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.
This is an updated version of a post I published a couple of years ago. It’s not all that common, but I do see it from time to time in small press publishing contracts that I review: a publisher claiming ownership of the editing and copy editing it provides, or making the claim implicitlyRead More
Once upon a time, there was a publishing and marketing scammer called Chapters Media and Advertising, owned by one Mark Joseph Rosario. Chapters pretended to be a US company--it even had dual business registrations in Wyoming and Florida, as well as a purported address in Nevada--but in reality, it operated out of the Philippines (much like its many brethren).
Chapters was an unusually devious little scammer. In addition to offering the usual substandard publishing services and junk marketing ripoffs, it had a sideline in impersonating literary professionals, including agent Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Agency and literary scout Clare Richardson of Maria B. Campbell Associates. I've written about both of these impersonation scams (as well as the issue more generally; Chapters was not the only one doing this).
I don't know if it was my posts that did it, but Rosario apparently felt that Chapters had received too much exposure--because sometime in the past couple of months, he abandoned the old Chapters website (along with the website of an associated scam, TechBooks Media) and rebooted as a pair of new companies: Paper Bytes Marketing Solutions and Blueprint Press Internationale.
It also, apparently, has trouble providing royalty statements and author copies.
Writer Beware has received a number of complaints from Riverdale anthology and book authors who cite publication delays, poor copy editing, late or missing royalty statements, non-provision of contractually-promised print author copies, and poor communication (for instance, authors finding out about to-be-published stories only when other authors spotted the stories in proof copies).
I've also seen royalty statements for several RAB anthologies, which appear to sell in miniscule numbers (for example, several years into its five-year contract term, one anthology had sold just 35 copies in total, according to correspondence from RAB). RAB has a policy of not paying out anthology royalties at all until at least $50 is due; this benchmark is stipulated in most of the RAB anthology contracts I've seen--but not in all, and even where it's not, the $50 benchmark has been cited as a reason for not providing royalty checks.
This is an expanded version of a Twitter thread I published last weekend--but not everyone is on Twitter and there have been new developments, so I'm amplifying it here.
You'll find this post useful not just as an amusing account of unmasking a fraud, but as a series of tips on what should ring warning bells when you're evaluating an agency's website.
On Sunday morning, an alert writer DM'd me about a new agency promoting itself on Twitter: Pique Literary.
A couple of years ago I featured Waldorf Publishing in a post about a manuscript contest it was running, which was replete with red flags--not least of which is that Waldorf is a vanity publisher. At the time, it was charging a menu of fees, from which authors could pick and choose:
In 2019, Waldorf switched to a book purchase requirement: authors were required to buy 50 or 100 books, "to ensure us that Authors are participating in marketing and actively promoting their book". Possibly it won't surprise you to learn that there is nothing on Waldorf's website or in its publicity materials to suggest that fees are involved.
Other business ventures undertaken by Ms. Terry include Dream Coast Films, a production company she established in 2013 that doesn't appear to have ever gotten off the ground, and Master Media Class, a short-lived media training course she co-founded in 2020 with two Waldorf authors.
A few months ago, I began getting questions about a self-described hybrid (read: fee-charging) publisher called New Degree Press (NDP). Reported fees were in the $5,000 to $8,000 range, which paid for a suite of publishing services including editing, formatting, and publication via KDP and IngramSpark.
So far, so unremarkable. But there's something that sets NDP apart from more familiar pay-to-play publishing ventures: although it presents the appearance of an independent publisher on its rather sparse website (including soliciting submissions), NDP is in fact the publishing arm of The Creator Institute, an entrepreneurship course created by Georgetown University professor Eric Koester.
Likened to a master's degree or MBA, the Creator Institute (CI)--dubbed the bSchool Program (for Book School)--enables students to "learn-by-doing--enabling you to discover your passion, develop your expertise and establish your credibility through the creation and launch of your very own book." Method and goals are summarized thus:
