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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Since we started publishing more guest blog posts here at Writer Beware, and especially since I added a page to the blog describing what sort of guest posts we want and how to submit them (there's a link just to the right), I've been getting a lot of solicitations. A few are appropriate. Most...not so much. I'm especially amused when I get a solicitation as obviously inappropriate as the one below (and yes, I know these aren't generated by human beings--but still). Hi my name is [[name redacted--not that I believe it's a real name, but never mind]] and I'm a blog spotter. I basically scour popular blogs in an effort to find great writers. I loved your post on Opportunity or Exploitation?, nice job! I'd like to get straight to the point. Our client wants people like you to sponsor their products and will pay you to do so. They're launching an educational product on September 7th that teaches others how to mak...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Reported in the UK newspaper the Mirror, and subsequently picked up as a news item by PW , GalleyCat , the Bookseller, and the Times of India , among others: A boy of six has won a book deal worth thousands. Leo Hunter was awarded a 23-story contract with an American company after they read his first tale, Me and My Best Friend . Leo started the book - about a little boy called Liam and his make-believe adventures with his dog Henry - when he was five. It is now hitting bookshelves in America and is available online in the UK. There's just one problem. Although the deal probably is worth thousands, the money isn't flowing in the direction the news coverage assumes--from publisher to author. In fact, it's going the other way. Because little Leo's publisher, Strategic Book Publishing , charges fees. A minimal amount of research would have revealed this fact, had the various news outlets thought to fact-check a story that is ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware NOTE: PW Select no longer offers reviews. PW Select listings now appear in the magazine's print and digital editions, and authors who buy PW Select also receive "featured" listings on PW's BookLife website. Print on demand technology has done a lot over the past 10 or 12 years to change the publishing landscape. Among other things, it has created an explosion of fee-based publishing options, small publishers, and micropresses. These ventures in turn have driven an intense proliferation of services targeted to writers, all of them intended (theoretically, at least) to offset the minimal marketing and limited distribution that's typical of POD publishing services and small presses. Among these new writers' services (or "services," depending on how incompetent or unscrupulous the providers are) are book review services that review for a fee. Many are independent, and often run by not-necessarily-highly-quali...

Apart from writing synopses, one of the tasks that writers hate most is creating query letters. It's a necessary evil, though, because in the USA at least, a well-written, dynamic query letter may be your one shot at getting a reputable literary agent's attention. Below is my best advice on query letter writing. (It's excerpted from a much longer article that went live on the Writer Beware website today: How to Find a (Real!) Literary Agent --a complete tutorial on how to research, query, and submit to literary agents--while avoiding the bad guys.) Enjoy! - Ann C. Crispin Chair, Writer Beware ----------------------------------- What is a query letter? It’s a business letter, professionally written, carefully proofread (NO TYPOS!) that basically introduces your book and asks the agent “would you like to read this?” A query letter is not a synopsis. It’s not your autobiography. It’s short, pithy, and very well written. I can’t overstress how important a good query letter is...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A few of life's inevitabilities: Death. Taxes. Writers' quest to find a way around the submission process. There's nothing you can do about death. Taxes are pretty non-negotiable as well, unless you're prepared to retreat into a fortified compound and teach your children to be sharpshooters. But finding a way around the submission process...just about everyone seems to think there's an app for that. In the olden days, before email, there were submission catalogs. You paid for a listing in a paper catalog, which was then supposedly circulated to agents and publishers--who, if they received it at all, promptly tossed it into the trash (this was before recycling, too). Manuscript display websites , which allow writers to display their work for (theoretically at least) the attention of agents and editors, were born of the early days of the Internet and have been popping up ever since. Many display sites, such as H...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Between December 2009 and July 2010, I received a number of questions and advisories about a company called New Century Publishing, located in Indianapolis, Indiana. On its website (shut down now, but here's a cached version ), New Century presented itself as a selective small press--but in fact it was a vanity publisher. The contracts I saw required authors to pay $1,750 (supposedly, 50% of the costs of publication) and to buy 40 of their own books. Since fees were nowhere mentioned on New Century's website, the writers who contacted me had all approached it in the belief that it was a reputable small publisher, learning about the fees only when they received the contracts. Leaving aside all the other issues surrounding paying to publish, deceptive presentation is a really basic red flag. If your publisher is dishonest in its dealings with the public--if it misrepresents itself in order to attract submissions--how can you trust it t...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Think twice before you attempt to promote yourself or your service in the comments sections of what you believe to be similarly-focused blogs. I probably would never have known about the contest currently being promoted by ShortStoryBook.net , had they not posted this to my Tuesday blog post : Hi there! Shortstorybook.net is organizing a short story writing contest. We do think that you too might have a marvelous story to tell, one that is your own! So if you can compose it in not more than few words, we would want to hear from you. Also, you stand a chance to get your story published on our site and win cash prize of USD 100. “Then what are you waiting for? …put on your thinking cap and get writing. For registration and other information check - http://bit.ly/short-story-contest-2010 Happy writing! (Clue #1 to this outfit's lack of cluefulness: their failure to include actual linkage. I will provide it for them: Short Story Contest .) ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware® "Writer Beware" is now an officially registered service mark of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. (A service mark is like a trademark, except it's used in the advertising of services while trademarks are used in the sale of goods and products.) You'll note the addition of the ® symbol to the WB blog, WB website , and WB Facebook page . We've discussed the advisability of registering several times over the past few years. What finally prompted us to do it was our discovery of a forthcoming self-published book about writing and publishing scams called Writer Beware. Not only was the author of the book not connected with us, in our judgment she didn't have the expertise to write authoritatively on the subject. Given the book's title and subject matter, we worried that writers might assume that the book had our endorsement, or even had been produced by us. Service marks and trademarks carry some...