally held to be as liable as the person who made the statement. So if you write a book and someone feels you have defamed them, they'll probably sue your publisher as well as you. What about self-publishing services, though? Are they liable for the content of the books they print? Are they publishers, in any sense of the word? A recent lawsuit against Amazon's POD self-publishing service, BookSurge , put that question to the test. The trouble began in 2003 when Mia Calcagni and Shana Sandler, both cheerleaders at a high school in Maine, had a falling out. Each complained to the school that the other was harassing her. When a swastika was spray-painted near Sandler's house in an apparent anti-semitic attack, Calcagni was convicted of criminal mischief. Her parents, indignant, decided to write a tel...

The lovely ladies at Author 2 Author have nominated Writer Beware Blogs! for the I Love Your Blog Award . There are rules involved. If you're nominated, you are supposed to: 1) Add the logo of the award to your blog. 2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you (as shown above). 3) Nominate at least seven other blogs. 4) Add links to those blogs on your blog. 5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs. I've fulfilled Rules 1 and 2, but after some thought, I'm not going to proceed farther. I suppose that awards like this can be classified as memes, but to me they seem very much like chain letters, in that they impose an obligation on the nominee and force the nominee to pass that obligation on to others. I could certainly think of seven great blogs to nominate--see the sidebar--but I'm not comfortable with asking them to do something just because I think they're cool. So I'll just confine myself to saying thanks to Lisa, Kristina, Deena, Emily, and...

Yesterday I got a question from a writer who'd been offered a publishing contract by a small publisher, and was concerned because the contract language seemed to indicate that the publisher intended to register copyright in its name, not the writer's. I asked the writer to send me the contract, so I could look at the actual wording. Sure enough--a transfer of copyright was demanded. But there was a twist: a rights reversion clause. Once the contract terminated, the copyright and all rights would return to the author. I don't know if it's a growing trend or just coincidence, but I've seen a fair number of contracts like this lately--most from micropresses, but some from sizeable independent publishers. I've touched on the temporary-transfer-of-copyright issue in a previous post about precautions for small press authors , but I think it's important enough to warrant a more detailed discussion. Most writers know that unless you're entering into a work-for-h...

Access. That's what the manuscript submission game is all about. Getting access to publishers. Getting access to literary agents. If you've been sending out your manuscript, you know what a grind it is. You've probably wished there were an easier way. There's no shortage of services that offer to grant your wish, claiming to provide an alternative to the conventional submission process or to leapfrog you past the slush pile. Submission services promise to streamline the tedious process of research and querying. Manuscript display websites put snippets of your work online in hopes that agents and publishers will stop by and be impressed. Book coaches and literary consultancies offer to help you polish your submission materials, and to match you up with the right agent or publisher. All, of course, for an often-hefty fee. Most services of this kind are directly sourced in the hopes and frustrations of the writing community, with entrepreneurs perceiving writers' de...