literary scams --- warnings

Warning Signs: How To Spot A Literary Agent Scam: Part One

Thursday, 16 April 2009 01:25 by Writer's Relief Staff “How can you tell if a literary agent or agency is legitimate and not a scam?” New novelists and veteran writers can fall prey to literary agency scams—hidden tricks that literary agents use to fake legitimacy or make a quick buck on a book. Writers should be wary of scams when approaching literary agencies or individual agents.

The only way that a reputable literary agent should make money off an author is by selling the author’s book. That’s it. If an agent is asking for any fees (reading, evaluations, marketing, or retainer fees), let the red flags unfurl.

Reading fees at agencies weren’t always a red flag, but because several agencies began abusing the system—charging fees without having any genuine interest in the material itself—the practice was abolished by the Association of Authors’ Representatives or AAR (the trade group for US literary agents).read more 

A Message from Writers Relief

 Writer’s Relief, Inc. is a highly recommended author’s submission service. Established in 1994, Writer’s Relief will help you target the best markets for your creative writing. Visit their Web site at http://www.WritersRelief.com to receive their FREE Writers’ Newsflash, which contains valuable leads, submission guidelines, and deadlines for writing in all genres. 

blogging 101 and check out my other one

Blogging 101   Friday, 13 February 2009 11:40 by Writer's Relief Staff

The term “blog” is a derivative of “Weblog,” a phrase coined by Jorn Barger to describe his online journal, Robot Wisdom. A “blogger” is the person behind the blog—a collection of online journal entries. And the “blogosphere” is the community of blogging sites as a whole. Got it? Here’s some history.

Back in 1995 FrontPage was released by Vermeer Technologies. It was one of the first Web publishing tools, and it was designed to allow ordinary people (those without coding skills) to publish their own Web sites. Two years later Ritual Entertainment hired Steve Gibson to write journal entries online full-time, making him one of the first professional bloggers. And today there are too many blogging sites to document.

Weblogs originally were defined by one single characteristic: the site had to contain a series of dated entries. From there Weblogs differed in scope and content, style and tone, but they all contained individual commentaries, personal thoughts, and links to related sites. A blog may contain videos, photos, sketches, even music. Read one person’s journal-type blog over a period of a year, for example, and you get a pretty good idea about what it’s like to walk in that person’s shoes for a while. It’s socially appropriate voyeurism.

NOTE

"Writer's Relief, Inc. is a highly recommended author's submission service. Established in 1994, Writer's Relief will help you target the best markets for your creative writing. Visit their Web site at http://www.writersrelief.com to receive their FREE Writers' Newsflash (today, via e-mail) which contains valuable leads, guidelines, and deadlines for writing in all genres." (And, of course, please be certain to let us know where and when the excerpt will appear.)