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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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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
As I've discussed before on this blog, one of the many changes currently rocking the publishing industry is a general blurring of lines, a mixing and melding of formerly sharply separate categories and functions.
Literary agents, squeezed by a tough publishing market and a growing number of competitors (thanks to the epidemic of mergers and layoffs that has caused large numbers of former publishing house staffers to transition into agenting), are branching out into other fields--consulting, editing, even publishing.
Trade publishers, looking for ways to raise more income to support their core publishing functions, are establishing pay-to-publish divisions: Thomas Nelson with West Bow Press, Harlequin with DellArte Press (nee Harlequin Horizons), Hay House with Balboa Press. (Specialist publisher Osprey Publishing also announced plans to offer pay-to-publish options through AuthorHouse UK--but a search of both Osprey's and AuthorHouses sites turns up no mention of these options, so I wonder if they've been discontinued.)
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Renovation is delighted to announce an open competition for the design of the 2011 Hugo Award base. The Convention is soliciting artists and designers from around the world to come up with a base that is worthy of the Hugo Award and which reflects the convention’s theme of the New Frontiers and/or the region of Reno, Nevada and the North-Western United States.
The winning designer will have the opportunity to introduce their base design as part of the Hugo Ceremony itself and the base will also enter the archive of Hugo base designs, including the Hugo History exhibit which travels to each Worldcon. In addition, the winner will receive a full 5-day attending membership of Renovation along with $250 towards the cost of attending the convention.
Entrants are asked to submit initial drawings/renderings of their design by January 1, 2011. Entrants also need to be able to arrange for up to 30 bases to be manufactured if their design is successful, with a target price of no more than $150 per individual base. The winning design will be selected no later than February 28, 2011.
Full terms and conditions for the competition can be found on Renovation’s website.
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Monday, November 8th, 2010
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Sunday, November 7th, 2010
The Odyssey Writing Workshop, one of the most respected programs for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, is offering three online writing classes this winter. Each class is focused on a particular element of fiction writing and is designed for writers at a particular skill level, from beginners to professional writers.
For sixteen years, Odyssey has pursued its mission to help developing writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work by holding its annual six-week, in-person workshop in Manchester, New Hampshire. But last year, using the latest technology, Odyssey expanded its mission, taking the teaching techniques that are so effective at the workshop and adapting them to create online classes. Odyssey Director Jeanne Cavelos explains, “We have worked very hard to ensure that our online classes are of the same quality and caliber as our in-person workshop and that they deserve to carry the name of Odyssey.” Courses provide a supportive yet challenging, energizing atmosphere, with a class size limited to fourteen students. While courses are designed for adult writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, interested writers of other genres are welcome to apply.
(more…)
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Sunday, November 7th, 2010
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Many of the writers who contact me with Writer Beware-type questions seem to be convinced that the process of getting published is equivalent to a crap shoot. There are enormous numbers of people trying to sell a book, and very few publishing slots to go around. What slots there are go mostly to insiders and celebrities, rather than new writers. Agents and editors are so [pick one] busy/arrogant/sadistic that they're as likely to toss your query as to read it. All in all, you’ve got a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do of getting published.
This kind of thinking makes me crazy. I'm not saying there isn't some truth in it--there are thousands of manuscripts in circulation at any given time. The number that find publication is very small. Agents and editors are overworked. But the assumptions that accompany these nuggets of truth are incorrect--and so are the conclusions drawn from them.
Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Tips for Beginners, Writer Beware | 10 Comments »
Friday, November 5th, 2010

Member News
Tags: Andrew Burt, Catherynne Valente, Felix Gilman, genevieve valentine, Juliette Wade, Karen Evans, Kevin Evans, Lauren Beukes, n. k. jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Trent Hergenrader, twitter, yasmine galenorn
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Thursday, November 4th, 2010
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Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Publishers Weekly reports that a New York Supreme Court judge has dismissed most claims in The Peter Lampack Agency's suit against a former client, best selling mystery author Martha Grimes.
At the heart of the suit is the question of what commission rights an agency retains after a client leaves. Most author-agent agreements include language ensuring that the agency will continue to receive commissions on any contracts it brokers, for as long as those contracts are in force--even if the client leaves the agency before the contracts terminate--and on any sales resulting from its efforts prior to the client's departure, even if those sales post-date that departure. (So, for instance, if the agency pitches the client's manuscript to a publisher, and the publisher makes an offer after the client has left the agency, the agency is entitled to commissions if the client accepts the offer.)
So far, so standard. But some agencies go farther, claiming the right to commissions on any sale deriving from the original sale, whether or not the agency is responsible for the sale--for example, if the publisher retains and licenses book club rights or foreign rights. The agency may also claim commission rights on the sale of successor works--sequels, spinoffs, and the like. And some agencies claim perpetual representation rights--and therefore commissions--on any works they sell for the first time. This kind of provision, known as an interminable agency clause, in effect makes the agency the work's representative for the duration of copyright, and is strongly advised against by authors' groups.
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Posted in News, SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
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