Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America has joined the Open Book Alliance, a coalition of librarians, legal scholars, authors, publishers and technology companies dedicated to countering the proposed Google Book Settlement.
Rollout! by Brian Dana Akers
Morphology is a fantasy and science fiction writer’s best friend. Seriously. Why? Because everyone uses it, and I mean everyone, whether they know it or not. Every story that makes up a name for a group of people and then pluralizes it is using morphology. Every story that takes a nice-sounding made-up word and then adds on a suffix to make the name of a country or city is using it too.
Manifold: Origin by Stephen Baxter (Available for Purchase)
Star Trek: The Original Series #15: Corona by Greg Bear (Available for Purchase)
Vitals by Greg Bear (Available for Purchase)
Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson (Available for Purchase)
Our sister site, Nebulaawards.com, has an interview with Jeffrey Ford who was nominated for his short story “The Dreaming Wind.”
Whenever I think I’ve seen it all, something new comes along.
The explosive growth of self-publishing options over the past decade or so has spawned a mini-industry catering to writers trying to get notice for their books. From publicity companies (some competent, many not) to the marketing packages hawked by self-publishing providers such as AuthorHouse (typically overpriced and largely ineffective) to completely worthless pseudo-services (email blasts, online catalogs, book fair “representation”), self-published authors these days have near-unlimited opportunities to spend money on self-promotion.
Such as this one, from self-publishing service Outskirts Press: put your book cover on a postage stamp.
No, I am not making this up. From an Outskirts’ press release, dated today:
Outskirts Press, the fastest growing full-service self-publishing and book marketing company, recently announced it is making available to its family of over 4500 published authors an opportunity to feature their book cover on customized first-class US postage stamps.
Every envelope they send out can then promote their own books with these new eye catching stamps. These are legitimate, custom First Class U.S. Postal stamps, and they come in quantities of 120, each with a color image of the author’s book cover.
This clever book marketing tool is just one more marketing device within an already expansive repertoire of promotional aids provided by Outskirts Press to its authors. Unlike many self-publishing firms, Outskirts Press understands the key role marketing plays in their authors’ success, and they continually develop new promotional and marketing services for their authors to use well beyond the initial publication of their work.
Of course, Outskirts’ “new promotional and marketing services” are also designed to snag their authors’ dollars. Prices aren’t mentioned in the press release, but per this list of add-ons to Outskirts’ basic publishing packages, 120 custom stamps will set an author back $149.
When was the last time you took a careful look at a postage stamp?
A beautiful, handcast commemorative pendant in the shape of an owl has been awarded to the 2009 Octavia E. Butler Scholar. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz received her pendant on July 31, at the party celebrating the conclusion of this year’s Clarion West Writers Workshop session, where she was a student. The pendant was cast from an exclusive […]
From the multi award-nominated author of SHIGIDI, a stunning new collection of stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, knowledge & justice; converging to our future selves.
R. Gary Raham writes science fact and science fiction. Raham’s writing has been known to make a reader laugh and think simultaneously with no known deleterious effects.
