The official blog of Writer Beware® shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news, and commentary. Writer Beware® is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
One post back, I wrote about this guy who’s scattering scurrilous messages around the Internet about me and Dave Kuzminski. At the time, I’d only found two of these, but in fact there are more–five in all. Here’s another one. And another one. And still another one. Guess what. We still don’t care. Since ol’Read More
In 1999, I started getting complaints about a guy with the unfortunate name of George Harrison Titsworth, who ran an agency called Helping Hand Literary Service in San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Titsworth sought clients by placing ads like this one in free weekly papers such as Pennysaver: WRITERS WANTED by literary agent that specializes inRead More
In Ann’s and my line of business (the scam-busting business, that is), we inevitably create some resentment (to put it mildly) among the people we warn about. Here’s one typical example. Here’s another. An alert Writer Beware reader recently let me know that someone calling himself J.G. Goodman has posted some unflattering comments about meRead More
Hi, folks. Been gone a while, due to illness in family. At any rate, this morning I got a call quite early from a Sergeant John Walker from the Texas police force (yes, I confess I was picturing Chuck Norris the whole time we were chatting!) to ask me if Writer Beware would post aRead More
A couple of posts back, Jill Elaine Hughes left an interesting comment: It might be interesting, Victoria, to get some respected editors to do a post on how they prioritize agented submissions based on the quality/reputation of the agent. I know that if you’re repped by Donald Maass or Ethan Ellenberg, you can get readRead More
Thanks in part to the delightful Miss Snark and the estimable Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Writer Beware’s 20 Worst Agents List has been proliferating across the Internet. We thank everyone who has re-posted the list–we’re thrilled it has gotten so much exposure. The more writers know about literary predators, the better. To date, however, the listRead More
