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.
Writer Beware is taking time off for the holidays. Unless there’s some especially major publishing news, look for us to be back after January 1. Victoria will still be answering email. Contact her at beware [at] sfwa.org. We wish all our readers peace, happiness, and excellent writing. Thanks so much for being here, for readingRead More
So...if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I love the crazy stuff, the little nuggets of publishing weirdness that I run across from time to time. Like author reality shows. Or bidding for a literary agent. Or trying to auction your story idea on eBay for millions of dollars. Or the tale of the "literary agent" who faked her own death and turned out to be a wanted criminal.
So here's another snippet of weirdness for y'all. Introducing Quill Shift Literary Agency ("Re-imagining the role of the literary agency by creating an environment that finds and promotes great writers, invites readers to participate, and intrigues publishing houses to purchase those writers' works").
Founded by Ayanna Coleman, who claims publishing experience but provides no specifics (though she appears at one point to have worked for Serendipity Literary Agency), the premise of Quill Shift is a bizarre mashup of crowdsourcing (represented mss. are posted on the agency's website for "shifters" to read and judge), crowdfunding ("shifters" can "donate money to see it become a physical book"), and purported market testing (if a ms. achieves its financial goal "showing that the market will support it", it's then submitted to publishers).
Anthologies, once a staple of genre publishing, have become a rarity at major publishing houses over the past couple of decades. Small presses still embrace the anthology format, however, as do genre readers–at least, judging by the number of small press or one-off genre anthology projects on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. While most of theseRead More
My name is Michael Capobianco. Some of you may know who I am. I was President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for thee terms, 1996, 1997, and 2007. I’ve also served SFWA in a number of other capacities, including VP, Treasurer, and, currently, as one of SFWA’s representatives to the Authors CoalitionRead More
If you’ve read my two previous posts about All Classic Books, you already know this story. If you haven’t, here’s the gist. Cheryl Lee Nunn of notorious vanity publisher American Book Publishing (one of Writer Beware’s Thumbs Down publishers, also featured in an alert at Writer Beware) attempts to expand her author-fleecing operation with aRead More
Writers, don’t fall for this offer from Global Talk Radio that’s currently doing the spam circuit. Here’s a new and FUN way to promote your book, business or website! Talk about it “on the air” in your own words… reach a highly-targeted audience and you might open doors to new opportunities! A RADIO INTERVIEW CANRead More
