My story about the Nebula Awards weekend went up in the Monday PW Daily and can be found here. It’s got quite a different focus from my blog posts, discussing the business chatter that went on particularly around digital publishing and self-publishing. Sample quote:
At a later round-table discussion among SFWA members about whether and how self-publishers might qualify for membership, Gordon Van Gelder, the editor and publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, proposed that rather than focusing on self-publishers qualifying as authors, they should instead be asked to qualify as markets. At present, qualifying novel markets need to pay authors at least $2000 per book or 5 cents a word, have been in business for at least one year, and have a print run or circulation of at least 1000 copies. “Someone pointed out that it’s probably going to be unwieldy if we have a hundred people trying to qualify that way,” Van Gelder said after the discussion, “but no one screamed in horror at the idea.”
After the flurry of posts this past weekend, which I greatly enjoyed writing, expect blogging to be light over the next couple of weeks; I’m working on a big project that I can’t talk about just yet, and then there’s BEA to cover (will you be there?) and the June romance issue to edit and the fall announcements to write about (yes, fall! I’m already getting in Christmas romances to review). I’m swamped! But I will post when I can and miss you all desperately in the meantime.
“Why self-publishing is publishing, with all that entails.” Your subtitle says something very important.
I’ve self-published two books and will have a third out in a few days. Self-publishers cannot create the content and skimp on other elements of a book. We MUST create or commission a catchy and interesting cover. We MUST deliver near-perfect copy-editing. We MUST design the book’s internal appearance, even if it is simple; simple and elegant are closely allied. And we MUST publicize it in blogs, at conventions, and in all the other ways.
Self-publishing is not a miracle channel to readers. It is hard work and must be done well or our works will be ignored.