Writer Beware
Posts from my Writer Beware blog
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Delmont-Ross Writing Contest: The Saga of a Fake Literary Competition
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A little while back, I stumbled on a news story about Mitchell Gross, a Georgia man who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly luring ...
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The Fine Print of iBooks Author
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Yesterday, with great fanfare, Apple rolled out two new applications: iBooks 2, with new features aimed at students; and iBooks Author, which allows individuals to create iPad-optimized ebooks. Both...
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Digital Rights Showdown: HarperCollins v. Open Road
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware One of the effects of the phenomenal growth of ebooks over the past few years has been to bring new value to the backlist--both for publishers who hold the contracts for backlist books, and authors who wa...
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BookStoreMarketing.net: Beware Spam PR Services
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Recently I've gotten a number of questions about BookStoreMarketing.net, a service that promises to promote authors' books to bookstores via a printed catalog, a promotional email, or both. Alternatively,...
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2011: A Writer Beware Retrospective
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware As we begin the new year (Writer Beware's fourteenth!), here's a look back at some of Writer Beware's most notable posts and warnings from 2011. JANUARY First One Publishing's Writing Contest...
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Happy Holidays From Writer Beware
Because even watchdogs have to rest sometimes, the Writer Beware blog will be taking a break over the holiday season. Unless there's a really juicy publishing story, we'll be on hiatus until the new year. (We'll still be answering email, so if you w...
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Publisher Alert: Arvo Basim Yayin of Turkey
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A couple of weeks ago, I began hearing from self-published and small press authors who'd been approached over the summer by a Turkish publisher called Arvo Basim Yayin. All reported having been contacted ...
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D Publishing: Dymocks’ New Self-Pub Service
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Last week, Dymocks, an Australian bookselling chain, announced the launch of D Publishing, a electronic and POD self-publishing service. Like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, Dymocks is a major book vendor....
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Pearson Education Extends Scope of Permissions Licenses
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Writer Beware has learned that Pearson Education, a major education services company (and the parent company of trade publisher Penguin), is currently requesting vastly extended licenses for copyrighted t...
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The Fine Print of Amazon’s New KDP Select Program
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Almost since Amazon's controversial Kindle Owners' Lending Library--which allows Amazon Prime members to borrow selected ebooks for free--debuted, there have been rumors that Amazon was inviting KDP self-...