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Featured Author
Canadian hard-SF writer Robert J. Sawyer has won the Nebula, Hugo, John W. Campbell Memorial, Aurora, and Seiun awards, all for year’s best novel.
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A modern teenage girl inherits the power of The Lady of the Lake and must find Excalibur’s scattered shards before Merlin.
Nebula Awards Weekend
The Forty-Seventh Nebula Awards Weekend will be held Thursday through Sunday, May 17 to May 20, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, near Reagan National Airport.
We honor Connie Willis as our Grand Master!
To register, click on “Registration” in the menu to the immediate left. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Register” button.
Tours, workshops and panels are available for registered attendees (the number of people who can be accommodated on the tours and workshops is limited.) Active and Associate SFWA members may nominate works, until February 15th, for the awards to be presented at the May 19th Nebula Awards Weekend Banquet. Hour long interviews and readings will be recorded by Jim Freund for his Hour of the Wolf radio show broadcast on WBAI (99.5FM) in New York City.
Jon Williams is our Toastmaster (he will also conduct a half-day Writers Workshop on Friday morning.) Mike Fincke is our Keynote Speaker.
The Mass Autographing Session on Friday, May 18th will be followed by a reception to honor the nominees and other honorees.
You don’t have to be a nominee, a member of SFWA, or even a writer to participate in the weekend. Registration for the 2012 Nebula Awards Weekend is open now. The cost for the Nebula Awards Banquet is $75.00 per person. The cost to register is $50.00 for a SFWA Member and $60.00 for a non-SFWA Member until February 29, 2012. Rates for registration will be higher as the date of the event draws closer.
Results from the 2010 Nebula Awards (presented 2011).
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Archive for December, 2009
Quick Updates for 2009-12-19
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Resources
- Three links from Victoria Strauss: 1) Thoughtful article from author Jason Pinter on social networking & the authorial mystique, 2) American Library Assn urges Justice Dept to "actively supervise" Google Book Settlement, 3) French court finds Google guilty of copyright violation, orders it to pay damages.
Member News
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Associate member, Lou Berger!
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Affiliate member Allen Lewis!
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Affiliate member Joseph Adegboyega-Edun!
Tags: Allen Lewis, Joseph Adegboyega-Edun, Lou Berger, twitter, victoria strauss
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2009-12-18
Friday, December 18th, 2009
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Associate member, Lou Berger! #
- RT @victoriastrauss: Thoughtful article from author Jason Pinter on social networking & the authorial mystique http://tinyurl.com/y8u3kkw #
- RT @victoriastrauss: American Library Assn urges Justice Dept. 2 "actively supervise" Google Book Settlement http://tinyurl.com/y8swyzq #
- RT @victoriastrauss: French court finds Google guilty of copyright violation, orders it to pay damages http://tinyurl.com/ye63jw7 #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2009-12-18
Friday, December 18th, 2009
- Welcome to SFWA's newest Associate member, Lou Berger! #
- RT @victoriastrauss: Thoughtful article from author Jason Pinter on social networking & the authorial mystique http://tinyurl.com/y8u3kkw #
- RT @victoriastrauss: American Library Assn urges Justice Dept. 2 "actively supervise" Google Book Settlement http://tinyurl.com/y8swyzq #
- RT @victoriastrauss: French court finds Google guilty of copyright violation, orders it to pay damages http://tinyurl.com/ye63jw7 #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off
“Teddy Bears and Tea Parties” by S. Boyd Taylor
Friday, December 18th, 2009
Teddy Bears and Tea Parties by S. Boyd Taylor
July 2009, ChiZine
Tags: S. Boyd Taylor, Taylor, Teddy Bears and Tea Parties
Posted in Nebula Suggested Reading, Short Stories | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2009-12-17
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Resources
- Looking for a reprint market? SFWA member Jason Sanford talks to Russian SF magazine ESLI.
- And in summary: Writers, responding to negative reviews will never End Well. So just Don’t Do It.
Member News
- The Seattle Examiner interviews SFWA member Jennifer Brozek.
Tags: twitter
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off
Link: Why Are Europeans White?
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
When working on the world-building for your secondary fantasy world, here’s an interesting thought to chew on. Did you know that Northern Europeans are uniquely depigmented?
“White,” of course, is a a social designation. The question really is, “Why are northern Europeans depigmented?” Here is a map of human skin tone. The natives of northern Europe are oddly light-skinned. They are paler than anyone else on earth.
Most people know that it has something to do with sunlight, UV, latitude, and vitamin D. Here is a map of solar UV at the surface taken from satellite. It matches the skin-tone map everywhere but Europe.
Read the entire article as it traces development back step by step to figure out why Northern Europe is unique in its depigmentation.
Tags: research, world building
Posted in SFWA Blog | 3 Comments »
The UK’s Society of Authors Issues Guidance on Ebooks
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Given Random House’s recent claim on electronic rights in older contracts, Macmillan’s recent announcement that it will be issuing “enhanced ebooks” simultaneously with some of its hardcover releases (and charging even more than for the hardcovers), and the thorny rights and payment issues raised by the rapid expansion of the ebook market, this seems an especially relevant piece of news: the UK’s Society of Authors has issued guidelines on ebook licensing and royalties for authors and agents.
The full text of the statement (which I found via the excellent TeleRead blog) can be seen here. The guidelines are below, and seem to me to make a great deal of sense.
1. Consider granting publishers a licence for 10 or 20 years, rather than for the full duration of copyright;
2. Limit any grant of ebook rights to the verbatim text. Wider electronic rights (e.g. for enhanced ebooks) should be negotiated separately and only if there is a definite intention to exploit the rights.
3. Royalties on ebooks should be much higher than they are. Until the economics and scale of the market become clearer, we consider that publishers should share ebook income equally with their authors. In any event we particularly encourage authors to try to negotiate steep increases to their royalties at agreed sales thresholds (as publishers recoup their set up costs). When a book has become well-established, it may be reasonable for the author’s share to rise to as much as 75%. On other forms of electronic access – e.g. rental and pay-per-view – authors should receive at least 50%, preferably nearer 85%, of the publisher’s receipts.
In suggesting these royalties we have taken into account that:
(a) publishers need to cover their overheads and make a profit; but
(b) the direct costs of originating, producing and keeping an ebook ‘in print’ are low (e.g. no printing costs); and
(c) the cost of making an ebook available through a third party distributor such as Amazon is minimal. Publishers’ warehousing and distribution costs are eliminated, as are losses from dealing with returns and unsold stock.
4. Authors should have the right to initiate a review of ebook royalty rates every 2 years and have the right to insist that royalties be increased to match those then prevailing in the trade.
5. When enhanced ebooks are developed, authors should have the right to approve – and be involved in – adaptations, abridgements, and dramatizations, as well as decisions on musical, interactive or other embellishments.
6. Contracts must allow authors to regain rights, if they so choose, once sales have all but ceased. When the work is POD and / or ebook only authors should be able to terminate their publishing contract on one month’s notice if sales in the home market in traditional and/or electronic form fall below an agreed level (or if the author’s income falls below an agreed amount) over 12 months, once the advance has been earned or more than, say, three years have passed since publication, whichever is the sooner.
Tags: digital, ebooks, Random House, victoria strauss, Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | Comments Off
Quick Updates for 2009-12-16
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
- Video: The The Impotence of Proofreading. http://is.gd/5pBML #
- RT @innaj: And in summary: Writers, responding to negative reviews will never End Well. So just Don't Do It. http://bit.ly/72e64I #
- @CherylMorgan Thank you. in reply to CherylMorgan #
- RT @Ginger_Clark: Authors, if you emailed me a query before 11:59 pm on 12/8/09, and you have not heard from me, I am passing. I'm sorry. #
Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off
Conventions and writing, or Schmoozing 101
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
by Mary Robinette Kowal
Let me talk about conventions and their relationship to my writing life. Everyone will have very different experiences, depending on their personality. Here’s how it works for me.
I primarily go to conventions for three reasons.
- To see other people in the field whose company I enjoy.
- Improve craft/business sense.
- To be “visible.”
1) To see other people in the field whose company I enjoy.
I relish the social aspect of SF. There are people that I just plain like and a convention is like old home week. It’s fun! I like you guys.
2) Improve craft/business sense.
A convention with a really good list of panels is going to appeal to me more than one in which I only hang out at the bar (though I love that, too). I want to know what’s happening in the field and to think about things that aren’t just products of my own brain banging against the inside of my skull. Even if I only learn one new thing, that’s a thing I didn’t know before.
3) To be “visible”
I’m a new writer, so I’m building my “brand.” I’m not going to get that many new readers at a convention, but the people at cons are the ones who vote on things and frankly, nominations can be leveraged ((Nominations and awards do not automatically mean a reader increase. You have to know how to work them, but the power of narrative on career is a different topic.)) into getting more readers which means…that cons are filled with a good target audience. Cons also tend to have editors at them and those are good people to know.
Now, I’ll be frank about how this works, because a lot of people don’t understand how to do effective schmoozing. Yes, yes, I’m aware that admitting this happens is distasteful. But, I’m going to talk about how to schmooze, anyway.
Schmoozing 101
These are all ideas to employ but none of them are hard and fast rules. Schmoozing is all about being charming and that will vary somewhat depending on the situation. So, here are the basic ideas behind successful schmoozing. (more…)
Tags: business, convention, Mary Robinette Kowal
Posted in Networking and Self-Promotion, SFWA Blog | 3 Comments »
Quick Updates for 2009-12-15
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Resources
- Victoria Strauss: How not to run an eppublishing startup (from the EREC blog)
Industry News
- Read about previous rulings against Random House's "in book form" ploy.
- Odyssey 2010 details announced.
- The Authors Guild response to Random House's digital rights grab.