Archive for the ‘Information Center’ Category

Get Personal with your Marketing Efforts

The words “online marketing” are fairly generic, since there are quite a few components involved with this business practice. Marketers (like myself) often utilize web analytics, social media, blogging, natural and paid search, online advertising, etc. For authors, online marketing may be a little more targeted to our writing and publishing efforts via social media and blogging platforms.

Research Tool: Google News Timeline

If you are writing fiction that’s set at any point in the real world’s history, the subject of research can take up countless hours of time. The nitty details can tie up you up while writing anything from alternate history to urban fantasy. Sometimes though, you just need to know a quick date to set the background of your story.

Check out the Google News Timeline, as a quick place to start your search.

Article Recommendation: Bits of Destruction

With the publishing industry shifting so rapidly now, it’s always interesting to see what people think the new paradigm will be. Bernard Lunn takes a look at it in a two part article at ReadWriteWeb. As with any set of predictions it’s just guesswork, but guesses worth reading.

Networking 201: How to “work a room”

When attending a social function–whether it’s a small gathering at someone’s home, or a political fundraiser, or a room party at a convention–you are being gifted with the opportunity to meet, mingle, and make contact with a wide variety of people. What I intend to do here is give some pointers on how to get the most out of any social gathering, whether you’re there for business or for pleasure.

How to Network at a Convention

So here it is. You’re a fairly “new” writer, or at least new to the convention scene, and you desperately want to make some industry contacts in the hopes that it will make it easier to get an agent/sell your work/quit your day job and hire a cabana boy/any of the above. You decide to go to a convention, perhaps picking one of the “big” ones such as WorldCon, or World Fantasy, because you’ve heard that editors and agents are absolutely spilling out the doors.

Here are some guidelines/rules/suggestions to go by:

Apex Magazine newest SFWA qualifying market!

Today the board of directors of SFWA unanimously voted to add Apex Magazine to the list of SFWA qualifying markets. When Apex moved online in June of 2008, one of editor Jason Sizemore’s reasons was to be able to pay his authors SFWA pro-rates and to get them a wider audience.

SFWA Model Author-Agent Contract

This contract was written under the direction of the SFWA® Contracts Committee. The model or sample contracts have been written as a guide to writers in understanding common publishing contracts and to help them negotiate better contracts. They are not intended to be used as boilerplate contracts by publishers, writers, or agents, nor should such […]