Check Out 'Writer Beware' - Before You Get Conned!
June 20th 2007 06:59
I thought I'd post a link to the Science Fiction Writers of America's Writer Beware website, which describes the info presented there as "Warnings About Literary Fraud and Other Schemes, Scams, and Pitfalls That Target Writers."
In its article about Contests and Vanity Anthologies, SFWA cautions writers to carefully evaluate any such so-called opportunities and provides the specific guidelines that writers will need to do just that. There's a good deal of information here, including quite a few links to other helpful resources which also address this and other related issues.
There are links to such info as the following:
~How to increase your chances of winning once you've found a legitimate contest and decided to enter your work
~Personal stories of individuals who have been taken advantage of by some of these unscrupulous contests/groups
~Submitting and selling your work for legitimate publication
You may just find some info here that will save you a lot of grief--not to mention money!
So, why not check it out!
Jeanne
Did you enjoy this post? Don't leave me lonely--Please comment!
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Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
It is a jungle out there.
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
It really is a jungle out there! I fell for one of those vanity anthologies myself, once--though I sort of suspected what they were up to. I decided to try them out and paid big bucks for the anthology, which, it turned out, featured my poem on page one!
If that isn't enough to stroke a writer's ego, what is? Only trouble was, the pages weren't even numbered--and, as you may have guessed--there wasn't even a table of contents! (How could there be, with no page numbers?)
At that point I began to suspect that something fishy was going on; and a few months later, my suspicions were confirmed when I met another aspiring poet, whose poem was also featured on "page one" of one of these anthologies!
You can never be too careful!
Thanks for stopping by!
Jeanne
Comment by Anonymous
Thanks for alerting us to this.
Laura
WritingThoughts
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Thanks for your comment! Though "Writer Beware" is put out by Science Fiction Writers of America, it isn't aimed solely at writers of that genre, but contains information about questionable publishing practices that could affect writers of many different types of material, including poetry.
In addition to the info presented on the site's main page, the "Writers' Alerts" section is of particular interest.
Thanks for sharing the Absolute Write resource with us, as well! Would you care to share a link with my readers? I didn't notice the section you spoke of when I visited AbsoluteWrite.Com.
Take care!
Jeanne
Comment by Lilla
Enviro Warrior
Dream Interpretations
An Extra Ordinary Life
Damo's right... for me? ... more like a bowl of spaggetti..*lol* this is great advice and again a fabulous site to have bookmarked..
...thanks for passing it on...
Lilla ...
Comment by Jeanne Dininni
Writer's Notes
Thanks, again, for commenting! Appreciate your input!
Jeanne