…for Rivera. Karen reported:

Apparently, Siren wasn’t the only publisher that ex-Ocean’s Mist Press owner, Noemi Rivera lied to, about who she was. She also apparently faked her name over at Red Rose Publishing. She got found out though:

From: “Wendi”
To: redroseauthors
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:40:50 -0000
Subject: [redroseauthors] Important Information for you all!

It has been brought to my attention the owner of Ocean’s Mist Press was at Red Rose Publishing. She was writing under the name of Maria McBean. She submitted to us and gave us that name and signed her contract as such.

When this was brought to my attention I ran her social security number and it showed that it did not belong to Maria McBean but belonged to Noemi Rivera.

I am so sorry as I have concluded that she has commited fraud as she fraudulantly signed an alias and that makes her contract null and void.

She has been removed from the authors loop plus her book has been taken down or in the process of being taken down at all the other places we are distrubted at.

She has breached her own contract and is NO LONGER WELCOME AT RED ROSE PUBLISHING! Nor would she have been welcome if she submitted as herself.

I wanted you all to know what was going on. I am so sorry as she SCREWED every one she has ever came into contact with.

Take care and have a great evening!

Wendi

Do people honestly believe that nobody’s going to find out? I wonder if it was worth the humiliation. Besides now her name is linked to all sorts of questionable and/or illegal and/or unethical behaviors. Not a great way to go.

I think that by now everyone knows what’s going on with Cassie Edwards. What’s very interesting about the whole situation is how quickly the story spread. (BTW — I’m not here to debate whether or not she plagiarized or the morality of Penguin’s response, etc.)

It’s been a little over a week since SBTB posted several questionable excepts. Then the main stream media started picking up the story, and now it’s all over CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo, AP, Google News and so on.

Years ago when Janet Daily plagiarized Nora Roberts, most people just didn’t hear about it. (That was in 1997 in case you’re wondering.) Now if you lied (James Frey) or plagiarized, everyone with the Internet access can read about it. And it’s not your publisher or agent you need to fear, but the readers who will feel cheated and/or lied to. Note how Frey’s publisher initially defended him, but it was the public response that destroyed his reputation and resulted in Oprah calling him out in her show.

I’m very interested in how CE situation turns out, since she seemed to have used mostly old references with dead authors and/or expired copyrights.

My first post for Wicked Wenches is up. Check it out: What Are My Chances?

Edit if you get to this page after trying to access my general blog, please click here. I made some changes to the general webpage navigation. Thanks.

From Treva Harte’s blog (I think it belongs to her… ):

Headline: Loose Id Bids on Triskelion’s Contractual Assets
Dateline: 11 October 2007, Las Vegas, Nevada

Earlier this week, a representative of Loose Id, LLC entered a bid in the bankruptcy proceedings of Triskelion Publishing for the contractual assets of the company. If successful in their bid, Loose Id, LLC will release the majority of contracts at no cost to the authors who entered into them.

In a few cases, new contracts will be extended to the author from Loose Id in lieu of the Triskelion contracts. If an author chooses to reject the offer made them, their contract will be released by Loose Id, at no cost to the author.

Loose Id’s intentions in bidding on the contracts are fourfold: (1) to facilitate the unencumbered acquisition of works offered to the company by former Triskelion authors; (2) to assist authors in securing release or reversion of rights to their work; (3) to potentially acquire and re-publish top flight manuscripts that match Loose Id’s publishing guidelines; and (4) to reassure authors pursuing e-publishing careers of the sound business practices and corporate ethics of reputable e-publishers.

At this time, it is unknown whether Loose Id will succeed in its bid to acquire the Triskelion contracts. If the company is awarded the contracts, Editor in Chief Treva Harte indicates that all contracts to be released will be processed within 30 days of closing the deal and any offers of publication to be made shall be made within 60 days of close. No contract acquired by Loose Id will be held by the company against the will of the author.

Contact information: help@loose-id.com

Everyone go over to Rachel Vater’s blog. Read the comments. Very very nice topic.

I’m revising Nine outline. I’m ecstatic to get it done, and better yet, I think it’s a very strong story. And the nicest thing about all this hard work is that I feel that I’m becoming a better writer with each story, and that’s just thrilling!

I hear / read a lot from writers who moan that getting published is like Catch-22.

You need to have a contract to get an agent. But you must have an agent to query publishers.

What’s a new writer to do?

Master the art of query writing.

It’s much cheaper than going to conferences, trying to pitch your novel. And if you can’t write query letters, how are you going to pitch your story anyway? The main part of query is the actual pitch itself.

As for my agent hunting, it’s going very well right now. Very happy with responses I’ve been getting.

I read an article from NYT about online résumés and job sites.

Might as well apply the same principle to agent hunting because now it’s so much easier to query one via email.

NYT had another article about emails — how at first they seem wonderful then you learn to hate them as more of them land in your inbox.

The average Fortune 500 company receives about 2,000 résumés a day…I wonder how many queries does an agent receive a day? Eeek!

An interesting quote from the article:

It (the high volume of e-résumés received) makes them very pressed for time. The harsh reality is that the No. 1 goal of most recruiters “is to eliminate and exclude as many people as possible,” Ms. Enelow said.

Dear Author broke the news that Triskelion is filing bankruptcy — not restructuring kind, but liquidation kind.

A lot of authors’ rights will be tied up during this time. My heart goes out to all Trisk authors who are going through a very difficult time.

Simon & Schuster has changed its standard contract language in an attempt to retain exclusive control of books even after they have gone out of print. Until now, Simon & Schuster, like all other major trade publishers, has followed the traditional practice in which rights to a work revert to the author if the book falls out of print or if its sales are low.

The publisher is signaling that it will no longer include minimum sales requirements for a work to be considered in print. Simon & Schuster is apparently seeking nothing less than an exclusive grant of rights in perpetuity. Effectively, the publisher would co-own your copyright.

The new contract would allow Simon & Schuster to consider a book in print, and under its exclusive control, so long as it’s available in any form, including through its own in-house database — even if no copies are available to be ordered by traditional bookstores.

Other major trade publishers are not seeking a similar perpetual grant of rights.

We urge you to consider your options carefully:

1. Remember that if you sign a contract with Simon & Schuster that includes this clause, they’ll say you’re wed to them. Your book will live and die with this particular conglomerate.

2. Ask your agent to explore other options. Other publishers are not seeking an irrevocable grant of rights.

3. If you have a manuscript that may be auctioned, consider asking your agent to exclude Simon & Schuster imprints unless they agree before the auction to use industry standard terms.

4. Let us know if other major publishers follow suit. Any coordination among publishers on this matter has serious legal implications.

Feel free to forward and post this message in its entirety.

From Author’s Guild

Go to Kristin Nelson’s blog for more info also.

From Jim-Butcher.com:

Jim’s books continue to grow in popularity! WHITE NIGHT is currently #4 in Hardcover Fiction on Publishers Weekly and #5 on the New York Times Bestseller list, as well as #17 on USA Today.

Want those numbers in context? Compare them with PROVEN GUILTY, which reached #21 on the New York Times Bestseller List and #91 on the USA Today List last year. Jim largely credits the TV series for effectively tripling his sales: the hardback edition of PROVEN GUILTY had an initial print run of 35,000, whereas WHITE NIGHT’s initial run was 100,000.

PROVEN GUILTY was the one that got released before WHITE NIGHT. And Butcher’s series was turned into Sci-Fi channel TV series. Amazing how the publisher tripled his print-run and put the release date to right AFTER the series premiere. I know that Sci-Fi did quite a bit to promote the show, and good for Butcher since I really like Dresden Files and read them all.

The series was optioned in 2005. Then it was announced in October 2005 that Nicholas Cage would produce the movie. (They were thinking about doing a movie first.)

Publishers Marketplace reported: USA Today best-selling author Jim Butcher’s DRESDEN FILES 9, DRESDEN FILES 10, and DRESDEN FILES 11, to Anne Sowards at Roc, in a good deal, by Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Literary Agency (world English). *Good deal: $100,000 - $250,000*

# 9 just hit NYT 5 spot. So the publishers will have to shell out a lot more money starting book #12.

BTW - I also noticed that Dresden Files reported a lot of foreign sales of its first two to three titles to countries like Korea, Japan, Greece, China, Taiwan, Israel, France, Spain, etc. since Sci-Fi optioned the series and went into production. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

I know some people say that they don’t want to let studios, etc option their books, but looking at the power of TV you can’t help but wonder if that’s a short-sighed move.

P.S. Tess Gerritsen wrote in her old blog post (which didn’t get moved to the new blog she created for her website) about how much established NYT authors make. Thought I would share since it’s very interesting.

From my own observations of the business, authors who consistently place in the bottom third of the NYT list (Positions # 11 - 15) are worth at least a million dollars a book, North American rights. We’re talking combined hard/soft deals here, since most publishers now retain paperback rights. If you consistently place #6-10, your deals go even higher, into multi-million dollar range. Once your books consistently place in the top third, the deals become wildly unpredictable, because now we’re talking Harry Potter and Dan Brown territory. Eight-figure book deals are not out of the question.