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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Yesterday, Amazon's brand-new crowdsourced publishing program, Kindle Scout , opened for voting by the public. The concept is pretty simple : Kindle Scout is reader-powered publishing for new, never-before-published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book gets published. Selected books will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% eBook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing. Authors can submit their full manuscripts of 50,000 words or more (including cover art, various metadata items, and an author photo), about 5,000 words of which are posted on the Kindle Scout website for a 30-day "campaign". Readers can then browse books and nominate their favorites. If a manuscript they've voted for gets published, they receive a free ebook. Things authors should note: According to the guidelines, Amazon provides no editing, copy editing, proo...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware This is a very long post. If you're already familiar with the issues involved, scroll down to the third section and read from there. Last week, social media lit up with news that Permuted Press , a well-regarded small publisher of horror fiction, was going digital-first, and also suspending new title releases until 2015. In an email sent to authors, Permuted Press's President, Michael L. Wilson, touted PP's success in 2014, along with a huge increase in its release schedule: from 20-25 books per year to over 100 so far in 2014. However, While we’re thrilled at the response to the “new” Permuted Press, our staff has been burning the candle at both ends pulling it all together. Everyone here is upbeat about the results, but to be totally honest - we’re exhausted. In order for us to operate at our optimum and to be able to build upon the successes we’ve already seen, we need to make a few adjustments to our original plans. So, we’r...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A few years ago, I wrote a post on the difference between copyright (literally, the right to copy or reproduce, ownership of which guarantees authors control over their intellectual property) and rights (the bundle of rights contained within copyright, which authors can grant or license to others or exploit on their own). This week, that post received a (likely spammed) anonymous comment: Copyright protects works of original authorship such as text, artwork, photographs, sound recordings, screenplays, music, lyrics, etc. You can register more than one work under one copyright registration. Such as a collection of books, songs, photographs, etc. If you need to protect your work you will want to register it for copyright. Visit http://copyrightregistry-online-form.com/ and fill out the form on the site. Your work will be registered same day! In addition, there are representatives available day and night as well as a live chat box r...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Partly in connection with the controversy surrounding troubled publisher Ellora's Cave , I've been getting questions about how to go about requesting rights reversion from one's publisher. There's no official format for a rights reversion request, and if you do a websearch on "rights reversion request" you can find various pieces of advice from authors and others. Here's the procedure I'd suggest. (Note that I'm not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice.) First of all, if you have a competent agent, ask your agent to handle it. Especially if you're with a larger publisher, your agent is more likely to know exactly whom to contact, and in a better position to push for a response. If you don't have an agent, or if your agent is not very competent or not very responsive: 1. Look through your contract to find the rights reversion or termination language. Sometimes this is a separate clause; sometim...