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Victoria Strauss — The Perils of Searching For Publishers on the Internet

Imagine you’re a new writer. You’ve just completed your first manuscript, and are on fire to get it published. You don’t know a lot about the publishing world, or how to identify a good publisher for your book–but that’s okay. You have the Internet. So you open a search engine–Google, let’s say–and type “publishers” into […]

Leslie What nominated for Oregon Book Award

Leslie What, SFWA member, has been nominated for an Oregon Book Award for her story collection, Crazy Love! The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually for the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young readers literature. All finalists are promoted in libraries and bookstores across […]

Editors, check your slushpiles. There’s a plagiarist afoot.

If this were a case of a single plagiarized story, it would not be news.

A few days ago Shock Totem received a story called “Baboulas” by an author calling himself Richard Ridyard. John Boden, Assistant Editor of Shock Totem, read the story and immediately cried foul.

“This is plagiarism,” he said. “This is Stephen King’s ‘The Boogeyman’ from his Night Shift collection. Even the title is the same!” ‘Baboulas’ is the Greek word for ‘Boogeyman.’

Victoria Strauss — Google Book Search Settlement Fairness Hearing Adjourned

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department’s anti-trust division urged the court to reject the Google Book Search Settlement, citing “concerns of the United States regarding class action, copyright and antitrust law.” (The full text of the DOJ’s brief can be seen here.) However, it urged the parties to continue discussion, since “a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits, [and] the United States does not want the opportunity or momentum to be lost.”