Top white author admits she made up story of growing up with tough black gangs in LA | the Daily Mail reports:

“A memoir by a white woman who claimed she was raised in poverty by a black foster mother and sold drugs for a gang in a tough Los Angeles neighbourhood has admitted the book was pure fiction.”

Publisher Riverhead has cancelled author Margaret B. Jones’s book tour, and has recalled all copies of the book.

The story also notes:

An editor at Riverhead described the discovery as “upsetting” and as a “huge personal and professional betrayal.”

Yes, it is a betrayal. Whatever gets into some authors? A publisher invests money in an author, and then is, as the editor said, betrayed.

Write It Once And Sell It Forever

Get A Constant Flow Of Cash By Writing And Selling Ebooks… It’s Much, Much Easier Than You Think

Ebooks are BIG online. Most ebooks contain from five to 100 pages, and sell anywhere from $10 to $100 dollars, and over, depending on the information. Clever writers are realizing that there’s gold in ebooks, and that they’re well-placed to mine that gold…

Discover how you can self-publish online, and make a great income, writing and selling ebooks with “Write and Sell an eBook: Every Writer’s Quick-Action Guide To Writing Ebooks”..

Amazon’s created a new self publishing option: publish on Kindle.

Is this for you?

I’ve read the Getting Started guide, and it seems straight-forward. However, payments are made to a US bank account, so this limits the service to US authors.

Here’s an interesting story from MarketingSherpa.

MarketingSherpa: How Elsevier Created New Ebooks From Old Content to Lift Revenue 15%: “SUMMARY: Libraries and other institutions continue to add online content databases to their collections. So, opportunity calls for publishers to digitize even more specialty content for these customers.

See how one reference book publisher repurposed content by digitizing thousands of print titles for its paid content site and pushed usage through complimentary downloads. Conversions were strong enough to lift book revenue 15% in 2007.”

(This article is available until February 23)

Your takeaway from this? Basically this: As important as electronic rights have been for the past decade, they’re even more important now, so make sure that both you and your agent are up to date on e-rights, and that you place a strict limit on the length of time for which you license them.