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.
A month ago, I blogged about the troubles at Aspen Mountain Press, whose authors report nonpayment of royalties, contract breaches, delayed publication schedules, and other problems; and whose senior staff resigned en masse in early August. Usually, when this kind of turmoil engulfs a publisher, authors and staff members are reluctant to say too much,Read More
Today's guest post by multi-published author Doranna Durgin is about a publisher behaving badly.
More than that, however, it highlights something that every writer signing a publishing contract needs to be aware of: the importance of reversion clauses (which publishers often like to keep as vague as possible so they can hold on to rights for as long as possible), and the problems that can arise even when authors and their agents re-write open-ended reversion clauses to make them more precise.
This post was originally published at Doranna's blog, where an active conversation is ongoing in the comments thread.
LOBSTER PRESS For some time, there’ve been rumors of financial trouble at Canadian children’s publisher Lobster Press. Those rumors were recently confirmed in articles from Publishers Weekly and Quill and Quire. From Quill and Quire: Q and Q has learned of multiple instances of unpaid royalties stretching back to 2008. The company has also shedRead More
It’s been a year since I first blogged about serial plagiarist “Iron” Dave Boyer (among many other names), whose prolific pilfering of other writers’ words has become something of an Internet legend, especially in the horror community, where he concentrates his efforts. The fact that Boyer’s multiple misappropriations have been extensively exposed by intrepid researchersRead More
Some of you may be aware that for the past few months, a group calling itself The Write Agenda has been attempting to wage a disinformation campaign against Writer Beware and other anti-scam activists. (Note: We’re expecting that at least some of the data we’re linking to in this post will disappear after the postRead More
I get a lot of questions about publishing contracts, and many requests to review them. I’m not a lawyer, but I do have a fair knowledge of publishing contract boilerplate, as well as a good grasp of the issues that writers need to look out for, and I’m always willing to provide experience-based feedback. (Plus,Read More
