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.
Scroll down for updates On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. It’s a familiar meme…which can be turned around. On the internet, nobody knows you’re not a dog. I can claim, for instance, to be a well-known literary dog…er, agent, and as long as I put a little effort into the subterfuge, andRead More
On this blog and elsewhere, I spend a lot of time warning about junk book marketing services: so-called marketing and promotional services that are cheap to provide, but can be sold at a big markup, and for the most part are of little worth for book promotion or can more effectively be done by the author him/herself. Some examples: press releases, email blasts, book trailers, book fair display, social media setup, and social media advertising.
All these and more are hawked to writers at exorbitant prices by assisted self-publishing companies like the various Author Solutions imprints--and also, increasingly, by their scam imitators. Either way, they're a ripoff...but the scammers demand even bigger fees, tell even bigger lies, and deliver even more shoddy results. And that's when they're not just taking your money and running.
A few weeks ago, I focused on pay-to-play radio interviews--another junk marketing service--and why they're not worth the huge fees charged by providers. This week, I'm going to talk about pay-to-play magazines. (You'll note that all the companies discussed below are on my Big List of Publishing and Marketing Scams.)
Note: As of September 2020, freelance writers and editors (among many others) are exempted from AB-5. Scroll down for updates Last year, California passed a new law, AB-5, intended to make things better for gig economy workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, by forcing these companies to provide employee protections and benefits for theirRead More
Happy New Year! It’s that time again–time for a look back at the schemes, scams, and issues Writer Beware covered in 2019. PUBLISHER TROUBLES Sadly, there’s never a shortage of stories like these. Scandal Engulfs Independent Publisher ChiZine Publications: Arguably the biggest small press story of the year, the spectacular collapse of Canadian indie ChiZine Publications–amidRead More
Early in 2019, seventeen writers were recruited to participate in a box set of medical thrillers, called (with unforeseen irony) Do No Harm.
The buy-in: $750, with net income from sales going to two designated charities, and participating writers receiving a pro-rated share of any net income above those contributions. The goal: through cooperative marketing efforts, to get the set on the USA Today bestseller list.
Here's how the opportunity was presented to potential participants (this is from an email that was shared with me):
On Sunday morning, I woke up (late, I admit) to a flurry of emails about an website I’d never heard of before: Pressfuls. The writers who contacted me reported that they’d entered a free short story contest this past September. As you can see, pretty minimal information. At the end of October, they received aRead More
