If you’re a writer of any sort and you don’t follow Writer Beware, well … beware! Just a couple of weeks ago, after taking Harper’s Bazaar (of all magazines!) to task about the predatory language in its 2019 short story competition, blogger/author Victoria Strauss succeeded in the grab-all-and-forever terms removed.
In January last year, Strauss posted how the awful Author Solutions had spawned an army of clones offering similarly over-priced and highly over-hyped “services” to unwitting writers. Well, the clones march on. In an updated post published late Decemeber she documents twenty-one more publishing and marketing “services” to beware of.
Like AS [Author Solutions], the clones rely on misleading hype, hard-sell sales tactics, and a lucrative catalog of junk marketing services. Even if authors actually receive the services they’ve paid for (and judging by the complaints I’ve gotten, there’s no guarantee of that), they are getting stiffed. These are not businesses operating in good faith, but greedy opportunists seeking to profit from writers’ inexperience, ignorance, and hunger for recognition. They are exploitative, dishonest, and predatory.
Read. And beware!