Quick Updates for 2011-01-26
Part 2 of SFWA member @eugiefoster's story, "The Princes and the Golden Fish," is now out in the February issue of Cricket. #
SFWA Blog
Tidbits
New language in the termination provision of the Harper’s boilerplate gives them the right to cancel a contract if “Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or if Author commits a crime or any other act that will tend to bring Author into serious contempt, and such behavior would materially damage the Work’s reputation or sales.”
Guest Post: The Greatest Challenge Agents Will Face
The unpublished often believe that agents exist because of the publishing funnel, and to be sure, that has helped cement agents’ central importance to the publishing business. But what really enables agents to exist is the fact that up until recently, every deal, big or small, was up for negotiation–the size of the advance, the terms of the contract, the rights up for discussion.
Renovation Deadline
Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, today issued a reminder that the deadline is fast approaching to gain the right to nominate for the 2011 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Conditions for Suspense:
Part 6–Character deservingness
All of us have an automatic scale of justice inside of us. We can’t turn it off. Nor can we ignore it. It’s very simple. If someone’s bad outweighs their good, then we think they don’t deserve good things. Conversely, if someone’s good outweighs their bad, we think they should be happy.
Quick Updates for 2011-01-22
Industry News and Member News for Sara Creasy, Dan Gollub, Karen Sandler, Jess Haines, Seanan McGuire, and Laura Anne Gilman.
Five for Friday
Rob Horning in The New Inquiry says publishers will not only use data collected from eReaders to track your buying habits, they’ll use it to track your reading habits. Did you skip to the end of the book? They’ll know. Did you give up on page 28? They’ll know.
Best Solution Author Agency (or, Beware of Agent Solicitations)
I don’t often write posts like this, because it’s really like shooting fish in a barrel. And there are so many red flags here that savvy writers may wonder why I bother. But there are a lot of new writers searching for agents, many of whom are probably new to Writer Beware, and may not yet be clear on what to watch out for.
Quick Updates for 2011-01-21
SFWA member @seananmcguire's short story "Riddles," sold to HUMAN TALES, coming from Dark Quest Books. #
Guest Post: What is Typography?
For the past year, I’ve been working with dancers from Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague on creating a tool that translates text into simple choreographies. A user types a word in a typesetting-like application that plays back this word as an uninterrupted dance sequence where dancer’s body temporarily makes positions recognizable as letters.
