Thursday, October 21, 2010

Breaking my hiatus again....

We are still waiting for the new arrival over here but until he decides to make his appearance I wanted to boost the signal on a couple of scams and scandals that have come to light recently.

First via Writer Beware (this is one blog you absolutely should be following) comes the very odd story of "Iron" Dave Boyer. Dave ran an unusual scam, he masqueraded as an editor of various publications then cherry picked stories from his slush pile and submitted them to other publications. Sometimes with out changing the name of the story. This is a rare practice, most fake editors and agents don't bother to read your work, they are just interested in scamming money from you. According to Writer Beware's team there are legal actions being pursued against him currently. Dave seems to work primarily in horror, so if you think you may have submitted to him a google search of your stories might be worth the time, and please contact Writer Beware.

The scandal bit concerns Dorchester Publishing. Previously Dorchester decided to exclusively move to an E-book only model due to financial issues. As a press there have been numerous complaints of non payment of royalties to their authors. As a result of this the rights of some of Dorchester's books have been reverting back to their authors. Dorchester has not stopped selling the authors' books that they no longer hold the rights to (and which the author is not receiving any roayties for). Yesterday they were called out publicly over this issue and the author who went public with this, Jana Deleon received an answer at last assuring that the books will be taken down after this broke however she is not the only author in this situation. If you are considering purchasing a Dorchester book I would recommend checking in with the author or borrowing it from the library until the rights issues can be resolved.

Back to waiting for the new arrival.

1 comment:

  1. Good to know regarding the scams. And big hugs for the upcoming bundle o' joy. :D

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