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Weekly Roundup: 2/18–2/24

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SFWA: 2011 Nebula Award Nominees Announced

If you read speculative fiction, you should check out this year’s nominees for the Nebula. If you go to the announcement on the SFWA website, you’ll not only be blessed with a complete list of nominees, but you’ll also get links to where you can purchase the nominees, or (if possible) to where you can read them for free. I’m currently reading one of the novella nominees and I’m loving it. (Also of note, Embassytown is up for best novel. You can find my review of Miéville’s most recent release here.)

Rachelle Gardner: 13 Ways to Impress an Agent

Agent Rachelle Gardner spills the beans on how to impress an agent … or a publisher … or a reader. Admittedly, not everything on the list will impress a reader, but most of them will. The ideas  apply no matter which route you intend to take with your publishing career. Rachelle’s advice applies to both fiction and nonfiction writers, and she marks her distinctions between the two.

Jim C. Hines: Who Controls Your Amazon E-book Price?

A little more advice that can apply to those who want to self-publish and those who, for the most part, want to go traditionally. Jim Hines uses both publishing routes for different projects, and he wants anyone who’s self-publishing anything (backlist titles or new works) to keep their eyes open when it comes to who sets the prices on their work. Hint: Amazon is in the business of making Amazon happy, not necessarily making you happy.

Weekly Roundup: 12/10–12/17

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BusinessWeek.com: Publishers Are Still Missing the Boat on E-book Pricing

Mathew Ingram argues that publishers are shooting themselves in the foot with their ebook prices. He makes some strong points, and I’d agree with him that charging more for an ebook than a paperback is a mistake (even if it makes number sense publisher-side). However, as more of the market transitions to electronic, ebooks will be less of an afterthought and their prices will need to carry the costs of editorial and marketing, costs that have stayed more or less static in recent years and have, for some time, been carried by print sales. So I think pricing is a bit of a sticky issue.

Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor

This isn’t something new, like most roundup items are. This Tumblr account has been around for some time, but if you haven’t looked into it yet and you write anything that puts women in armor, you should check it out. It presents exactly what you’d expect: women fighters in reasonable armor. For some thoughts on the issue of reasonable armor with character, you can also visit armorer’s opinion post about reasonable armor in fantasy art (heads up: the examples of unreasonable armor he gives are especially tasteless; good examples, but they weren’t particularly pleasant to see).

ePub: The Language of eBooks—A Primer

If you have experience with HTML, CSS, and other markup languages and you aren’t yet sure how this whole ePub format thing works, this is a great resource for getting started. If you know nothing at all about HTML or CSS, this might not make any sense at all.

Brilliant Book Trailer

Most writers hate self-promotion. Here’s one author who does a very good job of promoting his book without making you feel like he’s being a salesman. (His book is due to release 1/3/2012, it’s called Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, and his last name is Klauss. I remember that off the top of my head after seeing this once, and that’s all the information I need to get his book. That’s how well he did.)

Weekly Roundup: 10/8–10/14

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Kern Type ScreenshotKern Type: A Kerning Game

This may not appeal to many book people, but type nerds will appreciate this kerning game from Method of Action. From the game instructions: “Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters. Typographers call this activity kerning. Your solution will be compared to [a] typographer’s solution, and you will be given a score depending on how close you nailed it. Good luck!”

Tony D’Souza: When to Stop Working on Your Book

Novelist Tony D’Souza describes all the work and years he put into his manuscript Voyage of the Rosa … and then explains how he let it go and started something else. Letting a book die is something many writers have a problem with. Having an objective eye to help you know when to let something lie is a huge benefit. Indie publishing means anything can be published, but not everything you write is something you should sell. D’Souza explains how his masterpiece became a monster; maybe his story can help you avoid similar pitfalls.

Amazon: Amazon Launches a New Imprint

Amazon is launching a new science fiction, fantasy, and horror imprint called 47North, and has announced the first run of titles.

Rose Fox: Someone at Amazon Launches a Speculative Fiction Imprint

In light of the 47North announcement, Rose Fox expresses concern that nobody seems to have stepped forward to claim the imprint from an editorial standpoint. She raises questions over whether or not the editorial side has much genre experience. She sounds a bit hostile (and she admits that she is), but she raises some good points regardless.

Stacy Whitman: FAQ: Muslim Protagonist

Editor Stacy Whitman of Tu Books answers a question from one of the writers submitting to her. The writer wonders if a Muslim protagonist isn’t relatable enough for a widespread audience. This writer really shouldn’t fear: he or she is submitting to Tu Books, which has the great goal of adding diversity into YA and middle grade science fiction and fantasy. In Stacy’s words: “When we say ‘about everyone, for everyone,’ we mean everyone. Except maybe Sauron.” In her post, Stacy focuses on what makes a character more or less relatable. Especially when you’re dealing with speculative fiction, that doesn’t mean your reader shares a background with the character.

Carolyn McCray: “Price Pulsing”

Over at Digital Book World, Carolyn McCray gives some Amazon-sales advice in her article, “‘Price Pulsing’: the Benefits of Dynamic Pricing on Amazon.” She describes a method of temporarily lowering your price for promotional purposes to boost you in the Amazon rankings before you put your book back at retail price. It’s essentially a sale, but McCray explains the strategy behind the sale.

Weekly Roundup: 9/17–9/23

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Seanan McGuire: Across the digital divide.

Author Seanan McGuire wrote a post that takes a different look at the e-revolution in publishing than I’ve heard before: she looks at how it makes reading an exclusionary luxury. I’ve thought about this sort of thing before myself. (Probably because ever since I moved out of my parents’ home I’ve been a few steps behind every technological advance—except in the case of required professional software like Adobe Creative Suite products and Word.)

In response to the argument that even those who don’t have an e-reader have a computer (something I have heard), I know people who can’t afford to have a home computer either. Those people would have to rely on places with free computers, like libraries, but library computers aren’t the sort you can sit at for hours and hours because they’re in high demand (not to mention the decrease in library funding). The issue of making electronic reading as democratic as print reading is one that hasn’t been satisfactorily addressed for me. The ease of moving a print book from one owner to another is one reason I’ve been happy to keep buying print books even though I have an e-reader.

Thomas Baekdal: Infinite Choices and a World Abundance vs. Supply and Demand.

Thomas Baekdal explains why supply-and-demand rules do not apply to the abundance of ebooks. This is a follow-up to his article called “The Myth of the 99 Cent Book.” In both articles he emphasizes why 99 cents is not a sustainable price for books to trend toward and why it’s a bad way to go. He suggests that you stop focusing on making your book cheap enough that people won’t fight about having to give you money; instead, make your content into someone of sufficient quality that people will be clambering to give you a fair price.

Baekdal’s reasoning is why I’m so happy with publishers and authors who are dedicated to making their ebooks into quality products instead of subsidiary aftereffects (Pyr, for example). When you put out a quality story and you present it in a quality way, with attention to detail and quality, you can maintain a sustainable price point and readers will pay it willingly because they know it’s worth the money.

Writers Beware: PUBSLUSH Press

There have been a lot of crowdfunding projects cropping up across the internet, and one of the newest is PUBSLUSH Press (they’re technically still in beta). Writers Beware posted a critique of PS’s publishing agreement and noted some things to be aware of. These crowdfunding organizations are another option and venue for writers, but it’s best to go into anything—from traditional publishing to doing everything yourself—with your eyes wide open to the opportunities, risks, and sticky bits. PUBSLUSH has quite a few sticky bits.

The Rook by Daniel O'MalleyDaniel O’Malley: Chapters 1 & 2 of The Rook

The Rook is a book that piqued my interest at some point in the past, though I’m not quite sure when or where. (I may have heard about it through Publishers Weekly, but I’m not sure because I don’t record where I find things when I put them on my “to watch” list.) There is a two-chapter teaser for the fantasy novel available now. Yes, I’ve read the teaser. After I read it I was tempted to pre-order the novel (which doesn’t come out until January 2012). I haven’t because my birthday and Christmas happen between now and its release, and I tend to get wonderful gift cards to bookish places on one (or both) of those occasions. That and I still haven’t finished the stack of books next to my desk and I’ve cut off my book spending until it’s been devoured. And The Hum and the Shiver comes out next week, and that’s another book I’ve been watching.