I’m delighted and a little daunted and planning on lots of things.
Right now I’m composing a blog post about self-publishing and why SFWA”s looking at it, as well as my own adventures, past and planned, in self-publishing.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
We’ve got two coming up in the next couple of weeks and I’ll be at both.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
7:00 PM
$10 at the door
$8 for Folio Members, SFWA Members, and Town Hall Members
Complimentary wine reception to followFolio Forum
A Tribute to Ursula Le Guin
Noted local authors and fans honor the great writer.
Plus a recording of Le Guin, reading her famous storyFolio: The Seattle Athenaeum
314 Marion Street, Downtown Seattle
Parking tips and map: www.folioseattle.orgMany deeply mourn and greatly esteem Ursula Le Guin, the famous, and famously prolific, Portland-based writer of science fiction, fantasy, and many other works. To honor Le Guin, who died last month at the age of 88, Folio is hosting a gathering of authors and readers moved by the works of this remarkable author. Le Guin wrote poetry, children’s books, essays, and short stories. Her science fiction works attracted an immense readership and she brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy.
A highlight of the evening will be hearing Le Guin on a recording where she reads from one of her most famous stories, “The ones who walk away from Omelos.” Those sharing memories and tributes include Cat Rambo, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and critic Edward Wolcher of Town Hall Seattle.
That weekend:
Sunday, February 25
7:00 PM (please support our venue by buying food and drink!)
$free
Celebration of the Life and Work of Ursula K. Le Guin
Blue Moon Tavern, 712 NE 45th St, Seattle, Washington 98105Please join us for a reading to commemorate the words and worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (1929″“2018). One of the most beloved writers of our time, Ursula K. Le Guin inspired generations of readers with her science fiction and fantasy literature, from Earthsea to Hain-Davenant. Let’s keep her spirit with us always.
Our evening celebration will consist of readings of Le Guin’s work by Eileen Gunn, Nisi Shawl, Cat Rambo, and you. Please bring up to five minutes of your favorite writing by Ursula K. Le Guin to share during open mic. This event is *free* and open to the public.
There will be a sign-up at the venue for open-mic readers. (Slots will be limited, readers selected in order of sign-ups.)
#sfwapro
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The series so far:
Going forward, I expect more and more indies to enter the organization as it proves that it’s giving them solid value for their membership in the form of:
I also expect the SFWA offerings that attract indies to expand and develop. Here’s some specifics, ranging from those already in the works to some still in the planning stages.
SFWA Storybundling
I want to start by plugging that SFWA Fantasy Storybundle again, because it’s still up, and b) it’s a great example of a program that we’ll continue to expand. Next year we go from two bundles to three altogether — one focused on SF, one on fantasy, and a third on games — and we’re thinking along the lines of a Nebula nominee bundle for 2019 that would provide some financial benefit to being on the ballot, which I think is nifty.
It’s also an example of SFWA writers working together. All of the Storybundle contributors have been coordinating social media and interviews, and it’s definitely going to make it worthwhile to participate, plus raise a little money for the organization in the process.
Partnering
The Storybundle partnership, as well as the terrific Nebula-based HumbleBundle that ran this year, are examples of good partnerings. Another is the support of Kickstarter, who has sent representatives to our Nebulas and Worldcon to talk with our members about not just the basics of running a Kickstarter but the advanced details that help them finetune such a campaign.
Kobo’s another example, as is ACX and Bookbub. Overall, though, there’s plenty of opportunities, and the sky’s the limit as far as expanding things go.
SFWA Nebula Conference Programming
I’d like the 2018 Nebula conference to be the first where we don’t get complaints about the indie programming, but human beings are human beings and that remains to be seen. There will always be glitches. I do expect it to be even better than last year. And as I said in the previous piece, I believe part of last year was more a question of perception rather than actual lack.
SFWA Stuff in the Works and Coming Soon
Several projects with strong implications for indies are in the works, such as:
SFWA Ed will be SFWA’s online school, offering content that will include plenty aimed at indie publishers, such as book cover design, book marketing basics, and working with social media. This project’s at the point where its coordinator is working with individual contributors and companies on the first wave of content; I expect to see it manifest fully in 2018.
The SFWA First Chapters Project is a budget item I pushed through this year. For those that haven’t worked with nonprofit corporations, one way to earmark some energy for a project is to make sure it’s represented in the budget, and while I had to yank it the previous year, this time I got it through.
Just as buying a book is an expenditure financially, reading that book represents an investment of time for most people. Accordingly, my thought is a compendium of only first chapters, giving the reader a chance to dip into a book and see whether or not they want to make that investment. Available only electronically (perhaps somewhere down the road in print form, who knows?), this would ideally hold first chapters from books by publishers ranging from indie to trad, but it’ll take time to get to that point. Therefore, we’ll start with the group that most needs some boost to their discoverability, and start with the indies.
I would like to stress that this is not open for material yet. If you want to make sure you get e-mailed when the project portal goes live, please e-mail me or comment below in a way that will let me know what your e-mail address is. (If you have been requested to not contact me, please direct that e-mail to office@sfwa.org.)
Still in the Planning Stage
Other items are a little further down the road, like these:
SFWA Mentorship Program is something I expect very soon. I’m looking forward to seeing what SFWA Board member Sarah Pinsker and her committee have put together.
SFWA Review Site with Listings for Editors and Other Publishing Resources is still nascent to the point where it’s a budget item I’ll propose for the 2018-2019 financial year. I’d like to see a portal where SFWA members can review copy & developmental editors, book formatters, cover designers, book publicists, and similar resources in a format modeled after review sites like Yelp or Angie’s List.
We do have a spreadsheet some members have contributed to, but recent issues make me think that we need to rework it in a way that lets people know if an individual has a pattern of bad behavior.
Whither SFWA?
Right now while there are some hybrid authors on the boards, the majority remains traditional. That a major one of the many reasons I’m sorry that we lost Maggie, but she put in a hell of a term and a half, and many efforts simply would not exist without her. So I hope we’ll see not just one but several indie members stepping up and running for the SFWA board in coming years. This is for selfish reasons — I’ve learned so much from our indies so far.
Supporting indie writers has strong implications for diversity, including meaning we can better serve the indie groups that have arisen because of traditional publishing’s obstacles, which can take many forms. I’m finishing up editing a SFWA roundtable podcast about the BlackSpecFic report that references this, along with a blog post about what action items for SFWA I perceive, and hope to have that up Wednesday or Thursday.
What else lies down the road? I don’t know. I love this organization and continue to think it’s worth putting a whole lot of volunteer time into every week, particularly at a time when for many of us, our financial livelihoods are in jeopardy. I get a whole lot of intangibles, including knowing that I’m paying it forward, in exchange for that time.
One great joy of working with creative professionals is the tremendous amount of talent, imagination, whimsy, and overall enthusiasm that they bring to projects. I close with one such example, our SFWA anthem, “Radio SFWA,” created by Henry Lien, in a Nebula conference that exemplified one more reason to join: just how much fun SFWA can be sometimes. I believe every time you hear someone screaming “woooo” in the background, there’s a very good chance it’s me.
#sfwapro
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3 Responses
Congrats on the SFWA vice presidency. As to including self-pubbed authors in SFWA, the sooner the better. If SFWA doesn’t find some way to include them, it’s days are numbered. Many authors aren’t even considering traditional publishers and instead are publishing directly on Amazon because self-pubbing actually makes them more money. So the self-pubbing trend is only going to continue to grow in the future. If SFWA is going to survive it has to include them.
My condolences! Given the recent history of the SFWA and it’s attacks on Conservatives and the falling sales of the books the SFWA backs, I suspect a very trying and frustrating time for you.
Self publishing is the future, damn it! I like paper books! But I fully appreciate E-books simplicity and the lack of the gatekeepers that exist at the major publishers. Until Baen Books came out, I had almost quit reading new Science Fiction, and was subsisting on haunting used book stores for stuff I hadn’t read.
Lots of assumptions there – not sure that I agree with you some of them, such as “it’s [sic] recent attacks on Conservatives”, particularly given how many conservatives there are in the org. One of the things I appreciate about the organization, in fact, is the spectrum of beliefs, since I think political diversity is pretty important.
I’d be interested to find out where you’re getting “the falling sales of the books SFWA backs”. Do you mean SFWA-published collections like the Nebula anthology? Or the “Featured Author/Book” section on the website? I’m not sure that’s accurate, and certainly I’ll be curious to see how the recent decision to make the latter available to all members works.
But I do appreciate a lot of the Baen authors, particularly folks like Eric Flint and Elizabeth Moon. I’m looking forward to her next Paksennarion book. Dunno if I get to count myself one — I’ve got a story forthcoming in one of their military fantasy anthologies — but there’s some fine company there. If you like military SF I just finished a couple of excellent self-published ones by Elliott Kay: POOR MAN’S FIGHT and RICH MAN’S WAR, which I recommend as fun reads.