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.
The following statement was sent by the Authors Guild to its members on Sunday. The Guild labels the proposed merger between Penguin and Random House (which would create the world’s largest publisher) “unsettling,” and urges “close scrutiny from antitrust officials at the Justice Department or the FTC.” ————————————- Here’s our storm-delayed member alert on lastRead More
It’s right there in the logo of the Screenplay Replay Contest: the come-on.”Where Your Winning Script Gets a Publishing Deal.” Here’s more: In today’s competitive script marketplace, adaptation is king. From The Hunger Games to The Help to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, an incalculable number of blockbuster scripts started their lives as successfulRead More
On Wednesday, I blogged about high entry fee awards schemes. Today, I’m going to discuss another potential awards trap: non-optimal entry rules. eBookMall is a veteran ebook retailer, one of the very first (it was founded before the turn of the century). Now it’s hosting an awards program called America’s Next Author, which it isRead More
It’s Awards Week at Writer Beware! No, I’m not handing out prizes–I’m dispensing cautions. I’ve got two posts this week, both focusing on literary awards you may want to think twice about before entering. Today’s post features two awards of a type that seems to be becoming more and more common: aimed at small pressRead More
Query letters. Except for the synopsis, there’s no more dreaded task a writer has to undertake. How to boil an entire book down to a short pitch that not only provides an accurate snapshot of the work, but makes a literary agent (or a publisher) want to see more? This is incredibly difficult–not just becauseRead More
On the heels of several publishers’ secret settlement deal with Google in the long-running Google Books lawsuit, a judge has made a major ruling in another lawsuit over book scanning. In September 2011, the Authors Guild, two international writers’ groups, and several individual authors filed suit against a number of major US universities, challenging theirRead More
