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

Every time I bemoan Writer Beware’s overpacked file drawers, and wonder whether I should get rid of files for agents and publishers that have gone out of business (or at least consign them to the basement), I’m reminded of why it’s important to keep that old information handy.

@diannefox @moirarogersbree SFWA has accepted electronic publication as qualifying for membership for years. # @moirarogersbree Can you point to what you are seeing in our guidelines that leads you to believe that epubs are ineligible? # @moirarogersbree Time/Warner, for example, puts out some books exclusively as epubs & we don't make a distinction. # @moirarogersbree […]

How threatened do publishers feel by agencies’ aggressive moves into publishing? Well, according to a report today in The Bookseller, Random House UK has done an end run around prestigious literary agency Sheil Land, directly approaching author Tom Sharpe to secure digital rights to his backlist.

Last week, prestigious UK agency Ed Victor Ltd. announced that it was going into publishing, with an ebook/print-on-demand division called Bedford Square Books.

Every summer, Klingon speakers from around the world have gathered for a long weekend of barking and spitting, singing and storytelling, impromptu game shows, off-the-cuff translations of broadway musicals, and vaudeville routines.

I often hear from writers who are convinced that they’re being cheated by their self-publishing services because they’ve been vigorously promoting their books, and yet their royalty checks are tiny.

Ask anyone – in these days of a less-than-thriving economy, and reduced budgets for book promotion, publishers increasingly count on authors to do much of the promotion for their own books.

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

The publishing news of the week–maybe of the year–is the collapse of Borders, the USA’s second largest bookstore chain.

New language in the termination provision of the Harper’s boilerplate gives them the right to cancel a contract if “Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or if Author commits a crime or any other act that will tend to bring Author into serious contempt, and such behavior would materially damage the Work’s reputation or sales.”