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Writer Beware
Guest Blog Post: The Scam of Private Label Rights Articles
Today, Smashwords founder Mark Coker guest blogs about “private label rights” services, which make it possible for anyone to “author” their own ebooks or to populate blogs by putting together chunks of content from the service’s database. The result: scads of badly-formatted, poor-quality ebooks and blogs, which are often used by SEO scammers to confuse Google Search results.
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Supreme Court Reinstates Major Freelancer Copyright Settlement
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Today, by unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that tossed out a settlement reached in a landmark case involving electronic rights and copyright.
In 1999, the National Writers’ Union filed suit against the New York Times and LexisNexis, among others, alleging copyright infringement due [...]
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Another Vanity Award: The 2010 Creative Spirit Awards
Is it irony or coincidence that, only a few days after blogging about vanity awards, I should be spammed by one?
Perhaps you have, too. It’s an outfit calling itself the 2010 Creative Spirit Awards.
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Beware of Fake Awards
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Here’s a story that, for sheer weight of irony, I wish like anything I’d been the one to break. But author and publisher Michael N. Marcus beat me to it, in a recent post on his Book Making blog.
Everyone loves an award, right? Awards acknowledge excellence and achievement, raise [...]
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Inspired Living Publishing: Another Vanity Anthology Scheme
Writer Beware breaks down an email solicitatioin from Aspire Magazine to the nitty gritty.
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MyFreeRead.com: Not Quite What It Appears
Earlier this week, I received an email from a company called MyFreeRead.com, enticingly titled, “Authors: We Want Your e-Books & Articles!”
Tags: victoria strauss, Writer Beware
DOJ Weighs in on Amended Google Book Settlement
Last September, the US Justice Department urged the courts to reject the Google Book Settlement, citing concerns about class action, copyright, and anti-trust laws. The DOJ’s brief put the Settlement’s approval process on hold, and forced the parties back to the negotiating table–resulting, in November, in the filing of an Amended Settlement. New deadlines were set for authors and for the filing of objections, and the Fairness Hearing (to determine if the Settlement will stand) was postponed to February 18, 2010.
Tags: Google Book Settlement, Writer Beware
Are You a Published Author? Now You Can Tell the World!
Victoria Strauss takes a satirical view of the latest fad in attempts to separate authors from their money.
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Dispatches from the Ebook Wars: Macmillan vs. Amazon
For some time, publishers and others have been concerned about Amazon’s policy of pricing ebooks at $9.99, regardless of the price tag publishers put on them. Many feel that Amazon’s discounted ebook pricing is an attempt to control and monopolize the ebook market by forcing a pricing standard. Some in the publishing industry have even called the practice predatory.
Tags: Amazon, Macmillan, Writer Beware
Cris Robins and The Robins Agency: She’s Ba-aaack!
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Once upon a time, there was a self-styled literary agent named Cris Robins who ran a purported literary agency called The Robins Agency. For more than ten years, Robins charged editing fees, levied various upfront fees, and, as far as Writer Beware can determine, never made a single [...]
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