I often see small presses using a contract template they’ve picked up from somewhere, which may employ outdated terminology (such as referring to plates or unbound sheets) or contain unnecessary language (such as including a revised editions clause in a fiction contract) or make inappropriate claims on subsidiary rights (a larger publisher may be able to do something with translation rights, for instance, but there’s no reason in the world for a cash-strapped, contactless small press to claim them).

I absolutely love the military, but I’m not blind to the challenges and limitations of the life either. Control Point was definitely a steam valve in some respects.

Many writers assume that a literary agent’s inclusion in a market guide or listing–whether it’s a print book, such as Jeff Herman’s Guide, or a website, such as QueryTracker–is an imprimatur of reputability. Surely the agent wouldn’t be listed if there were any questions about his/her honesty or competence.

While there are certainly advantages to Amazon’s program, anyone who thinks Amazon is in this to help authors is a fool. Amazon, like pretty much any other business, is in this to make money.

Basically, genre is a very useful guideline for grouping together novels that share certain characteristics, but I think it can also be a trap–what Ursula Le Guin and many others referred to as the ghetto. It tends to create books that are in dialogue with nothing else but genre: and, again, dialogue is a good thing, and a terrific way to create new literature; but it’s not the only one.

If a display site is free, you lose nothing by signing up (as long as you’re careful about any contacts you receive). But if you have to pay a fee, you might want to think twice before pulling out your wallet.

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 a woman into investing millions of dollars in a phony company.

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 want the freedom to exploit a new range of rights.

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.

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.