Archive for the ‘Writer Beware’ Category

Nurmal Resources PUBLISH ME! Contest

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I’ve gotten a number of questions recently about the Nurmal Resources PUBLISH ME! contest, from authors who’ve been solicited via email to enter it. (What’s Nurmal Resources, you may ask? A new publisher. According to its website, “Nurmal is passionate about developing resources that inspire a new normal […]

Guest Blog Post: Grants for Writers–As Diverse As You Are

Being paid for writing is the ultimate author’s dream. Today, guest blogger C. Hope Clark sheds light on an area of support that many writers don’t think of: Grants. There are plenty of them out there, if you know where to look–though, as Hope points out, you must be sure you meet their eligibility requirements, and are willing to conform to their conditions.

First Novel Sales: The Data

What’s the average advance for a first novel? How long does it take the typical first novel to sell? Do most first novelists sell their books on their own, or through an agent? Will publishers and agents consider first novelists who don’t have any short fiction publication credits?

Writer Beware is on Facebook

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Because I don’t already have enough to do (ha!), I’ve just set up a Facebook page for Writer Beware. It’ll aggregate the content I’m posting around the Web–the blog posts here, my Twitterfeed, and info from various writers’ groups and discussion boards. Your comments, responses, and thoughts are […]

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.

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 […]