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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A short post, as I'm on vacation at the moment. (Why am I posting to the blog while I'm on vacation? Because I'm obsessive. There, I said it.) Interview with Ann Crispin Check out this interview with Ann Crispin, Pitfalls in the Writing Road . It highlights her work with Writer Beware--and also her upcoming book, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom (pub date: May 2011). It's the first Pirates book for an adult audience, and tells the story of how Jack Sparrow became Captain Jack Sparrow. It's a fabulous book (I've read it) so do stop by Ann's website and check out the exciting excerpts . How Moral Are You? Agent Richard Curtis reports that HarperCollins has added a morals clause to the termination provisions of its contract . New language in the termination provision of the Harper’s boilerplate gives them the right to cancel a contract if “Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public con...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I don't often write posts like this, because it's really like shooting fish in a barrel. And there are so many red flags here that savvy writers may wonder why I bother. But there are a lot of new writers searching for agents, many of whom are probably new to Writer Beware, and may not yet be clear on what to watch out for. I also think it's important, every now and then, to emphasize the basics of author self-protection--because as cataclysmically as the publishing landscape is changing, the basic warning signs remain the same. Currently doing the rounds (at least, judging by the number of reports I've received) is this spam...er, solicitation from a new literary agency called Best Solution Author Agency (I've reproduced it exactly as written). [Author's Name Redacted]: I found your profile on Writers.net and I would like to take a moment and introduce myself and my company My name is Dan Grogan and I am a Literary...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I'm behind the eight ball with this post, because home renovation insanity has kept me more or less offline for the past few days. Many other bloggers have beaten me to the punch with commentary on this contest, so there's already quite a bit of information out there . Apologies if what follows is repetitive of stuff you've already seen. First One Publishing , a new digital publishing venture, has announced a contest to promote its launch . Entries must be novels of up to 65,000 words, and prizes include publication. There are a number of reasons to be wary of this contest. First, the prizes. Publication is an attractive prize--but First One is new, and not all new publishers make it. First One does have more behind it than many startups--it's an offshoot of Karen Hunter Publishing , which looks like a fairly well-established independent, and the CEO, Karen Hunter, has a wide and varied background in writing, publishing, a...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Received in email this morning via Google Alerts: this press release from an outfit called 3L Publishing , announcing publication of a book called Vanity Circus: A Smart Girl's Guide to Avoid Publishing Crap . A manual on how to avoid bad writing? Not exactly. " Vanity Circus is an entertaining, funny and insightful book that guides readers through the complex, sometimes frustrating but always interesting world of publishing." As it happens, the book's authors are co-owners of 3L Publishing, and 3L publishing is a book producer--or, if you want to be less polite about it, a vanity publisher. I don't whether to laugh at the press release's opening line ("Business owners and individuals who have lost their jobs or seek new ways to supplement their income are turning to book publishing as a way to make money"), or cry at the fact that anyone would advocate paying a lot of dough to a book producer as a way o...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A couple of recent news items have me thinking about the importance of looking at information in context. The first is an article from the Los Angeles Times entitled " Book Publishers See Their Role as Gatekeepers Shrink. " The article covers a number of writers who are bypassing trade publishers to publish their work themselves--such as Joe Konrath, who has had a great deal of success self-publishing his backlist on the Kindle; Seth Godin, who last year decided to become his own (and apparently other people's) publisher; and Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson, who are serializing a collaborative novel online. The second is a cluster of information about ebook sales. According to USA Today's latest Best-Selling Books list, ebook sales for the week after Christmas were higher than print sales for 19 of the top 50 sellers . Amazon reported similar news in October, when it revealed that for top-selling books, Kindle ebooks were o...