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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware One of last week's major publishing news items was super-agent Andrew Wylie 's announcement that he is establishing a brand-new digital publishing venture , Odyssey Editions , to publish his clients' backlists. The clients in question include some of the most eminent writers of the last century, such as Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Philip Roth. Most of these authors' book contracts pre-date the electronic age--so they don't mention electronic rights. This has become a matter of intense dispute, with publishers claiming that standard book contract language (which allows for publication "in book form" or "in any and all editions") incorporates those rights by implication, giving them the exclusive right to publish in electronic form as well as print; and authors, agents, and authors' estates arguing that since the rights were never explicitly granted, publishers have no claim on them. Last year, Ran...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware One of the things that writers often argue about, in writers' forums and on writers' message boards, is whether writing is an innate talent that can be honed but not learned, or simply a skill that can be taught to anyone willing to be trained. Whether you subscribe to one view or the other, a large part of a writer's honing, or training, or whatever you want to call it, is self-directed. Practice is vital: you don't have to write every single day (unless you want to), but you do need to write frequently. Outside criticism (from editors, colleagues, writers' groups) can not only help you improve your work, but teach you how to criticize yourself. And then there's reading. Reading widely, reading critically--analyzing how other authors handle structure, achieve effects, solve problems, etc.--is one of the best ways to build your skills. In today's guest blog post, writer and educator Aimee Weinstein discusses the ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware In the comments thread of my post last week on the myth of the evil editor , a reader posted this, in reference to writers who don't want or don't believe they need outside editing: Wouldn't the adage apply: A writer who edits him/herself has a fool for a client. I would turn that around: A writer who doesn't edit him/herself has a fool for a client. No writer--especially, no fiction writer--can be completely objective about his or her own work. We all need an outside eye--not just an editor for the finished book, but input from readers (friends, colleagues, a writers' group) as the project progresses. But those outside sources of advice and criticism are only part of the editing picture. Just as important (I'd actually argue that it's more important) is the ability to self-edit--to be able to evaluate pace and structure, to recognize when plot, character, theme, etc. are working and when they aren't, to spot...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Recently, in an online conversation touching on self-publishing, a self-published writer commented on how happy she is that her books are truly her own--published exactly as she intended them, not mutilated or adulterated by some big publishing house editor whose main goal is to turn out cookie-cutter authors. When I replied that I've worked with three editors at five large publishers over the course of seven novels, and have never had my work mutilated or adulterated, much less transformed into a cookie, she told me that I was "very lucky," for she knew of many writers who'd had the opposite experience. I didn't ask her who those writers were. If I had, I suspect I would have gotten a vague response about a friend of a friend, or an article she'd seen at some point, or some other form of non-first-hand information. Like the fear of theft, the idea that the main function of publishing house editors is to turn books ...

Seems to me that this latest "offer" from PublishAmerica speaks volumes. What it says should be fairly obvious to even the most naive writer. (For some background on PA's other recent offers, see this thread at Absolute Write.) -Ann C. Crispin Chair, Writer Beware www.writerbeware.com ----------------------------- From: "support@publishamerica.com" To: [email address redacted] Sent: Tue, July 13, 2010 12:57:52 PM Subject: A new start for your book Dear author: Sometimes a book deserves a new start. Not labeled in book vendor databases as POD. A low list price. A new publisher. Introducing: Independence Books . Independence Books is our new subsidiary. It is treated as an independent publisher. Not registered as POD in vendor databases. Not registered as PublishAmerica. Uniform list prices are $14.95. Want a new start for your book? We will cause it to be published as an Independence Books title. It will receive a new ISBN and the new $14....

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware An alert reader sent me this link: AuthorForSale.com . Gosh, I thought. Are authors so desperate these days that they're selling their favors online? Could it be a patronage thing--authors in search of sugar daddies to finance their careers? Or perhaps you can buy an author to walk your dog or clean your house. Heaven knows they probably aren't cleaning their own, what with deadlines and all. As you have no doubt guessed, AuthorForSale is none of those things. It's yet another brand new iteration of an old idea: the manuscript display website . These websites, which have been around in various forms since the late 1990's, promise to match writers with agents and publishers, enabling all parties to bypass the slush pile. AuthorForSale describes the process (somewhat opaquely) thus: Simply put , the author of an unpublished proposal, creative idea or manuscript, creates a Showcase that is tightly profiled in line with a matrix...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Lately, my inbox has been plagued with a rash of emails with subject lines like "Help with your writing," "Book Publishing," "Publish your book with reliable services," "Publish your manuscript," "Learn how to publish," and "Do you have a story to tell?" It's spam, of course--advertising for pay-to-publish companies, which pay email marketing companies (a.k.a. spammers) to contact lists of harvested email addresses, in hopes of luring writers sign up with them. Those who are Internet or publishing-savvy are probably wise to this. But inexperienced new authors may not be. Clicking the links in some of these spams (spammers keep track of clickthroughs, so the more you click, the more you'll be spammed) whisks you to faux price comparison/buyer guide websites (actually link farms) like this one or this one , where vanity publishers like Dorrance Publishing and publishing serv...