It’s unfortunately very easy for writers to buy into these faux numbers–whether out of fear, or inexperience, or simply because they vindicate writers’ own frustration with rejection.

Writers: Forget about that boring day job. Forget about tedious book promotion. Heck, forget about writing books! There’s another way to make money–and it was created with authors in mind.

In July of 2008, I blogged about Light Sword Publishing, a.k.a. LSP Digital, about which Writer Beware had received a substantial number of complaints (delays, nonpayment of royalties, unprofessional behavior, misrepresentation of the company’s expertise and capabilities).

Publishers aren’t eager to allow Amazon to undermine the economics of the e-book market, representing the lone bright spot for the industry, by permitting an estimated two to five million Amazon Prime customers to start downloading e-books for free.

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.