At the SFWA blog, Victoria Strauss posted an article for Writer Beware about virtual author assistants (VAAs). VAAs have taken a 30-day course to qualify them for a VAA certificate which, according to the course web site, enables them to:

...work behind the scenes to create, organize and coordinate all the different pieces necessary to get a book published.

See Victoria Strauss' analysis of virtual author assistants certification for more information. She also briefly compares VAAs to book shephards and offers this book shephard link to the Selling Books blog for further information.

Writer Beware also happens to have an article on Harlequin's new self-publishing imprint, which was recently reported on the FFO news blog.