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.
Hi, my friends: Lately I’ve been dealing with family illness while trying to make significant progress on my new novel, Winds of Vengeance, so I haven’t been around much. I really appreciate Victoria stepping in and blogging so excellently. Since I’m in the middle of a major project — well, I consider writing an epicRead More
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WRITERS WANTED by literary agent that specializes in getting unpublished writers published. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children's. Free evaluation. Helping Hand Literary Services.
Writers who ignored the multiple red flags (real agents don't advertise; real agents don't represent poetry) and submitted to Helping Hand got an offer of representation, complete with a glowing acceptance letter. "I don't normally have this much to say about a submission," the letter began (and yes, every potential client got the same letter, customized with their name and book title). "You are a talented writer with a great deal of potential...Plus, it doesn't hurt a bit that I found 117 [or 150, or 200, depending on the letter] publishers that buy material like yours."
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
