While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.
When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here - there are too many.
Being published badly is worse than being never published.
It can destroy your career and your dreams.
The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.
But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.
Absolute Write: Bewares and Background Checks
Preditors and editors
Writer Beware
and the WRITER BEWARE blog
Keep yourself and your work safe.
This is really important, so if you are a writer or have writer friends, or you are a writing blog, please reblog it.
Also applies to many so-called freelance sites that are just content mills, and may not pay unless your work is used, even if the contract seems designed otherwise.
Listen, reading these is like legit reading horror stories. When it comes to publishing your writing, always, always, ALWAYS do your research. Not only will it help you avoid scams, but it will also be likely to help you land a much better fit for an agent/publisher/whatever. Knowing more is never going to hurt.
I’ve heard stories like this that are scarier than horror stories. This is an all time worst nightmare for a writer. Everyone reblog and make sure you keep your work safe!
Always, ALWAYS check Writer Beware. Let me also recommend Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog about contracts and contract scams for authors in her section Business Musings.
Reblogging again for the links.
Also check pred-ed.com and the Absolute Write forum. Then google Publisher’s name + scam and see what comes up.
Do NOT use the BBB ratings, they are wholly unsuitable for rating publishers and regularly give A ratings to well-known publishing scams.
You can also read my own post on publishing scams, have a link on the left of my blog ( can’t link here, I’m on mobile, sorry).
Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.
(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)
I actually recommend using the Smashwords Style Guide even if you don’t use Smashwords.
It lays out how to neatly format an e-book in a wonderful step by step format, and you can get it free from Smashwords. Just leave off the couple of things that are (very obviously) Smashwords specific.
If you can’t stand dealing with the meticulous detail, then by all means hire somebody, but most people can learn to format an ebook correctly and once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes about an hour tops.
Because the redirects aren’t working for me, I’m going to assume others might have trouble with these links, so for those who need it the URL for the website to Writer Beware is:
www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/
As stated on here: “Writer Beware is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers Association, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.”
These are not publishers’ guilds, notice; you sometimes see scammers trying to defend themselves against Writer Beware exposes by claiming that they’re “small press” or “indie” and Big Publishing is somehow out to get them - but all of those guilds are run by and for writers, to help support them and represent them in the field. It is the closest writers have to having unions, and there’s no direct competition between them (you could literally be an in any of those guilds are the same time as each other, in addition to others, and I believe a number of authors are).
Writer Beware is a wonderful resource, and I highly recommend it. It’s both a good general guide to the scams people run/red flags to watch out for (such as giving up your copyright entirely as opposed to specific rights, or being charged to publish something or have it edited, when they’re trying to act like they’re a “normal” publisher), and a frequently-updated list of the latest specific known scammers, both in “fake agents” and fake/scammy publishers categories. (The company formerly known as Publish America is one of the most famous and egregious cases, but by far not the only one)
Additionally, for SF and fantasy writers, the SFWA’s own list of qualifying markets that one can be published in as a prerequisite to be able to get into their guild (remember, it IS a profession-based guild), is a great guide to normal markets for those genres that have standard contracts that aren’t abusive or scammy, and their guidelines include some of the industry-standard minimums for “per word” etc rates, so even if some new magazine market isn’t on their list, you can tell if it’s suspiciously far outside the usual per-word or whatnot standards. (It’s likely the guidelines for Mystery Writers of America etc also would be useful in that vein)
Even if you’re unpublished or don’t want to join their guild, they’re a wonderful group and resource, and I highly recommend their site and Writer Beware in particular!
The other sites mentioned above, such as “Preditors and Editors” should be still valid if you Google them, and are often rec’d by Writer Beware, but Writer Beware is the one I’m most familiar with. :)
Also, you should never have to pay an agent or anyone a “reading fee”! DO NOT PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK!!! Run away from so-called agents that charge a reading fee! They are considered unethical in their own industry!
Also related to agents: Should you go this route and seek one, DO NOT PAY ONE DIME TO THEM upfront! A real agent only gets paid when he sells your book to a publisher! The average cut is about 10-15% of the first sale profits, if I remember right, with cuts of film and other rights maybe being more, when sold. At most, writers should only be responsible for the costs of phone calls and postage.
For more information see: How Literary Agents Get Paid. Standard Commission Practices and Payments for Literary Agents
Edited to Add:
Some other great, highly respected resources for writing and getting published are:
So how is Josh's dogpiling different from what you're doing to Brony D&D?
I’m owning my decisions and making effective use of them.
I know that if I speak negatively about something and then put a link in the description, it will be hammered with dislikes and critical comments. Hence I only include the videos that ought to be hammered and criticized. I deliberately left out the summary videos to avoid them being hammered, and it worked.
I’ve also deliberately cultivated a more tactical-thinking and pragmatic audience. I’ve kept far-right bullshit as far away from my work as humanely possible by alienating those people and making them hate me.
Josh never owns his fucking decisions, he’s always got to find some way to wash his hands of all responsibilities. He gives limp-handed “Now don’t go do this thing” disclaimers, knowing full well that his audience will ignore it. He does this explicitly to give him an excuse to say that he’s not responsible for what his audience does.
My audience was more pragmatic and surgical in their distaste, but there was always the risk they would also be threat-spewing fuckheads. And if they were, that was going to be entirely on me and the consequences mine to bear.
I accepted that risk going in. Josh never can, and has to find some way to back out of taking any responsibility for himself. Hence why he tried to use Patch as a shield when he decided to go ahead and upload this shit anyway. He’s gotta have that shield. He’s too scared of responsibility.
Runner Up ($50 USD)
Denim Spectrum, by Poison Barb
Winner ($100 USD, Official Character Design)
Flutter Spectrum, by Strawberry Crisis
The two winners please throw me your Paypal address/donation link/whatever it is you use to accept money thrown at your face like a paper snowball.
Congratulations to everyone who made it into the winner’s circle, and/or made me go “HOLY SHIT” on stream like a dingus.
Thank you to everyone who submitted. I honestly didn’t expect this stupid idea to explode the way it did. I’m thinking of having another art contest with Spectrum’s now finalized design after I get paid next month.
Across the United States, many students walked out of school Wednesday to say enough is enough with regards to gun violence.
The national school walkout started at 10 a.m. in each time zone and was scheduled to last for at least 17 minutes — one minute for each person killed in a school shooting that happened exactly one month ago in Parkland, Florida.
More than 2,500 walkouts were planned across the country, according to Empower, the youth branch of the Women’s March that has been organizing the event.
Participants called for stricter gun laws as they also remembered the people who lost their lives in Parkland.
Many schools accommodated the demonstration. Others didn’t allow it, encouraging students to express themselves in ways other than walking out.
That was just the founder. Although that toxic additude remaines in the culutre of the house to a point it is not what defines it. Some Slytherins even fought at the battel of hogwarts. Slytherins are pragmatists. They are decribed as being sly or deceptive by the other houses and that is true to a point but it is also misleading. Slytherins are not inherntly deceptive they just don’t imediatly rule out decete (or other things seen as unsavory) on moral grounds like many other houses would. Insted of crying about how the ends never justfy the means Slytherins weigh the ends vs the means and carve their path. Lilys extreme prefrence for pragmatism and impact over intent is extremy Slytherin.
I know you think I'm a jackass. Hell, you might be right. But Lily's fans are currently going all-out on Josh rn, and we both know he doesn't deserve it. If he "knew" his fans would send Lily death threats, then she knows hers will do the same to him. Can you make a plea for them to stop, or maybe ask her to do the same?
1) You ARE being a jackass.2) Josh is not, to my knowledge, receiving threats of death, rape, B&E or stalking. Lily was.3) He is receiving CRITICISM, because he did something wrong. And you equating that to the above is also wrong.4) Lily does know her audience, and those who do cross the line will be dealt with. We once had someone in her Discord server try to commission me drawing them murdering Josh. I told Lily, and she immediately told them off and permanently banned them from the server. Everyone, including Xain, who was still friends with Josh at the time, was furious with them when they found out.5) You want to talk about people going on an attack who should stop? How about all the people you reblog who accuse Lily of abusing me, or me abusing her, or me being either deluded or an apologist?
Emma Gonzalez directly called out Trump, the GOP, and the NRA for enabling the murder of children.
Oliver Willis at Shareblue:
A Florida teenager who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, issued a rousing call to action at a rally against gun violence.
Emma Gonzalez declared that the shooting at her school should be “the last mass shooting.”
And she responded directly to Trump’s tweet, which blamed students at the school for not reporting on the shooter’s behavior before the event.
“We did,” Gonzalez said, “time and time again, since he was in middle school.”
“We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue,” she continued. “He wouldn’t have harmed that many students with a knife.”
“How about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the shooter’s fault?” she demanded, and called out those who do deserve to shoulder that blame.
“[The people] who let him buy the guns in the first place. Those at the gun shows. The people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic. The people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew that he expressed homicidal tendencies. And I am not talking about the FBI. I am talking about the people that he lived with, I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.”
And Gonzalez again did not let Trump’s responsibility go unremarked upon
“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy, and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us that nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”
Gonzalez then called attention to the $30 million spent by the NRA in support of Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and how that translates onto each life lost to gun violence.
“That comes out to being $5800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?” She asked.
“To every politician who has taken donations from the NRA: Shame on you!”
The crowd erupted into a loud chant, echoing her cry: “Shame on you!”
Emma Gonzalez and her Florida community are not allowing Trump, the Republican Party, or the NRA to intimidate them into silence. They are speaking up to defend their families, and shaming those who enable this epidemic of violence.
The video of the full speech by Emma Gonzalez, via CNN’s YouTube:
Having your feelings hurt is not comprable to being a victim of sexual assault, abuse, or pedophilia. Zak’s VICTIMS are his victims. Not his friends. Not his coworkers. The actual people he abused.
The people he fondled and molested at cons. People who were blackmailed or tricked into helping him cheat on his partners. Girlfriends and boyfriends alike who were openly treated like garbage, abused, and dumped like it was nothing. People he tried to pressure into sex and threw away when they refused to be treated like an object.
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