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.
There’s a new literary agent in town, boys and girls. His name is Henry Santsaver, and his agency is called, rather generically, Literary Associates. Here’s his page on Publishers Marketplace. Here’s the agency’s website. Anyone’s who’s read my posts on the qualifications an agent needs or fake track records should be able to spot theRead More
Yesterday I drove up to Annapolis to give my writing workshop on “Finding an Agent” at Anne Arundel Community College. The last hour of the short workshop is devoted to writing a first draft of a query letter for the student’s current work-in-progress. At the upcoming Balticon, Victoria and I have volunteered to conduct aRead More
This was one of the silliest writing-related (well, sort of) things I ran across last year: the Book Millionaire "reality show." It's the brainchild not of a publishing industry insider--or even a publishing industry outsider--but of Lori Prokop, purveyor of a variety of get-rich-quick tapes, seminars, and books, and owner of her very own vanity press, Best Seller Publishing, Inc. (which currently has no working website, but here's what it looked like in 2003).
And guess what--these lucky would-be authors don't need to squeeze out a single line of prose! According to the show's FAQ: "We are looking for a person who desires to be America's next Book Millionaire and best selling author. This means the book may or may not be written yet nor would it need to be written before filming of the show."
So this is a book contest in which an actual book is irrelevant. For any potential contestants who might be feeling a little nervous about that, not to worry--if you don't have your own book, you can use someone else's! "You will not need to have your own book finished for the filming," the FAQ helpfully explains. "Rather, we will use prominent company products and currently published books for the tasks." Clearly, this is a competition for all the people who always kinda thought they might write the Great American Novel but never quite found the time, or the people who have a fab idea for a book if someone else would just take care of writing it for them, or the people who want to be authors but don't want to take the time to turn themselves into writers.
A few posts back, I linked to an example of the sort of agent website that fairly screams “Avoid!” Unfortunately, the reason I know about this website is that someone wrote me to ask whether the agent was reputable. You’d think that some things–an inability to spell, for instance–would register on the clue meter. Sadly,Read More
WELL, LEST ANYONE READ THIS POST IN THE ARCHIVES AND NOT NOTICE THE DATE, I AM HEREBY ANNOUNCING, IN BIG LETTERS, THAT THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN ON APRIL 1st, 2006. IT IS AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE. JOKE. HA HA HA. DO NOT SEND US ANY CHECKS OR MANUSCRIPTS. THEY WILL BE RETURNED UNREAD AND UNCASHED.Read More
Q. If you listen to music while writing do you find yourself writing the scene(s) to fit the music or is it just pleasant background noise? A. The only time I’ve used music to affect my writing was when I was writing tie-in novels. I found that playing a tape or CD of the StarRead More
