It should probably go without saying that you don't want your publishing contract to include clauses that contradict one another. Beyond any potential legal implications, internal contradictions suggest a publisher that either doesn't understand its o...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®This is another in my series of blog posts about serial reading/writing app contracts (you can see all of them here). This time the subject is Stary (official name: Stary Pte Ltd, based i...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®GenZ Publishing is “on a mission to bring new authors to the world.” Founded in 2015 by Morissa Schwartz when she was just out of college, GenZ publishes a wide range of genre fiction, as well...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®The Writer Beware blog has a new home!After many years on the Blogger platform, we have finally transitioned to WordPress, which offers much greater flexibility in terms of design, control, and ease of use.&...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware® Are you sick of my contract warnings about reading/writing apps yet? Honestly I'm not even sure who I'm aiming these posts at. They go right over the heads of many of the writers who could benefit...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®As if the querying game weren't hard enough, writers increasingly need to watch out for fake agents/agencies. These fakes are set up by scammers as fronts for referral schemes. The aim is to draw the wr...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®This is another in my series of posts about author-unfriendly contracts from reading/writing apps and platforms. (Previous installments: EMP Entertainment and A&D Entertainment, Fizzo (formerly Fictum), ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®Last week on Twitter, I was contacted by a writer with concerns about the official rules for Wattpad's Open Novella Contest 2022. Specifically, this clause:This is incredibly writer-unfriendly. Prize winners...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®In 2018, I wrote a post that, in part, warned about a solicitation from an obviously dodgy "ghostwriting" service (one big clue: the mangled English everywhere on its website). With a bit of digging, I ...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®Last week, several people drew my attention to this article in the Des Moines Register. "Iowa Romance Writer Sues Over Efforts to Have Ghostwriter Take Over Series." If your "conflict of interest" radar...