If you have an unpublished manuscript that you’re shopping to agents and/or publishers, or considering self-publishing, there’s no need to register your copyright prior to publication.
Why?
Writer Beware has received reports that authors are receiving phone solicitations from an outfit called Close-up TV News, which describes itself as “…a premiere news magazine TV program spotlighting the most successful businesses across America. “
Recently I received a question about an apparently new Christian publisher, Blessed Hope Publishing. The writer who contacted me was suspicious because Blessed Hope had not only solicited his manuscript, but had accepted it within a matter of days.
India is a vast book market, and print is still king. So it only makes sense that Penguin (whose parent company, Pearson, acquired self-publishing giant Author Solutions Inc. last year) has just announced the expansion of ASI into India via its new “imprint,” Partridge.
The issue of orphan works–out of print, still-in-copyright books, films, photographs, etc. whose rightsholders can’t be found–is one that has been much in the news over the past few years.
Concern over a potential monopoly on orphan works was a major component of the criticism of the now-defunct Google Book Settlement, which sought to resolve authors’ and publishers’ objections to Google’s unauthorized scanning of in-copyright books.
Earlier this week, a press release caught my eye: Bestselling Author Jerry Jenkins Announces Innovative Publishing Firm. Since “innovative” in publishing press release-speak often means “charges a whopping fee”, I decided to investigate.
In 2008, following a bitter divorce, Iowan Scott Weier paid one of the Author Solutions Inc. imprints to publish his memoir, Mind, Body, and Soul. Subsequently, Weier’s ex-wife filed suit against Weier and ASI for libel, citing allegations in the memoir that she was a bad mother, had been the victim of molestation, and had a personality disorder
You may have heard that Vantage Press, one of the USA’s oldest vanity publishers, closed its doors at the end of 2012.
John Scalzi reported on this scam earlier this week, and his post was widely disseminated on Twitter–but since not everyone reads the same blogs, and the scam is a recurring one that isn’t limited to science fiction and fantasy writers, I thought it was worth covering here.
You’d think that dodgy publishers, publicists, and others would know better than to spam Writer Beware. But no. Disproving the frequent spammer claim that their email lists are carefully targeted, I get quite a substantial number of advertisements, press releases, and solicitations.
