Today’s guest post by multi-published author Doranna Durgin is about a publisher behaving badly.

More than that, however, it highlights something that every writer signing a publishing contract needs to be aware of: the importance of reversion clauses…

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.

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.

Anything I can control, I pay close attention to. Contracts. Personal relationships. The words. Stories I want to tell.

I get a lot of questions about contests and awards programs. Many self-published and small press writers are mesmerized by the possibility of prestige and recognition they seem to offer.

I find that’s the hardest thing about writing historical novels–getting the little stuff right. There’s plenty of information about the battles, the wars, the huge political movements. But just try to find out exactly what the inside of the county clerk’s office in Sacramento in 1910 looked like!

I’ve gotten some questions over the past week about a fiction contest currently being conducted by WriteOnCon, a “totally free, interactive online Writer’s Conference held annually during the summer.”

Direct contact from a publisher or agent should always be treated with caution, until research can determine whether the company or individual is reputable.

There’s been some Internet buzz over the past few days about an apparent scam in which an unknown individual, posing as agent Jodi Reamer of uber-agency Writers House, targeted an unsuspecting author with a fake representation offer, followed by a fake high-advance contract offer from a major publishing house, all in the space of a few hours.