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.
Many of the writers who contact me with Writer Beware-type questions seem to be convinced that the process of getting published is equivalent to a crap shoot. There are enormous numbers of people trying to sell a book, and very few publishing slots to go around. What slots there are go mostly to insiders andRead More
Dear Author has a post detailing internal problems at Red Rose Publishing: Authors are reportedly not getting their work published within a specified time. If rights are requested to be reverted because of this breach, the publisher is reportedly sending the authors bills for cover art and editing for those books. Notices of editors andRead More
Since we started publishing more guest blog posts here at Writer Beware, and especially since I added a page to the blog describing what sort of guest posts we want and how to submit them (there’s a link just to the right), I’ve been getting a lot of solicitations. A few are appropriate. Most…not soRead More
Reported in the UK newspaper the Mirror, and subsequently picked up as a news item by PW, GalleyCat, the Bookseller, and the Times of India, among others: A boy of six has won a book deal worth thousands. Leo Hunter was awarded a 23-story contract with an American company after they read his first tale,Read More
NOTE: PW Select no longer offers reviews. PW Select listings now appear in the magazine's print and digital editions, and authors who buy PW Select also receive "featured" listings on PW's BookLife website.
Print on demand technology has done a lot over the past 10 or 12 years to change the publishing landscape. Among other things, it has created an explosion of fee-based publishing options, small publishers, and micropresses. These ventures in turn have driven an intense proliferation of services targeted to writers, all of them intended (theoretically, at least) to offset the minimal marketing and limited distribution that's typical of POD publishing services and small presses.
Among these new writers' services (or "services," depending on how incompetent or unscrupulous the providers are) are book review services that review for a fee. Many are independent, and often run by not-necessarily-highly-qualified people--for instance, Reader's Choice, which offers an Express Review Upgrade for $45 (you can pay more if you want a marketing package as well), or IP Book Reviewers, which charges between $50 and $90 depending on length.
Apart from writing synopses, one of the tasks that writers hate most is creating query letters. It’s a necessary evil, though, because in the USA at least, a well-written, dynamic query letter may be your one shot at getting a reputable literary agent’s attention. Below is my best advice on query letter writing. (It’s excerptedRead More
