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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I get a lot of Writer Beware correspondence. I mean a lot--up to 20 emails a day. I also often hear from writers who don't have scams to report, or an agent's or publisher's reputation to research, but are looking for answers to general questions about writing and publishing, or are wondering where and how to start their agent or publisher search, or just want to reach out to someone who's been there, done that and may have a bit of encouragement to offer. It can take quite a bit more time to respond to such emails than to the more basic questions, but I'm glad to help if I can. Because of my volume of correspondence, and also the fact that Writer Beware is something I do in my spare time, it often takes me several days to reply, especially where the question involves research. My Writer Beware email address has an autoresponder explaining this, so that people won't be upset (I hope) if they don't hear from me for...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Last year, giant publishing services firm Author Solutions Inc. contracted with two major commercial publishers to create publishing service (a.k.a. self-publishing, a.k.a. vanity publishing) divisions: West Bow Press for Thomas Nelson, and DellArte Press (formerly Harlequin Horizons) for Harlequin. ASI also, at some earlier point, set up a similar operation, Cross Books , for Christian publisher LifeWay. While West Bow Press produced barely a ripple of concern, DellArte Press created a tidal wave of criticism and debate, not just among authors but among professional writers' groups (you can see Writer Beware's coverage of the controversy here ). Was it unethical for commercial publishers to run pay-to-publish divisions, drawing in newbie writers with the lure of the publisher's name and the promise that successful books might make the transition to a commercial publishing contract? Or was it a pragmatic move on the part of ca...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware When Writer Beware was founded in 1998, the main actors in the arena of literary scammery were literary agents (or people calling themselves literary agents). Though there were certainly many disreputable publishers out there (you can read about some of them on the Case Studies page of Writer Beware), complaints and questions about faux agents outnumbered complaints and questions about faux publishers by better than 4 to 1. The rise of digital publishing has changed all that. Digital technology, which makes it easy and cheap to set up a publishing operation, has created a tidal wave of publishers--small and micro, POD and electronic. These publishers don't work with agents (nor, since they typically pay no advances and generate few sales, would a reputable agent be interested in working with them). The result has been a reduction in authors' perception of the need for a literary agent, and thus, a reduction in the ability of fake li...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware You may have read a recent article in PW called "Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped," about the amazing growth in "non-traditional" (a.k.a. print-on-demand-produced) books. Or you may just have read about it, given how many tweets and blog mentions it received. If the latter, you may have wondered what such a gigantic surge in self-publishing portends for the commercial publishing industry (where output did indeed dip, though only by about half a percent)--or, if you're one of those folks who believes that "traditional" publishing is or should be dead, you may have felt a surge of righteous vindication. However, while that staggering 764,000 figure (actually, 764,448, more than twice the output of traditional books--the info comes from the latest US publishing statistics released by Bowker) is real, PW's title is misleading. In fact, those numbers include not jus...