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2012 Hugo Award Winners Announced
Based on 1,922 ballots received, the second highest total ever, the 2012 Hugo Awards go to…
Fake Jared And His Friends: Author Solutions’ Misleading PR Strategies
In my recent blog post on Pearson’s acquisition of self-publishing giant Author Solutions Inc., I posed several questions that I hope Pearson will consider as it integrates ASI with Penguin Group. One of these was whether ASI will start being…
Vanity, Vanity: Turning The Label Around
A prominent literary agent recently told me that unless an author receives a hefty advance of $100,000 or more most publishers will do virtually no promotion, leaving it to authors to create and exploit their own platforms via social media…
In Memoriam: Josepha Sherman
Author Josepha Sherman (b.1946) died on August 23 following a year of deteriorating health. Sherman began publishing in 1986 with a “Find Your Fate” adventure book and the novel Golden Girl and the Crystal of Doom.
Spec-Fic and Podcasting: Earbuds vs. Books, Part 2
So what might be the value of podcasting for new and established speculative fiction writers? Is it about exposure? Self-publishing? Monetizing the work? Creativity for its own sake?
Spec-Fic and Podcasting: Earbuds vs. Books, Part 1
The emergence of the iPod has revolutionized the way our culture consumes media; music, videos, apps, and even literature, specifically in the form of audio fiction. Both long and short form audio fiction have thousands of avid listeners who take…
Guest Post: How to Write a Sentence
How does a sudden attack that puts a sword in your belly play from the inside? If you’d seen the blade properly would it be in your belly? Didn’t you see it properly a little too late, when it was…
LendInk, Author Activism, and the Need for Critical Thinking
If you’ve been living under a social media rock and haven’t heard of the LendInk incident, here’s a brief rundown.
LendInk was a website that facilitated Kindle ebook lending, matching would-be ebook borrowers with ebook owners. All of this was perfectly…
In Memoriam: Harry Harrison
Harry Harrison (March 12, 1925-August 15, 2012) passed away early today. Best known for the film Soylent Green, Harry was also a SFWA Grand Master, a pioneer of genre, and a colorful personality. He will be greatly missed.
Guest Post: Dreaming Well: Does the Future of Publishing Need More Imagination?
I feel passionately that some of the information we are getting is increasingly wrong and motivated by selfishness and, yes, to some degree, a form of hyperbolic illogic. We are so hung up on predicting the next big thing, on getting in…
Guest Blog Post: The Red Flags of Writing Contests
FundsforWriters.com has listed contests for thirteen years, and we’ve reached a point where many sponsors send us contests. If the entry fee is over five percent of the first prize, I scrutinize the contest harder. If it’s over ten percent,…
Guest Post: Learning to Say ‘No’
There comes a time in the life of of every author when the list of Things One Should Do exceeds one’s capacity for time investment. Commissions, anthology invitations, interview requests and business propositions… They all accrue in proportion to one’s…
World Fantasy Awards Nominations
The 2012 World Fantasy Awards ballot has been released. Final results will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, to be held on Nov 1-4, in Toronto, Canada, where Lifetime Achievement Awards will be presented to Alan Garner and George…
Ebooks Outsell Print! Putting Headlines in Context
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware
Widely-discussed book news this week: Amazon UK’s report that ebook sales have outstripped the sales of all print formats combined.
According to unaudited figures released by [Amazon UK] on Monday, sin…
Literary Agent Scams: Still Around, But On the Wane
The other day, on one of the online writers’ discussion groups I frequent, someone asked a couple of questions about the list that I thought it would be instructive to answer here: why do we include agencies on the list…
Guest Post: Writers and Families
My family has a strange attitude toward my writing, which I think is almost always the case unless the writer comes from a family of professional creators. (By professional, I mean people who actually make a portion of their incomes…
Confession of a Museum Bunny
by Deborah Walker Ideas for my stories come to me in museums, in galleries, in libraries. Find me upstairs (and it’s always quieter upstairs) in the British Museum trawling the past looking for future inspiration. Old books, paintings, objects are…
Guest Blog Post: In Praise of Ripening
The word has gone out that Kindle publishing is a great way to make money fast. Churn out a short novel or how-to text with series potential, follow up quickly with a sequel, price the ebooks at $.99 or $2.99,…
Guest Post: Panel Deportment and Demeanor
The problem with seeing one’s purpose on a panel as primarily that of speaking–“sharing” insights or regurgitating something recently read that relates to the subject–is that it turns panelists into lecturers. Speaking for myself, I’ve often found that the thinking,…
Guest Post: Writing And Courage
To talk about this, I need to talk about the scariest thing that ever happened to me. Bear with me.
In 1999, I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. The car behind me tapped my bumper, sending me fishtailing across…
Baltimore Science Fiction Society Hosts Writing Workshops
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) is proud to announce the beginning of a series of day long writing workshops run by active and acclaimed professional writers in the genre of science fiction and fantasy. The first will be on…
Quick Updates for 2012-07-21
Member News for Allan Cole, Ken Liu, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Mike Allen.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America joins with the rest of our nation and the world in mourning those who were killed and injured in Aurora, Colorado early this morning, through the actions of a man whose motives…
Quick Updates for 2012-07-20
Resources and Member News for Edward M. Lerner.