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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware   Would you like to guest blog for Writer Beware? To vary our subject matter and present differing points of view, we're looking to publish occasional guest blog posts on subjects relating to publishing, books, writing, and, of course, literary schemes and scams. If you're interested in writing about a current issue or problem in the industry, if you have a point of view about writing or publishing that you'd like to share, if you've had a writing or publishing experience that you think would help, inform, and/or warn other writers--we'd like to hear from you. Here are some examples of guest blog posts we've hosted in the past: Distributor vs. Wholesaler--Getting Your Book on the Shelf Playwriting in America: Percentages, Pitfalls, and Pay-to-Play A Reviewer's Plea Posts must be at least 500 words, and can be as long as 1,200 words. We're not a paying market, but we'll give you a byline, a bio, and links t...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Is it irony or coincidence that, only a few days after blogging about vanity awards , I should be spammed by one? Perhaps you have, too. It's an outfit calling itself the 2010 Creative Spirit Awards . The 2010 Creative Spirit Awards ™ Celebrating the Creative Spirit in Books, Film, and Music! The March 1st Early Bird Deadline is approaching fast! If you haven’t already submitted, we invite you to submit today! It's every Author, Musician and Filmmaker’s desire to generate notoriety, credibility and buzz about their work, and winning this significant award is the vehicle in which to make your creation stand out as the exemplary work it is. To further help winners achieve this recognition, following the close of the competition, press releases with information on the Creative Spirit Award™ Winners will be sent to key book sellers, film and music distributors, and other sales and marketing entities. Being a Creative Spirit Award™ winne...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Here's a story that, for sheer weight of irony, I wish like anything I'd been the one to break. But author and publisher Michael N. Marcus beat me to it , in a recent post on his Book Making blog. Everyone loves an award, right? Awards acknowledge excellence and achievement, raise the profile of the awardee, and garner the respect of peers (that's the theory, anyway). There are plenty of big prestigious awards whose names everyone recognizes, and lots of small, semi-prestigious awards that may be recognizable only within a particular niche or audience, and vast numbers of tiny, all-but-invisible awards that may make you feel good, but will provoke stares of incomprehension if you mention them to someone else. There are also--you guessed it--vanity awards, where the goal isn't to recognize excellence, but to entice entrants or winners to hand over cash to the awards sponsors. For instance, the awards given by the Small Busine...

Here's an email solicitation currently doing the rounds, from Linda Joy, President and Founder of Aspire Media Inc., and Publisher and Editor of Aspire Magazine : Will 2010 be YOUR year to embrace your wisdom, step forward and claim your dream of being a published author? If you answered YES then YOU may be one of the over 40 co-authors that I, along with my team of experts, will be working with this spring to bring your collective wisdom to the world!... Now, in a personal project of mine I will bring the same passion and commitment that I've brought to Aspire, to bring YOUR story, wisdom and insights as a co-author in my upcoming anthology: A Juicy, Joyful Life: Inspiration from Women who have Found the Sweetness in Every Day The email includes a link, the clicking of which takes you to Inspired Living Publishing , publisher of the above-referenced anthology, first in the Inspired Living series. Here, "inspired, engaged entrepreneur[s]" who are "ready to move...

Earlier this week, I received an email from a company called MyFreeRead.com , enticingly titled, "Authors: We Want Your e-Books & Articles!" Dear Authors, We want your e-books -- and we'll pay you for them!! * e-Books * Newsletters * Excerpts from books * Self-Published Articles Now, there's a new idea... actually get paid for writing your e-books and articles! We're launching a brand new website, where visitors can download free e-books on everything from running a business to fixing a car... and WE PAY OUR AUTHORS US $0.20 every time an e-book is successfully downloaded! Gee, 20 cents a download--who could resist? Me, for one. I might have written this off as just one more random spam--but then I began hearing from writers who'd gotten the very same email offer. The volume of questions began to suggest a sizeable spam campaign, which always gets my Writer Beware radar twitching. Visiting the MyFreeRead website, I learned that "MyFreeRead.com works...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware   Last September, the US Justice Department urged the courts to reject the Google Book Settlement , citing concerns about class action, copyright, and anti-trust laws. The DOJ's brief put the Settlement's approval process on hold, and forced the parties back to the negotiating table--resulting, in November, in the filing of an Amended Settlement . New deadlines were set for authors and for the filing of objections, and the Fairness Hearing (to determine if the Settlement will stand) was postponed to February 18, 2010. On Thursday, in a statement of interest filed with U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin in New York, the DOJ indicated that, while it continues to believe that the Settlement could provide a major public good, and acknowledges that the Amended Settlement Agreement includes "substantial" changes, it's still not satisfied. (The filing can be seen here .) The DOJ's strongly-stated concerns fall into the s...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Hey, Published Authors: Feeling artistically discouraged? Critically devalued? Culturally marginalized? Alternatively, are you just so full of self-admiration and self-confidence that you could absolutely pop? A Customized Author Plaque from ZLS Publishing ("The Authorpreneurial Publisher") might be just the thing. That's right, writers. You can get your book cover laminated onto a wooden plaque, along with "engraving options" such as "Bestselling Author – 5,000+ Books Sold + your name," or "Author Extrordinnaire [sic] -100+ Books Sold + your name." (Talk about faint praise!) The plaques come in a range of colors (white, black, blue, etc.) and a variety of sizes, from dainty to hefty. Just imagine the many uses to which you could put your plaque! If you can't, ZLS suggests: 1) To be used and shown during your book signings. 2) Picture of your plaque to be placed on your website. 3) To give as...

For some time, publishers and others have been concerned about Amazon's policy of pricing ebooks at $9.99, regardless of the price tag publishers put on them. Many feel that Amazon's discounted ebook pricing is an attempt to control and monopolize the ebook market by forcing a pricing standard. Some in the publishing industry have even called the practice predatory . (Readers, of course, are more likely to applaud cheaper ebooks, but many publishers, which have fixed costs to earn back whether a book is ink on paper or pixels on a screen, regard the $9.99 price point as a major threat to revenue .) Over the weekend, a publisher finally went head-to-head with Amazon on this issue. Earlier last week, John Sargent, CEO of "big six" publisher Macmillan, presented new terms of sale to Amazon for Macmillan ebooks. Under the so-called "agency" distribution model (which means that Amazon could not discount the books--see below for an explanation), digital editions ...