Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

Archive for November, 2011

Night Shade Books’ probation has been lifted

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Dear SFWA members,

As many of you are aware, on July 8, 2010 the SFWA board of directors voted unanimously to place Night Shade Books on probation for a period of one year, following concerns about contractual issues with their authors.

As part of the process, SFWA asked Night Shade to meet a series of benchmarks as a measure of a good faith effort to return to a solid standing. After a review of Night Shade Books and after requesting information from our members about the publisher’s activities during the period of probation, based upon the information currently available, the board believes that Night Shade has met the following conditions for it to remain on the qualifying list after its probation period:

• a. That it examined its catalogue to ensure it is no longer offering fiction in formats for which it has no rights, and makes whole those authors whose rights it has violated;
• b. That it instituted procedures and hired sufficient staff to ensure accurate record keeping for contracts and payments, both for previously published and future authors;
• c. That there are no instances of contractual violations on the part of Night Shade Books against authors signed to publishing deals after the start of the probationary period.
• d. Night Shade Books fulfills its contractual and financial obligations to the authors it has already published, including full and accurate accounting of royalties per contract, with payment of any royalties outstanding.

Therefore, the term of probation for Night Shade is lifted. Fiction contracted during that term is acceptable for qualification for SFWA membership. It may remain on the list so long as it continues to fulfill its contractual obligations to its authors and meets SFWA’s qualifying market standards. SFWA remains interested in the health of Night Shade books and will act at any time to deal with a member complaint against Night Shade.

We look forward to working with them and are glad that SFWA is able to retain Night Shade Books as a SFWA qualifying market.

Yours,
Mary

—
Mary Robinette Kowal
Vice President, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

http://sfwa.org

 

 

Tags: Night Shade Books
Posted in News | No Comments »

Quick Updates for 2011-11-30

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

• @geardrops @jaymgates The Nebula rules are here. http://t.co/azW3CE4H #
• @geardrops @jaymgates Maybe a link on the front page that says "Nebula Awards: How to Vote and Rules?" #
• @geardrops @jaymgates The link sadly, is already there. Look in the menu under "Nebula Awards." It's the top item. #

Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | No Comments »

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: How Relying on Numbers Can Get You Into Trouble

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

 Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware


Today I saw the following statement used as justification for choosing a fee-based publisher that charges its authors nearly $4,000, and actively presents itself as a real publisher, rather than a vanity publisher or a (very costly) self-publishing service:

A couple ratios I read a while back convinced me I did the right thing by publishing through [pay-to-play publisher's name redacted]. One ratio involved an author finding an agent - 1-in-5000 - and the other involved an agent finding a publisher - 1-in-100.

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Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | 1 Comment »

Nebula Awards Interview: Barry Deutsch

Monday, November 28th, 2011

by Tehani Wessely

Barry Deutsch is a cartoonist, best known for his graphic novel Hereville, about yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl. Hereville is the winner of the 2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award (the first time a graphic novel has won the award). Deutsch is also an award-winning political cartoonist.

Deutsch lives in a bright blue house with pink trim in Portland, Oregon. He’s currently working on a sequel to Hereville.

 

It’s a cliche, but given it’s such an unusual book, I have to ask, where did the idea for Hereville: how Mirka got her sword come from?

I think there are bits and pieces of Mirka in some of the earlier comics I began and abandoned — I’ve always loved reading and writing about tough girls, and I’ve always written fantasy. I also read Liz Harris’ book Holy Days, about the home lives of Hasidic Jews, sometime in the 1990s, and that obviously really stuck with me.

But basically, I have no idea where the idea came from. My friend Jenn Lee (who creates the best science fiction webcomic out there, “Dicebox”) had told me that Girlamatic.com, a website specializing in girl-friendly comics, was accepting submissions. With just a few days to go before the deadline, I sat down and started drawing page one, having no idea where I was going. And what came out was Hereville.

Hereville is the first graphic novel to ever make the Andre Norton Award shortlist – how does this make you feel?

Mainly, it makes me feel extremely honored. And delighted. And very surprised!

To follow on from that (probably!), does it feel a bit strange being up against seven text-only novels?

Well, Hereville also competed against prose novels for the Sydney Taylor Book Award (the first comic book ever to win), and for School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books (where Hereville lost on the very first round!). So it’s a strangeness I’m lucky enough to be getting used to.

What’s special about the Norton shortlist is the company I’m in! I’m a lifelong reader of sf and fantasy, so seeing my work on the same list as Paolo Bacigalupi, Holly Black, Scott Westerfield, and others — Terry Pratchett, for God’s sake! Terry Freaking Pratchett! No matter what happens, just being included on this list is a wonderful win for me.

What’s coming up next from you?

I’m thrilled to say that Abrams, my wonderful publisher, has signed me up to do two more Hereville graphic novels.

 

Tehani Wessely was a founding member of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine in 2001. Now firmly entrenched in Australian speculative fiction and small press, she has edited for Twelfth Planet Press (among other duties), judges for the Aurealis Awards, reads far more in one genre than is healthy, and writes reviews, non-fiction and interviews for ASif!, Fiction Focus and Magpies. In her spare moments, she works as a Teacher Librarian and enjoys her husband and three children.

Tehani is the editor of ASIM #4, #16, #27, #31 and #37, three Best Of ASIM e-anthologies, co-editor of ASIM #36, the Twelfth Planet Press anthology New Ceres Nights and other projects. She is currently working on an anthology of children’s stories titled Worlds Next Door, and a reprint anthology of Australian alternate mythologies from her own press, FableCroft Publishing.

Tags: barry Deutsch, interviews, Nebula Awards, Tehani Wessely
Posted in Nebula Awards, SFWA Blog | No Comments »

MLM for Writers: The Best Authors Lounge

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Writers: Forget about that boring day job. Forget about tedious book promotion. Heck, forget about writing books! There's another way to make money--and it was created with authors in mind.

I received a spam a couple of weeks ago from an outfit called The Best Authors Lounge for a query letter webinar. Intrigued by the sizeable signup fee ($74.99, rising to $99.99 after November 15), as well as the presenter's apparent lack of any professional experience that would qualify her to teach query letter-writing, I decided to investigate further.

From The Best Authors Lounge's opening page:

In order to be “the best author” you can be, join TBA Lounge, an interactive social network that puts the writer, freelance journalist, the author, the songwriter, the poet, and the speaker in a positive atmosphere in which you can be supported and therefore become more successful doing what you love to do, creating a world out of words.

So far, so groovy. There's a catch, though: to join this social network, you have to pay--and it isn't cheap. Fees range from $100 to $200 per month, depending on the level of networking you desire. There are also courses you can take (for more fees, natch) from something called TBA University. You can even self-publish your book, via a variety of packages ranging from $698 to over $1,200.
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Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | 2 Comments »

Quick Updates for 2011-11-23

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

• SFWA members including @daviddlevine are included in The Drabblecast podcast's 10-episode "highlight reel." drabblecast.org/new/ #
• SFWA member @eugiefoster's short story "Black Swan, White Swan" was published by PodCastle. http://t.co/LoepCyza #

Tags: twitter
Posted in Excluded Categories | Comments Off

In Memoriam: Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011)

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011) died on November 21. McCaffrey’s first published story, “Freedom of the Race” appeared in Science Fiction + in 1953, making McCaffrey one of the last science fiction authors discovered by Hugo Gernsback. Her 1967 novella “Weyr Search” appeared in Analog despite its apparent fantasy basis and introduced readers to one of her most prolific worlds, Pern, and earned McCaffrey a Hugo Award the following year. The follow-up novella “Dragonrider” which also appeared in Analog received a Nebula Award. McCaffrey’s awards marked the first time either award was won by a woman for a work of fiction. These stories formed the basis of the first Pern novel, Dragonflight. Her novel The White Dragon marked the first time a woman made the New York Times Best Seller list for a work of science fiction. In addition to the Pern series, which spawned numerous novels written by McCaffrey and, later, her son, Todd, McCaffrey also wrote The Ship Who Sang, which led to several collaborative novels in that series. Other series that McCaffrey wrote in, often with collaborators, included the Acorna books, the Catteni Sequence, the Crystal Universe, the Ireta series, and many more. McCaffrey was the Guest of Honor at ConAdian, the 52nd Worldcon, in Winnipeg in 1994. McCaffrey was named a Damon Knight Grandmaster by SFWA in 2005 and the following year she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Tags: Anne McCaffrey
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 12 Comments »

Nebula Awards Interview: Paolo Bacigalupi

Monday, November 21st, 2011

by John Ottinger III

Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for two Nebula Awards and four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year. His short story collection Pump Six and Other Stories was a 2008 Locus Award winner for Best Collection and also named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly

His debut novel The Windup Girl was named by Time Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards.

His debut young adult novel, Ship Breaker, was a Micheal L. Printz Award Winner, and a National Book Award Finalist. He currently lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on a new novel.

Photo by JT Thomas Photography

 

You have had an interesting road to publication. How did you know you wanted to be a writer and what twists and turns did your career take in getting you there?

I worked for thirteen years, failed to sell four novels, wrote short stories for a while after I gave up on novels, and eventually got up the guts to write more novels. My fifth and sixth novels were the ones that sold. The common thread through all of that is that I like the act of writing. Separate from the question of supporting myself or making sales or winning awards (which are lovely, don’t get me wrong), I really like creating worlds, building story, and exploring characters. There’s a core pleasure in that. Without it, I would have given up years ago. So it’s not so much a question of deciding I wanted to be a writer, so much as paying attention to what I enjoyed doing, and nurturing that and taking it seriously on a day-to-day basis.

In much of your work you explore dystopias – worlds where something has gone wrong and people are living on the edge. What first drew you to these types of stories, and why do you keep writing them?

I don’t think of myself as writing dystopias. To me, a dystopia is a deliberately designed society which is superficially perfected, but which is hell for the depicted individuals. That’s not what I do. I describe places where society has broken down or collapsed. I write about poor people. I write about places where technology went wrong, or we failed to adapt. And while it’s certainly hell for my characters, it’s not the same as what I think a dystopia is supposed to do.

I actually think of myself as writing our accidental futures. The kind you get when there’s a lack of forethought, a surfeit of poor planning, or just plain cynicism. And frankly, most of the worst details of the worlds I describe are based heavily on our present. Chittagong, Bangladesh isn’t a dystopia, its just a really poor place where we dump our scrapped ships because they have fewer worker safety and environmental controls. If I’m writing dystopia, then there’s an awful lot of our present world that fits under that umbrella. But hey, it’s a snazzy marketing term that doesn’t contain the dreaded words “science fiction” so maybe I shouldn’t complain so much. People keep telling me dystopias are hot.

As to why I keep writing them… I think they are necessary stories. If I’m going to chop down a forest to print a bunch of books, I’d like to think the stories I focus on are useful and relevant to our cultural conversation.

Do you consider yourself an issues-oriented novelist? Does being an issues-oriented novelist have to be a bad thing?

ROFL. Well, it hasn’t been a bad thing for me.
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Tags: interviews, john ottinger III, Nebula Awards, Paolo Bacigalupi
Posted in Nebula Awards, SFWA Blog | 3 Comments »

Guest Post: Little e, Big B:
Books and EBooks and Love and War

Saturday, November 19th, 2011

by Catherynne M. Valente

Here’s the thing. I’m sick to death of talking about ebooks.

In the current economic and publishing climate, that is a shocking thing to say. Posts about epublishing regularly get the most comments and pingbacks, I’m constantly asked to give talks about my own experiments in that arena, and I usually agree to do them. It is the topic of conversation among authors, agents and publishers alike. How we’re going to adapt, how it will change the publishing environment, how, most importantly, to make money with ebooks.

But I’ve had it. Because something seems to get lost all the time in these endless conversational loops that make me want to embed something in Data’s wrist so that I know how to break the cycle.

And that something is, you know, books.

My interest in ebooks is a tiny percentage of my interest in books. I didn’t dream of being a writer so I could spend my time discussing file formats and what Author X (even if X= me) did to sell a whole bunch of copies. Maybe it’s stupid and romantic, but I got into this because I loved books. Because stories were the most important things in the world to me, and I had so many of them to tell. Don’t get me wrong, there are vital and important things to talk about with regards to ebooks, and it is changing the industry. But when we discuss writing these days, we almost always end up talking about self-publishing and ebooks. And then any other conversation is over.
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Tags: Amanda Hocking, Catherynne M. Valente
Posted in SFWA Blog, The Business of Writing | 6 Comments »

Alert: Light Sword Publishing, a.k.a. LSP Digital, Returns

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

In July of 2008, I blogged about Light Sword Publishing, a.k.a. LSP Digital, about which Writer Beware had received a substantial number of complaints (delays, nonpayment of royalties, unprofessional behavior,  misrepresentation of the company's expertise and capabilities). For examples, see the Light Sword Publishing thread at Absolute Write, and also the comments thread of my blog post.

LSP was sued in 2007 by one of its authors, alleging breach of contract, fraud in the inducement, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The author prevailed: in April 2008, default judgments totaling more than $30,000 were entered against Light Sword Publishing and Light Sword's then-owners, Bonnie Kirby and Linda Daly. (The judgments were later declared non-dischargeable and dismissed.)

The judgments (and my blog post) occasioned quite a bit of discussion, and in May or June 2008, in time-honored dodgy-publisher style, Daly changed Light Sword Publishing's name to LSP Digital. It doesn't seem to have helped. December 2008, Linda Daly and Light Sword Publishing filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy petitions with the US Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Michigan. By March 2010, the bankruptcy trustee had decided to abandon assets and close the file; and in June 2010, Daly was granted a discharge.
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Tags: Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | 2 Comments »

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