Writer Beware

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Moral Rights: What Writers Need to Know

Header image: row of letter dice on gray surface against a red background spelling out "rights" with the first die printed on one side with "legal" and on the other with "moral" and turned on edge so both words show (credit: LuFeTa / Shutterstock.com)

JUL 3, 2025July 22, 202510 COMMENTS

Today I'm writing for SFWA's online magazine, Planetside (formerly the SFWA blog) on a subject many writers--especially in the USA--aren't familiar with. Enshrined in most countries' copyright laws, moral rights provide important protections that many writers don't really think about...until they are asked to relinquish them.

In addition to various economic rights, such as the ability to license and profit from the use of their original work, the Berne Convention (the international source for copyright law) affirms creators’ moral rights.

Moral rights are intended to protect authorship, primarily by ensuring that a creator’s work is published or disseminated with their name—the right of attribution—and that the work can’t be altered or modified in ways that would be deleterious or prejudicial to the author or to the work itself—the right of integrity.

CONTRACTS

Why the Bankruptcy Clause in Your Publishing Contract May Not Protect You

Header image: BANKRUPTCY in Scrabble letters on a bright red background (Credit: CafeCredit / Flickr.com)

JUN 27, 2025January 15, 20266 COMMENTS

I'm blogging at Writer Unboxed again today.

Bankruptcy.

When you’re considering a publishing offer, the possibility that your publisher will go bankrupt probably isn’t top of mind. And indeed, publisher bankruptcies aren’t very common. Publishers frequently fail or close, but bankruptcy takes time and costs money, and makes a business accountable to its creditors. Especially where there have been shady dealings, troubled publishers often prefer to just disappear.

PUBLISHER COMPLAINTS

Bankruptcies of Unbound and Albert Whitman & Co Put Authors Between a Rock and a Hard Place

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JUN 6, 2025August 1, 202526 COMMENTS

Established in 2011, UK-based crowdfunded publisher Unbound styled itself the Kickstarter for books and was widely heralded as the next big idea in publishing. Heady words like "disruption" and "paradigm" were tossed around, and the company's launch garnered substantial positive media coverage. (This blog post from Nail Your Novel provides an overview of how it all worked).

To all appearances, Unbound had a good run, publishing hundreds of books over more than a decade, gaining both critical and sales success. By some accounts, though, a lot of it was smoke and mirrors, and in 2024 cracks began to show, with authors reporting royalties delayed or unpaid and books unavailable for sale.

In December 2024, Unbound informed its authors that what they suspected was true: it didn't have the money to pay royalties. It claimed to be re-structuring, bringing on a new CEO, Archna Sharma, who promised to stabilize the company. But just three months later, Unbound went into administration--and almost at once was sold, with all its assets, in a pre-pack deal (a kind of bankruptcy deal where the sale of a company is negotiated with a buyer before an administrator is appointed) to a new company called Boundless Publishing, at a fire-sale price of £50,000.

OVERSEAS SCAMS

Two to Avoid: Book Order Scams and Fake Reviews

Header image: Glowing neon letters "Just Say No: on bright red illuminated background (credit: Kevin Tichenor / Shutterstock.com)

MAY 9, 2025May 9, 202526 COMMENTS

Scammers are nothing if not inventive. As writers become wise to their techniques, they invent new ones.

Here are two newish frauds that appear to be on the rise. As with most writing scams these days, they target self-published authors.

I've written before about book order scams, in the context of scammers impersonating bookstores such as Barnes & Noble with out-of-the-blue emails promising bulk purchases and big royalties. All the author has to do is pony up thousands of dollars or pounds to cover printing and/or shipping costs (the relevant note here: bookstores do not print the books they sell, and they typically order from the publisher or publishing platform, rather than from the author).

OVERSEAS SCAMS

Guest Post: My Twenty-Four Hour Dream

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APR 25, 2025April 25, 202533 COMMENTS

I've written many scam case studies and investigations on this blog, all of which reference and/or describe writers' direct experiences (while protecting their identities, as Writer Beware always promises to do). But when the essay below landed in my inbox this week, it presented the perfect opportunity to offer a different perspective: a writer's own first-person description of her encounter with a scammer.

The scam in question is an extremely common one: out-of-the-blue contact from someone claiming to be a well-known film producer/famous movie director/executive with a major production company supposedly eager to turn the writer's book into a movie. The essay details all the typical elements of this often-elaborate fraud: praise and promises carefully calibrated to manipulate the writer's hopes and dreams (and ego), contracts and other items that lend a veneer of authenticity, even a phone call from the famous director attached to the project! But also warning signs, which this writer didn't ignore but too many writers do--such as American movie people speaking with strong foreign accents.

Denise Beck-Clark has kindly given me permission to use her name and bio (at the bottom of the post). Hopefully her experience will help other writers recognize and avoid this type of scam. (My favorite part of the story: when the scammer recommends using Writer Beware.)

Generative AI and Copyrightability: Report From the US Copyright Office

Header image: pile of crumpled multicolored Post-it notes, each with a copyright symbol (Credit: StepanPopov @ Shutterstock.com)

APR 4, 2025April 4, 20259 COMMENTS

In 2023, the US Copyright Office launched an initiative to examine the legal and policy implications for copyright of generative AI (GAI). Incorporating comments from the public, the resulting report will be issued in installments, each addressing a different topic.

Today, I'm discussing the second installment, published in January, which offers the Office's determinations on what does, and doesn't, make a work that incorporates GAI eligible for copyright protection. (Part 1 came out in 2024 and covered digital replicas--deepfakes, etc.) There's a lot of confusion in this area, and while the report does deliver some welcome clarity, there's still plenty of ambiguity for individual creators and individual works.

Bottom line: works that incorporate GAI may be copyrightable. But there are limitations, and the determination must be made on a case by case basis.