Writer Beware

Latest Posts

Author Complaints at Clear Fork Press

MAR 21, 2025March 21, 202510 COMMENTS

In early February, author Vanessa Keel published a long, cautionary blog post about her experience with one small publisher. It was not a happy tale: an absent editor, little marketing support, a non-standard wholesale discount that discouraged bookseller orders, problems with royalty statements and payments, and much more. The result: few sales, crushing disappointment, and, ultimately, a rights reversion.

Vanessa didn't name the publisher, but she did mention the title of her book. So it was easy to confirm that the publisher in question was Clear Fork Press (CFP), a children's book publisher that publishes under four imprints: Spork, Blue Whale Press (formerly an independent publisher, acquired by CFP in 2020), &MG, and Rise. Per Amazon, CFP has a catalog of around 150 titles, most released via the Spork imprint (though you'd never know it from looking at the CFP website--more on that below).

I first heard about Clear Fork Press (then Clear Fork Publishing) way back in 2016, thanks to questions from authors who'd received contract offers. At the time, CFP had no imprints; its (poorly formatted and unprofessionally-worded) contract was quite brief, but included one significantly author-unfriendly provision: royalties paid on net profit (actual sales income less printing and shipping--for why this can be a contract red flag, see here).

BUSINESS OF WRITING

Are Writers Uniquely Vulnerable to Scams?

Header image: black fountain pen with silver nib resting on a handwritten page

MAR 7, 2025March 7, 202529 COMMENTS

This is a question that sometimes comes up when I do interviews. Writer Beware has been in operation for more than 25 years, yet it’s still so busy. There seem to be so many scams that target authors. Are writers somehow more vulnerable to fraud than other creatives?

In my opinion, no.

Writing scams aren’t unique. There are similar frauds in every creative industry. Headshot scams for models. Talent agency scams for actors. Representation scams for illustrators. Pay-to-play venues for musicians and artists. They may not be as numerous as writing scams, but they are widespread, and they use the same tricks and techniques to lure and ensnare victims.

BOOK MARKETING SCAMS

Why Cheap Promo is No Bargain: The Promo Website Empire of Alwin Gnanaraj

Header image: outstretched hand dropping $1, $10, and $20 bills into a stainless steel garbage can (credit: Atsushi Hirao / Shutterstock.com)

FEB 21, 2025March 4, 202614 COMMENTS

A literary agent recently reached out to me to let me know that one of their authors (a well-known literacy advocate) was being impersonated via a message falsely sent out under the author's name. The purpose of the message: plugging a "perfect" marketing website called AllKidsBooks (I've redacted the author's name and email address):

From what appears on its website, AllKidsBooks (warning: if you click the link, you'll be routed to a Cloudflare "verify you're human" page before you can access the site) is one of those DIY promo sites where authors sign up to post their own books, book trailers, events, etc., supposedly to boost their exposure to an eager audience. Additional perks include the promise of social media and email marketing.

Without information about traffic and/or subscribers and followers, such sites are pretty dubious as a marketing strategy, even if they're free. And AllKidsBooks is not free.

Turning Copyright on Its Head: The UK’s Proposed AI Copyright Exception

Header image: black chalkboard with drawings in white chalk of a brain that's half organic and half circuitry, flanked by one thought-bubble saying "Artificial Intelligence" and another saying "Copyright" (Credit: faithie / Shutterstock.com)

JAN 31, 2025January 31, 202527 COMMENTS

The explosive development and spread of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), with its potential for embedding itself in every aspect of our lives, poses a dizzying plethora of issues: environmental, social, existential, even apocalyptic. In this post, I'm going to be focusing on an issue of primary concern to those of us in the creative industries: the struggle to apply the framework of copyright law to GAI companies' utilization of our work for training their systems.

Developing and training the networks and large language models that power chatbots like ChatGPT and image generation systems like Midjourney requires vast amounts of data scraped from the internet: text, images, music, and more, including material protected by copyright. As we've been discovering over the past couple of years, GAI developers haven't exactly been scrupulous about obtaining the permission of creators for the use of this material.

GAI companies argue that it's not possible to develop their products without using copyrighted materials, and in any case, that to do so is fair use.* Creators, on the other hand, want to be able to control access to their work, as guaranteed by copyright law--and, incidentally, get paid for the exploitation of it. There's enormous anger in creative communities not just over these issues, but over the ways in which GAI can potentially supplant human creators and destroy livelihoods--not to mention the degree to which it is enshittifying the creative sphere by flooding the zone with GAI slop.

OVERSEAS SCAMS

USA Pen Press: The Ghostwriting Scam of a Thousand Websites

$USA Pen Press homepage with large images of John Grisham and J.K. Rowling flanking a boxed announcement: Hello World! We Are The USA Pen Press Bearers of the book publishing \ legacy$

JAN 24, 2025October 16, 202530 COMMENTS

Well, not actually a thousand. But a lot.

It's been a little while since I've written about ghostwriting scams (previous posts include the markers that identify ghostwriting scams and the scams' misappropriation of the Amazon name and trademarks)...but given how prevalent they are, and their increasing aggressiveness in advertising, especially on Facebook and other social media, it seemed like a good time to re-visit them, via an especially egregious example I recently discovered.

But first...a little background.

BEST OF WRITER BEWARE: YEAR IN REVIEW

Best of Writer Beware: 2024 in Review

Header image: the numerals 2024 against a blue background, with the zero shown as a target with an arrow in the bullseye, enclosed by a magnifying glass

JAN 10, 2025January 10, 202523 COMMENTS

Hard to believe another year has rolled around--it seems like five minutes ago I was preparing this annual overview for 2023. As always, it's been a busy year of writing scams, publisher implosions, exploitative contract terms, and more.

As in the past few years, impersonation scams were among the most frequent types of fraud reported to Writer Beware. And as always, their primary targets are self-published and small press authors. If you self-publish your book, it's almost a guarantee that you'll encounter some or all of these.

The Impersonation List. Impersonation scams, where scammers impersonate literary agencies, publishers, movie studios, organizations, and others with fake representation offers, publishing contracts, movie offers, and more--all, of course, involving large upfront fees--are among the most common of the many scams arriving from overseas. Constantly updated, this list includes all of the impersonations that have been reported to me (and there are a LOT of them), along with with tips on how to unmask imposters.