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.
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Are you sick of my contract warnings about serialized fiction apps yet?
Honestly I'm not even sure who I'm aiming these posts at. They go right over the heads of many of the writers who could benefit from them (at least, judging by the emails I receive from writers who've read my warnings and still want to know why this stuff is so bad, and clueless Facebook discussions scoffing at me for being such a nitpicker), and for savvier writers, probably aren't needed. Contract geeks, maybe?
On the other hand, the relatively new serialized fiction app space is shaping up to be a major predator, with dozens of companies aggressively recruiting authors--many of whom are young, inexperienced non-native English speakers--with exaggerated promises of money and exposure, and binding them to complicated English-language contracts that are almost comical in their awfulness.
As if the querying game weren't hard enough, writers increasingly need to watch out for fake agents/agencies.
These fakes are set up by scammers as fronts for referral schemes. The aim is to draw the writer in by offering commission-only representation--no fees! Ever!--and then refer them to a "trusted company" for some costly service they supposedly need before their book can be pitched to film producers or traditional publishers: a marketing campaign to raise their profile, a developmental edit, a "professional review", a screenplay...the list goes on.
Many such scams don't bother fleshing their fake agents out with any realistic details: they're just a name and a title on a solicitation email. Others, though, get more elaborate, with whole networks of imaginary agents complete with photos, CVs, even websites. Here's one such scheme I've written about in the past.
This time, GoodNovel (aka Singapore New Reading Technology PTE. Ltd.) is in my sights. Like the many similar platforms of this type, it hosts a wide range of genre content, and is aggressively recruiting writers to create long (sometimes extremely long) serialized online novels.
(UPDATE: Other serialized fiction apps in the New Reading Technology portfolio include Meganovel, Bluenovela, Filinovel, GoodShort [videos], and GoodFM [audiobooks]).
Writers can use the platform to create without signing a GoodNovel contract, or they can apply for a contract by posting at least 5,000 words and clicking a button, after which GoodNovel will evaluate whether they want to offer a contract, and if so, what kind.
Last week on Twitter, I was contacted by a writer with concerns about the official rules for Wattpad's Open Novella Contest 2022. Specifically, this clause:
This is incredibly writer-unfriendly. Prize winners must grant rights exclusively, perpetually, and without the option to terminate, and the contest sponsor can use those rights as it chooses, without notifying--or paying--the writer.
Additionally, and most egregiously, winners must waive their moral rights, which include the right of attribution--the right to have your work published with your name--and the right of integrity--the right to have your work published exactly as you wrote it. In other words, winners' works could be published or adapted in abridged or altered form, without their name or under someone else's name, and they'd have no right to object--if they knew about it at all.
In 2018, I wrote a post that, in part, warned about a solicitation from an obviously dodgy "ghostwriting" service (one big clue: the mangled English everywhere on its website).
With a bit of digging, I discovered not only that this service was a single scammer doing business on four different websites under four different names, but that domain registration, content, and other similarities linked the ghostwriting sites with nearly 30 other scammy websites offering other kinds of services, from logo creation to accounting.
Back then, ghostwriting scams (ghostscams for short) weren't super-common. How times have changed. There are a TON of ghostscams now.
