Tag: scams

Et tu, Catfish? Writing with Integrity

catfish books are rampant on amazon.com fish-216132_640Recently I’ve learned about a new (to me) term: catfishing. It means someone pretending to be what they are not. In terms of selling books on the Internet, this basically boils down to someone posing as an expert in a given field, then writing short, pithy eBooks using information easily and freely accessible on the Internet (think Wikipedia) and then passing it off as a definitive guide on Amazon.

The Washington Post recently ran a very thorough article on the phenomenon. The upshot is that (1) this is nothing new; there have always been people gaming every system ever devised and (2) most of these catfishers operate at least nominally within Amazon’s guidelines with the exception of paid reviews, the thing that Amazon is really cracking down on lately. Continue reading “Et tu, Catfish? Writing with Integrity”

FOULED!: Poetry Contest Scams

#PublishingFoul Logo Indies UnlimitedIt’s not just sketchy publishers and not-so-qualified editors who prey on unsuspecting indie authors. People who run writing contests can be less than legit, too.

Even poets can be targets. Maybe especially poets. Even traditionally-published poetry is a hard sell to most people who aren’t taking a college-level English class, so there isn’t a whole lot of it out there. Poets can self-publish, of course, just like any other indie author, and they have done so for years, by contracting with press owners to print chapbooks of their work. But they run up against the same problems fiction and non-fiction writers do, in terms of getting that work noticed. The traditional avenues of wider exposure for poets – other than handing out their chapbooks to random strangers on street corners – have pretty much been limited to submitting their work to contests and/or anthologies. Continue reading “FOULED!: Poetry Contest Scams”

My Horrible Experience with FirstEditing

#PublishingFoul Logo Indies UnlimitedGuest Post
by Brenda Perlin

After my first book had been picked up by a publisher (not as good as it sounds), I figured my story needed to be cleaned up before I let it go to press. I was jazzed by the idea of my book getting some attention, but I didn’t want to use the publisher’s “paid editing” option. I had no idea where to turn. That was until, by coincidence, a radio ad for FirstEditing was broadcast while I was driving. Jotting down their number, I called as soon as I could. Continue reading “My Horrible Experience with FirstEditing”

FOULED! Part 3: Getting Your Book Back

Predatory Publisher Month at Indies UnlimitedSo you’ve tried to get your publisher to give your book the editing, formatting, and marketing attention it deserves, but you’ve had no luck. Your logical next step may be to try to get your book back.

The technical term is reversion of rights. You’re asking the publisher to give you back any rights you granted it to publish your book. This sometimes becomes necessary even in contracts with a traditional publisher. If the book is not selling well, or some other disagreement has come up, an author may decide to buy back the book and shop it around somewhere else. Although increasingly these days, traditionally-published authors are buying back the rights to their books on their publishers’ backlists and going indie with them.

Trad publishers can be reluctant to agree to a rights reversion, but vanity publishers really don’t like them. Continue reading “FOULED! Part 3: Getting Your Book Back”