U.S. District Judge Denny Chin has granted preliminary approval to the revised Google Book Settlement, which was filed on Friday. He has set the date for the fairness hearing on February 18th, 2010.
Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA.
Today, Mystery Writers of America (a sponsor of Writer Beware, along with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) issued this announcement to its members:
Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss analyzes Harlequin Horizons and the trouble it presents for authors.
Paul Di Filippo and Sheila Finch have accepted appointment to the jury for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best SF novel of the year. In 2009, Paul A. Carter retired from the jury after having bravely served for many years, almost since the Award’s inception.
Yesterday, PW reported on the launch of AgentInbox, a new service from collaborative writing website WEbook.
“AgentInbox is a service that connects publication-ready authors with reputable, vetted literary agents,” says the service’s FAQ for writers. Writers enter their book’s “vital stats,” including title, genre, query letter, and all or part of the manuscript (there are several tutorials to help with the polishing process). They can then check AgentInbox’s roster of participating agents and choose which ones they’d like their submission to go to. WEbook staff pre-screens submissions, then forwards them on to the agents chosen.
On Friday, Google, the Association of American Publishers, and the Authors Guild filed a revised version of the Google Book Search Settlement. It’s now up to Judge Denny Chin to set dates for a notice period, an objection hearing, and the final Fairness Hearing.
In January of 2009, SFWA adopted a new set of Nebula Rules. This year is their first in effect so we thought we’d review the process for those who are curious.
As readers of this blog know, I’m fascinated by the strange phenomena that flourish at the fringes of the publishing world. So I was thrilled recently to discover yet another example: an online course that teaches people how to become Virtual Author’s Assistants.
At World Fantasy there was a one-hour panel on the Google Book Settlement with Russell Davis, Karen Wester Newton, Charles Petit, Jay Lake, Christopher Kastensmidt, and Dan Gamber moderating. This is a podcast of the full panel discussion.
In an announcement that has scientist and science-fiction authors alike reeling with the new possibilities, NASA announced today that it has found a “significant amount” of frozen water on the moon.
Neural networks are really amazing things. In my last post I talked about how a word brings up all of its meanings simultaneously; today I’m going to talk about how that’s not all it brings up.
I’m talking about connotations and allusion.
