Wednesday links: Critiques and scam agencies

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few. Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. Manuscript Rejection Feedback: 3 Critiques to Heed (and 2 to Ignore), from Writers Digest: Knowing which bits of critique to listen to and which to pass on can be difficult. While it’s largely a personal decision, there may be some critiques that we should all follow. Excerpt: “The trick is to figure out which criticism is worth considering. Once I determined how to separate wheat from chaff, I did some of my best revising while my debut novel was on submission.”
2. Red Flag Alert: Loiacono Literary Agency, Swetky Literary Agency, Warner Literary Group, from Writer Beware: It can be hard to keep track of the so-called agencies that are only out there to try to take advantage of writers. This post from Writer Beware helps to bring three to your attention. Excerpt: “This has been bad news for the scam agent industry, which has shrunk to a sickly shadow of its former self. Fee-charging agents, once the most common of all literary scammers, are now relatively rare. That’s not to say they don’t still exist.”