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.
HBO’s buzzed-about new series Lovecraft Country has spawned a short story contest: For the Love of the Craft. Co-sponsored by HBO and The Root, the contest invites writers “to pick a decade or an important moment in Black American history, and weave a tale of the monsters that litter that time.” There’s a $5,000 prize for theRead More
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about scammers impersonating reputable literary agents. These are not isolated incidents: I have a growing file of reports and complaints about this growing phenomenon–including from writers who’ve lost large amounts of money. Now publishers are being impersonated as well. Here are a couple of examples of the kindRead More
I've written about this new "beware" twice already (you can see those posts here and here), but it appears to be a growing problem, so I want to put out a more focused warning.
Scammers--the same Philippines-based Author Solutions copycats that I've featured numerous times in this blog (also see the long, long list in the sidebar)--are impersonating reputable literary agents and agencies in order to bamboozle writers into buying worthless "services." Here are the misused names I've documented so far; the scam companies they work for are in parentheses:
- Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency (TechBooks Media, aka Chapters Media and Distribution)
Scroll down for updates I first heard of Filles Vertes Publishing (FVP) in late February of last year, when I was contacted by a writer wanting to know if I’d received any complaints. I hadn’t–but a look at FVP’s website prompted some concerns. On the plus side, FVP was distributed by Small Press United, theRead More
Founded by Steve Berman in 2001, Lethe Press is an LGBTQ-focused independent publisher "specializing in the strange, the eerie, and the uncanny". In a publishing environment where small presses come and go like mushrooms, it has been in business for nearly two decades, and has garnered awards and starred reviews for its books.
Unfortunately, it has recently also been garnering complaints.
Writer Beware has heard from multiple individuals who cite a variety of problems at Lethe, including contract breaches in the form of unpaid royalties (for both authors and editors) and late royalty payments and statements. Contractors (such as audio narrators) have also gone unpaid. Royalty reports I've seen are seriously lacking; among other things, they fail to state sales numbers for ebooks, showing only gross income.
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware® A few months ago, I warned about a scammer impersonating agent Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The fraudster in question turned out to be yet another of the Philippines-based publishing and marketing scams that I’ve been writing about so much over the past couple ofRead More
