Author name: Victoria Strauss

…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.

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.

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…

Who is PUBSLUSH Press? What experience does PS’s staff have with publishing? There’s no information whatever at the website. You thus have no assurance that your book will be competently edited, published, distributed, or marketed.