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.
Ah, 2021. The year that was supposed to deliver us from the pandemic, and instead delivered…well. You know. At least one expectation didn’t change: scammers gonna scam. Writer Beware was ready. Below are highlights of a busy year of scam hunting, scheme exposing, contract analyzing, and just plain crazy stuff. IT CAME FROM OVERSEAS IRead More
In 2014, I wrote a post about Copyright Registration Online, one of many faux and exploitative copyright registration "services" that cater to writers' anxiety about theft and plagiarism, particularly of unpublished work, by promising to register US copyright or to provide some sort of copyright verification service.
Naturally, there are fees for these services. At the time I wrote the post, Copyright Registration Online was charging $135--which was a ripoff, on two fronts. You can register copyright yourself online at the US Copyright Office for only $45. Just as important: there's absolutely no need to register copyright for unpublished work.
Some registration services are basically pass-throughs: they do submit registration applications to the US Copyright Office, just at a seriously inflated cost. Others provide their own "registration" documentation or certificates, often based on some sort of timestamp. These might--and I emphasize might--help you prove copyright ownership, along with other materials like drafts and research notes, but there is no legal substitute for registration with the US Copyright Office (in the United States, you must previously have registered your copyright in order to file an infringement action). Just like so-called poor man's copyright, any "registration" received from a source other than the Copyright Office won't qualify.
I've recently gotten several reports of phone solicitations from a New Jersey-based bookstore called The Reading Glass Books.
Why would a bookstore be calling authors out of the blue? Well in this case, to sell shelf space: $350 for six months. Authors can direct the store to sell the books at whatever price they like, and will get "100% of the royalties" (which of course makes no sense, since direct sales proceeds are not royalties). And if you're thinking that the store will order the books...no, no, no, don't be silly. Authors must provide their own copies.
Paid shelf space for self-published authors isn't a new idea. Here's one entrepreneur who set up a bookstore entirely on that model (the store closed in 2019). And a few years ago there was some media coverage of independent bookstores that were renting shelf space to self-pubbed and small press writers--in some cases for a good deal more than $350.
I first heard of Hurn Publications (that's a link to an archived version; the Hurn website is no longer online) not because of author complaints, but because of a contact from the company's founder, Meaghan Hurn.
Shortly after I published this post about contract cancellations and other troubles at vanity publisher Waldorf Publishing, Meaghan emailed me to say that she had a list of publishers who were willing to "help" the cancelled authors by printing new editions of their books. Regardless of the publisher, referring authors isn't something I'd ever do; Writer Beware is scrupulous about avoiding conflict of interest, and we never offer publisher (or agent) recommendations or referrals. We also promise confidentiality, and don't pass on names to third parties.
Meghan also asked me to take a look at Hurn and "see where we might be able to improve from your unique viewpoint." I give advice to writers for free, but to publishers, not so much. Nevertheless, I took a look. And I saw some warning signs. Meaghan Hurn had no apparent professional publishing or writing experience prior to founding the publisher. The company was less than a year old (there's a really high failure rate among new small publishers; it's best to wait until they've been publishing books for at least a year, and preferably longer, before approaching them); it described itself as a "collaborative" publisher (often a euphemism for pay-to-play; Hurn emphatically denied that authors had to pay for anything, but some publishers make that claim and still have a book purchase requirement); and it claimed trademark status for non-trademarked properties (I checked).
I first heard about editor and author coach Christina Kaye (aka Christina Broaddus) last year, via a writer who later posted this public complaint on Facebook. The allegations: misrepresentation of services (editing by a trainee rather than Christina herself), inadequate performance (the complainant paid for content editing, and got something more like copy editing), and refusal by Christina to either re-do the edit or provide a refund.
In addition to the allegations, the complainant provided supporting documentation...including Christina's furious emails and lawsuit threats when the complainant refused to back off.
As far as I know, the lawsuit never materialized.
How cute is NovelCat's kitty logo? If only its contract were so adorable.
NovelCat is yet another of the serialized fiction apps, mostly based in Singapore and Hong Kong, that have sprung up relatively recently and are aggressively recruiting authors. A few have decent contracts, but many offer truly terrible terms, which I've explored in a couple of previous posts: EMP Entertainment and A&D Entertainment, which appear to have been deputized to recruit for Webnovel (this post includes an assessment of a number of similar companies), and Fictum, a new platform from ByteDance.
The full NovelCat contract can be seen here. It's non-exclusive, and the non-exclusivity doesn't seem to be vitiated by prohibitions within the contract (as with the EMP and A&D contracts, which include several clauses that severely restrict their supposed non-exclusivity). There's also an advance; the amount wasn't stipulated in the contract I saw, but similar platforms pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $1,500.
