Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Midwest Literary Magazine (MLM) bills itself as “the quiet press.” Its online magazine publishes poetry, articles, and short fiction. Its mission: to “find and publish excellent authors of poetry, fiction a…

How not to promote your book: make up a faux publicity company (at whose supposedly professional website you are the only listed client), whip up a badly-written press release (don’t bother with grammarcheck), and spam everyone you can think of (including, unfortunately, Writer Beware).

A judge has dismissed the case of an author who launched a criminal libel suit against a journal editor who published a bad review of her book, and the author has been ordered to pay punitive damages to the defendant.

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.

In May 2011, the publishers of many of the world’s most famous authors – including Dan Brown, Terry Pratchett, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer – join to support The Next Big Author: a new initiative which encourages budding authors to write the opening to a novel in May.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I’m fascinated by the bizarre things that happen at the outer fringes of the publishing universe.

A couple of weeks ago, I reported that the parties involved in the Google Book Settlement had applied for an extension of the deadline for authors to file claims for cash payments for works scanned by Google without permission.

This guest post by author and essayist Kim Brittingham addresses an issue I’ve been getting an increasing number of questions about lately: pay-to-play TV talk shows.

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.