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.
If you’re a regular here, you’ll have noticed our new look! It’s courtesy of the talented Tiana Smith of The Blog Decorator, who offered to donate a custom blog template just because she thinks Writer Beware is awesome. We’re grateful for her generosity, and thrilled to finally have a design that lives up to ourRead More
Welcome to 2015! It's time again for our annual look back at the year just past, to remind you of our most important, helpful, or amusing posts.
Here goes.
JANUARY
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware The Writer Beware blog will be on holiday hiatus for the next two weeks. I will still be answering email, though, so if you have a question, feel free to contact me at the email address in the sidebar. Many, many thanks to our readers, followers, and fans–andRead More
It also offers, in Writer Beware's opinion, a very problematic agreement for freelancers.
Contributors to The Toast are paid a flat, one-time fee of $50 on publication. No further compensation is due, even if The Toast re-publishes the contribution. The Toast also reserves the right to edit at will.
These aren't ideal provisions, but they're not uncommon. What is uncommon: contributors must hand over copyright and waive all moral rights (including the right of attribution). Here's the relevant language (my bolding):
UPDATE 12/18/14: HBO has changed its terms of use to partially address the concerns below. See the addendum at the bottom of this post.
What exactly is the Compendium? According to the FAQ:
The Game of Thrones Compendium will be the world’s first collaborative, crowd-sourced compendium. The end result will be a printed and bound edition. Every entry chosen for inclusion in the printed book will receive a copy with their name listed as an author.
The other day, I received this email:
Dear Writer Beware,
A couple of years ago, I published my mystery novel with [insert name of well-known deadbeat publisher here]. My contract won't expire for several more years, but I'm very unhappy with [deadbeat publisher] and would like to get out from under it. Can I change my title and publish on Amazon and hope [deadbeat publisher] won't see it?
I often receive such questions from authors who've tried and failed to get their rights back from their scammy or incompetent publishers, and are desperate to publish their books somewhere else. Can I change my title? Or the names of all the characters? Move the setting to a different country? Alter 10% of the book and legally make it a new work? Would my deadbeat publisher notice? Would it sue me?
