scams

Quick Link: Don’t Fall Prey to Publishing Scams: 7 New Writer Mistakes to Avoid

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Congratulations to Anne R. Allen for the awards given to her blog. We know she totally deserves the praise. Especially for articles like this. There are so many scammy people out there, I do so worry about new writers being taken by them. So caveat emptor – buyer beware and become knowlegable with this great post.

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Don’t Fall Prey to Publishing Scams: 7 New Writer Mistakes to Avoid

by Anne R. Allen

We all make mistakes. It’s how people learn. But some new writer mistakes can end a writing career before it starts. They play into the hands of the predators who make money off the delusions of newbie writers.

Ruth and I are long-time industry veterans, and as we say “we made the mistakes, so you don’t have to.” We were jazzed when two organizations honored us for our work this week.

Author Marketing Services named us one of the “50 Kickass Resources for Indie Authors.”

And the site “10 Greatest” put  us on their list of “Top Writing Blogs”

So here are some of the new writer mistakes we want to help writers avoid.

1) Writing-in-a-Garret Syndrome

It seems half the people I meet are “working on a book.” I met one at the supermarket this week. He wanted to tell me about struggling with his opus—at great length. I tried to be polite, but as my bourbon-caramel gelato began to melt, I suggested he join the Nightwriters in San Luis Obispo—an excellent group for writers at all levels. (And you still have time to enter their annual writing contest, The Golden Quill Awards. More info in Opportunity Alerts.)

“Oh no,” supermarket man said. “I’ll never show my book to anybody. They might steal my ideas. They can read it when it’s published.”

Read the full post on Anne R. Allen

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

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Quick Link: 10 Questions to Ask Before You Accept a Traditional Publishing Deal

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Congratulations, you have been offered a traditional publishing deal! But before you go spending your royalties, be a smart cookie and check that deal out through and through. Susan Spann from Writer’s In The Storm has some tips on what to watch out for so you can vet your deal carefully.

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10 Questions to Ask Before You Accept a Traditional Publishing Deal

By Susan Spann

The explosion of independent publishing houses in the U.S. and abroad makes it vital for authors to investigate publishers carefully before signing a contract. While even diligent research can’t ensure you’ll avoid every possible problem, here are some questions to ask before you accept a traditional publishing deal:

  1. Does the Contract Require You (the Author) to Pay for Anything?

If the answer is “yes,” this is not a traditional publishing house, and probably not a deal you should sign. Traditional deals don’t require the author to pay for anything, either out of pocket or by allowing the publisher to recoup expenses before calculating the author’s royalty share.*

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Profit Engine: The Author Solutions Markup – from Writer Beware

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Writer Beware is a site you should bookmark! Sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., the goal of the site is to shine a bright light on the scams and bad practices that prey on the unwary writer.  Victoria Strauss looks a little deeper into the Author Solutions sale by Penguin and why smart writers might want to avoid them. Originally posted January 15, 2016.

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Profit Engine: The Author Solutions Markup

As most of you already know, Penguin Random House dumped Author Solutions at the end of 2015, selling it to a private equity firm for an undisclosed amount. (“A Penguin Random House Company” has already vanished from Author Solutions’ logo.)

The sale received quite a bit of media coverage, at least some of which acknowledged AS’s troubled reputation–something else that won’t be new to you if you’re a regular reader of this blog.

One of the areas that I and others have often criticized is AS’s huge range of marketing services, which are aggressively pitched to authors who sign up for publishing packages. Most of these services are dubiously useful (email blasts), jawdroppingly expensive (book signings at book fairs), or both (cinema advertising). Basically, they’re the equivalent of liquor at a restaurant: relatively inexpensive to deliver, but extremely profitable because of the enormous markup at which they can be sold. (AS executives have actually admitted, in depositions related to class action lawsuits brought against AS, that selling books is not one of the goals of AS’s marketing services.)

What’s the actual markup, though? How much difference is there between the price for which AS sells a service, and AS’s cost to deliver it?

Here’s an example. One of my readers drew my attention to this recent ad on Craigslist, in which Author Solutions seeks “freelance coverage writers” to “read self-published books and provide detailed, coherent coverage on the work’s potential for film/television/digital adaptation.”

Read the full post on Writer Beware

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below

How Jessica Mitford Exposed A $48m Scam From America’s Literary Establishment

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This post by David Gaughran originally appeared on his Let’s Get Digital site on 12/16/15.

Jessica Mitford took on the American funeral industry, the California Department of Corrections, and the Ku Klux Klan, but it was her 1970 exposé of The Famous Writers School which led to Time calling her “The Queen of the Muckrakers.” And if a courageous editor hadn’t reversed his decision to kill her story, it might never have happened.

Mitford had been aware of The Famous Writers School’s existence for some time. Anyone who was a frequent reader of newspapers, books or magazines would have seen its ever-present advertisements, inviting aspiring writers to cut out and apply for the free aptitude test. While Mitford was suspicious, she didn’t have anything concrete until her lawyer husband took on a new client.

Bob Treuhaft was approached by a 72-year old widow, living on Social Security, who had cleaned out her bank account to make a down-payment to The Famous Writers School. On the same day Mitford heard the widow’s sorry tale from her husband, she received a book in the mail for review: Writing Rackets by Robert Byrne, which also mentioned the school.

Mitford had lunch with Bill Abrahams not long afterwards – then the West Coast editor of The Atlantic. She shared tales from Byrne’s book on literary frauds and the story of the cheated widow, and Abrahams asked her to write a short piece for The Atlantic covering both.

The following day Abrahams called to say that the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Robert Manning, had decided not to run the piece after all. While Manning agreed that the bold claims made in The Famous Writers School’s advertising were “probably unethical,” he pointed out that The Atlantic had made “many thousands of dollars” from those self-same ads and felt it would be equally unethical to run a piece criticizing the school.

 

Read the full post on Let’s Get Digital.

 

What's The Big Idea?

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This post by Nick Green originally appeared on Do Authors Dream of Electric Books? on 10/3/14.

I shelved the blog post I was going to write, because something caught my eye and made it pop out in anger. You may or may not have noticed that last month was the deadline for The Big Idea Competition, an apparent bid to find the ‘next big thing’ (you’re not yawning already?).

This is the brainchild of Barry Cunningham, well-known as the editor who discovered Harry Potter, which was the biggest Big Thing in publishing history, and also Tunnels, which… wasn’t. The premise is simple. As in, simply infuriating.

‘Have you got an idea for a story that children will love?’ the website asked. ‘Then tell us in 500 words! Win the chance of seeing your idea transformed into a book, movie, TV or theatre production!’

There is so much wrong with this premise – in fact the whole concept is so breathtakingly cynical and disingenuous – that I hardly know where to begin. The supposed rationale, as explained in its publicity materials, sounds reasonable enough: there are lots of people out there who might have a great idea for a story, but who lack the skill / patience / masochism to actually sit down and write it. But don’t worry! the organisers assure us. We’ve got stacks of authors and playwrights and impresarios right here! You come up with a good idea, and we’ll do the rest. Simples.

 

Click here to read the full post on Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?

 

The Curious Case of Ellora’s Cave

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This post by Jane Litte originally appeared on Dear Author on 9/14/14. Note that this post contains strong language.

Long before there was the Kindle, long before self publishing, long before the emergence of Fifty Shades, a digital first publisher by the name of Ellora’s Cave began to deliver sexy reads that would transform the face of romance publishing. Ellora’s Cave was established in 2000 as an outlet for Tina Engler to publish books with heavy sexy content that were romantic in nature. Because there was no “ebook” in the late 1990s, Engler would create PDFs and email them to reader who sent her money via paypal. In 2000, EC was established and soon thereafter, it would become a powerhouse selling hundreds of thousands of ebooks a year in a world where ebooks did not exist for the most part.

Engler’s path was not dissimilar to that of JK Rowling. She went from welfare to millionaire in a short time.

Ellora’s Cave fed an unheretofore unexplored appetite of women for explicit scenes, bold women, and frank language. Prior to 2000, references to the penis would often be couched in terms such as “manroot” “stalk” and “pleasure rod”. The clitoris or vagina would be known in equally obscure terms. Now it’s not uncommon to see the use of “cock”, “cunt”, or “pussy” within many mainstream romances whether they be historical, contemporary or paranormal. Today the line between erotic romance and non erotic romance appears blurred, not just for readers but authors and publishers as well.

But in 2000, erotic romance was a new and somewhat scary thing for mainstream publishers. In fact, the recent acquisition or launch of digital publishing arms for mainstream publishers followed a similar trajectory to the old acquisition and launch of erotic romance lines. While it might seem ludicrous today, in the early to mid 2000s, agents had to identify which publishers would accept erotic romances and which would not. And it was a big deal when traditional publishers started accepting erotic romances regularly.

 

Click here to read the full post on Dear Author.

 

Scam Alert: Editors Beware

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This post by Dave Bricker originally appeared on The World’s Greatest Book on 8/11/14.

I was con­tacted by a not-so-articulate per­son who requested my ser­vices as an edi­tor for an arti­cle. I looked at his doc­u­ment and found a ten-page para­graph that needed plenty of help. I wrote a polite response explain­ing that this piece would be time-consuming and expen­sive to edit, but the author seemed intent on hav­ing me rewrite it. He read­ily agreed to my price, explained his 30-day dead­line and told me he’d send a check.

If this doesn’t sound sus­pi­cious to you, it should.

Pay atten­tion and stay safe.

In a relationship-based busi­ness like edit­ing or design, a new client is almost always a referral.

“I saw the work you did for Jim Smith. I was won­der­ing if you ….”

If you pub­lish a web­site or blog, intro­duc­tions invari­ably start with,

“I read the arti­cle you posted about ….”

This client vol­un­teered no point of reference.

 

Click here to read the full article on The World’s Greatest Book.

 

Penguin's Author Solutions Still A Poor Self-Publishing Choice

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This post by Orna Ross originally appeared on the ALLi blog on 5/9/14.

Yes, it’s that time of  year again, when the Watchdog desk here at ALLi Towers (otherwise known as Jim Giammatteo and Mick Rooney) scan the self-publishing scene and analyse the good, the bad and the definitely-to-be-avoided.

Authors still have to make their self-publishing choices in an unregulated environment where the same service can cost $500 against $15,000, for pretty much the same thing, depending on where you shop; where services that are absolutely useless are sold at inflated prices; and where one large operation with many imprints dominates the information stream, including Google Ads/search.

Prior to launching our guide to services at Book Expo America at the end of May, we wanted to alert you to that company, the world’s largest self-publishing service, Author Solutions (ASI), acquired by Penguin-Random House in 2012, and trading under a number of brand names including Trafford, XLibris and iUniverse.

The Watchdog Warning issued last year about this company is still in place.

Our hope that Penguin would clean up ASI’s practices, notorious in self-publishing circles for over-promising and under-delivering has not, as yet, materialised — and ASI imprints score a very poor rating in our guide again this year.

 

Click here to read the full post on the ALLi blog.