A Contract Clause to Beware: Claiming Copyright on “Publisher’s Content” – Written By Michael Capobiancho

Writer's Treasure Chest

Hi, everyone. My name isMichael Capobianco, and although I’ve been an adjunct member of Writer Beware for some time now, this is my first official blog post.

I’m also the Chair of SFWA’sContracts Committee, which means I see a lot of bad contracts, both for book-length and short fiction. I’ve gotten used to much of the unfortunate and often contradictory clauses in these contracts, but last week I ran into something that caught my attention: a virtually identical terrible clause in two separate small publishers’ book contracts, a clause that I had never seen before.

Both contracts were for original fiction, but aside from the fact that neither paid an advance, they looked fairly different from one another until they came to this clause. To save you any further suspense, here it is:

The Publisher reserves all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in and…

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Happy Memorial Day

Jeanne Owens, author

Happy Memorial Day everyone! Have a great day enjoying the unofficial start of Summer, but also remember the reason for the day and keep those who gave their all for us in your thoughts.

(all images found on Pinterest)

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4 Reasons To Use Internal Thoughts In Your Writing

K.M. Allan

While there are just as many writing tricks as there are ways to tell a story, there are some specific ones that can help make your book something special, and one of those is internal thoughts.

If you’ve never heard of the concept, it’s where you let the reader inside a character’s head by writing what they’re thinking but not saying out loud.

Why is this such a good trick to use? Because it gives the reader something extra, like letting them in on a secret. That and the following other reasons are just some perks that internal thoughts can bring to your manuscript.

Internal Thoughts Ensure Motives Don’t Come Out Of Nowhere

As the writer penning the story, we know it inside and out. We’ve plotted, planned, and rewritten countless drafts so any motives are seared into our brains…

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Anthologies

Story Empire

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you today. In my last post, I talked about the advantages of writing short stories and how they could be stand-alone works or part of a collection. Today, I want to talk about anthologies.

What’s the difference? Dictionary (dot) com defines an anthology as this:

1. A book or other collection of selected writings by various authors, usually in the same literary form, of the same period, or on the same subject: an anthology of Elizabethan drama; an anthology of modern philosophy.
2. A collection of selected writings by one author.

My post today deals with the first definition. Participating with a group of authors in an anthology is another great way to build your backlist and attract new readers. I’ve been fortunate to have been included in four such collections.

If you participate in an anthology, here are a few tips.

• Decide on a central theme…

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A Writer’s Internet History (meme)…

Pay attention! (Meme)…

Stopping Book Piracy

Story Empire

Greetings, SE’ers! Beem Weeks here with you again. Today, I am going to expose those dastardly book pirates!

Pirates! They are fine for stories told within the pages of the books we read. But book piracy is another story altogether. Illegal book consumption accounts for 17% of all downloaded ebooks. This is stealing. Those who download and read books for free are just as guilty of theft as those who offer the books on hundreds of illegal sites scattered across the internet.

If you’ve ever Googled the titles of your own books or your author’s name, you’ve probably found your work being offered for free on one or more of these sites.

But now that you’ve made this discovery, what can you do about it? It’s your work. You own the copywrite.

Unfortunately, trying to stop this illegal activity completely is much like playing an intense game of whack-a-mole; the…

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Story Development and Execution Part 6: Constructing Chapters

Story Empire

Ciao, SEers. Today is part six: chapter construction. I was surprised to find none of us has spent a great deal of time discussing the chapter as a discrete unit of a story. We gloss of things in a few posts, but never delve into chapter construction. (There is a post on scenes that might interest you if you’re looking for more information.) Probably because it’s kind of evident what to do—write a scene or series of scenes that link together. The chapter should reveal character and/or advance the plot. That said, I’m going to talk about what the proper development of a chapter can do for your story.

We talked before about your first chapter being your standard. How you should revisit it often to make sure it draws in a reader from the first word and keeps them turning the pages. It’s hard to argue with that…

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Writing A Book: 6 Ending Types

K.M. Allan

You may know it when you start, it might pop up when outlining, or you could have no clue until you’re writing the last chapter, but every book needs an ending, and every writer needs to work out the best kind to use.

Luckily for us, there are plenty of options to choose from, such as the following 6 types!

1) Resolved/Tied Up

As I’m sure you can guess from the name, this type of book ending resolves everything.

It’s the happy-ever-after, tie-it-up-in-a-neat-bow, totally satisfying option.

For a resolved ending to work, your story should do its best to answer every unanswered question, address the story conflicts, and mysteries, and complete the character arcs.

It doesn’t mean everything has to be perfect and the ending happy, but it does carry the expectation of closure, which means you’ve got to practice your knots…

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Advantages of Writing Short Stories

Story Empire

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you today. This post is short and sweet. (Pun intended.) Let’s talk about short stories.

A collection of shorts. (Wait, those are dachshunds.)

There are advantages to writing shorter pieces of fiction. Not only does the writing process take less time, but many readers these days have shorter attention spans. There are some who won’t spend the time it takes to read a full-length novel, but they will spend 45 minutes or an hour for a short story. Even avid readers sometimes prefer to read something that takes less time.

The cost of these books is less than longer works, so that’s a big plus for some. And, if you’re in Kindle Unlimited, readers can “borrow” them. (As they can with full-length books who are enrolled in that program.)

Short stories help build your backlist of publications. It’s also beneficial when an author has to…

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