A brand-new page on Small Presses has been added to the Writer Beware website.
Here’s what you’ll find:
An overview of issues to consider if you’re thinking of submitting to a small press. For instance, stability can be a problem–the attrition rate among small presses is very high–as can competence. It’s easy and cheap to set yourself up as a publisher these days, and not everyone who does so has the necessary expertise.
Last December, I blogged about the Brit Writers Awards, an awards program for first-time authors, which was dogged by allegations of loose judging standards and poor communication.
…today’s post is about zombie literary agencies… agencies that die only to rise again and lurch out onto the Internet in search of writers’ brains.
Recently, a consortium of university libraries called HathiTrust decided to make more than one hundred digitized books available as e-books to the universities’ communities because the books were “orphans,” works for whom the rightsholders could not be located after a diligent search.
Small press publishing is inherently risky–for publishers as well as for authors–and while the situation at AMP is uglier than many, it’s also far from unusual.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
To all appearances, Colorado-based Aspen Mountain Press is an active and problem-free publisher. According to its Submissions page, it is currently seeking new fiction, and it recently launched a SF/fantasy imprint.
On Tuesday I posted about PUBSLUSH Press, a new crowdfunding venture for books. I found it an interesting idea (rather than just donating cash to worthy projects, PUBSLUSH supporters actually pledge to buy books…
