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by Brenda W. Clough

I’m going to make a big assumption here: You are not immortal. If this is not accurate, email me, and we’ll write another article for Planetside about planning for your endless life. But if you are like the rest of us, you’re going to die someday. And you should think about it.

Why Should I?

The notion of one’s own demise is curiously repugnant for some people. I had an uncle who steadfastly refused to contemplate it or take any action about it. This meant that when he did pass, his affairs were in chaos. This is not a good look for anybody, but 10 times out of 10, it’s particularly bad if you are an author or creative. Because you have more value than just your personal property. You have intellectual property: the copyrights to your fiction or art. And these can be a huge cause of contention after you’re no longer around.

The basic rule of all end-of-life planning is: If you want anything done, set it up now. Everything and anything can be done, if only you’re above ground to do it. Once you’re dead, you get no more say in anything. You want a Viking funeral, to lie on a burning longship as it’s pushed out to sea into a golden sunset? Oral instructions are easily forgotten, misheard, or ignored. Write it down, or better yet, find the business that does Viking funerals and sign a contract in advance for their services, and you’ll happily burn.

The first and most important step is to make your will. It’s not necessary—in fact, it’s downright unwise—to wait until your golden years to do this. When you acquire significant assets, like real estate, a partner, or children? You should make a will. These things are too important not to plan for.

What If I Don’t?

If you die intestate (without a will), your estate will be subject to probate. This means the government will intervene to determine how to distribute your assets. But you, being dead, will get no input into these decisions. The authorities may do things that you’d very much dislike. And going through probate takes ages. My uncle, who was too nervy to ever make a will? He owned property. It took two years for his estate to go through probate, two years during which his widow needed the money, and his sons frantically struggled with New York state’s bureaucracy. It was the last thing the family needed to face after the bereavement.

Depending upon where you live, you may not need a lawyer to draw up that will. There are online forms that allow you to create a simple will. This works if you don’t own a lot of stuff. If it’s you, your car, and your goldfish, you do not have a complicated estate. But if there’s anything complex or important in your life, you should hire an expert, an estate attorney, to be sure it’s done right.

A competent estate lawyer will help you to arrange things the way you want, now, while you still have all your marbles. If you want to provide for your beloved Labrador retriever, if you want to specifically ensure that your worthless son has nothing to squander on riotous living, the lawyer can make this happen. There are hundreds of mystery thrillers and Victorian novels, excitingly plotted around intestate deaths, confusing or badly worded bequests, and squandered inheritances. A properly drawn-up will means you offer no inspiration to novelists. You want this to be boring, legal, and airtight.

Your lawyer will also help you draw up an end-of-life document, designating a person to make medical decisions on your behalf if you are no longer able to do so. Again, this saves your loved ones a world of hurt at a moment of tragedy and crisis. It becomes especially important if you become incapacitated but don’t die right away. You do not want a fight between your kids about who decides to pull the plug on your life support. A spouse or partner is the usual candidate for this role, but your lawyer should ask you to designate a backup person as well.

Then Your Literary Estate

The above is the absolute minimum in estate planning. But an author or a creative has that intellectual property. The executor of your will acts as you have instructed regarding your money, house, or children. And your literary executor will do the same for your copyrights and intellectual property. They’ll sign contracts for reprints, collect the payments, and transfer those monies where you want them to go. Consult your lawyer about this, because state laws vary. You may need a second document, or at least a letter of your intent, designating someone to handle your literary estate.

Who should your literary executor be? Select someone who knows you and your work. Let them be responsible and reasonably young. A literary executor older than you may predecease you, and then you’d have to do it all again. You’ll want to discuss this with the person in advance, so they know what it entails and can consent to accept the role.

Supply them with a list of all your publications to date, so they have a grasp of how big your literary estate is going to be. Mention to them any vehement feelings you have about media options, or having your stories telepathically transmitted into the reader’s cerebral cortex if that technology comes online before your copyrights run out. These instructions can be as simple or as complex as you like. My son is my literary executor, and my instructions were elementary: “Grab all the money on offer, and run!” 

If you have no suitable person you’re comfortable with to act as your executor or literary executor, ask your lawyer again. The law firm may well agree to act on your behalf in this matter. Having an entity be your executor is no bad thing. Law firms don’t last forever, but they’re far more immortal than a human being.

Once you have your literary executor lined up, be sure to tell SFWA’s Estates-Legacy Program, which keeps track of them all. This will allow the Steven Spielberg of the 22nd century to find your literary executor and negotiate for the telepathic rights to your novel without difficulty. Much more information is available at this link. This would also be the moment to tell any agents you may have, literary or media, that you’ve chosen a literary executor.

Wait, There’s More

This is the absolute minimum for an author. Even if you only have a couple of stories out, it’s only responsible to take care of your physical and literary offspring. But let’s suppose you’re a bigger player. You’re George R. R. Martin or Stephen King, with a dozen New York Times best sellers in your catalog, movie deals in development, or Netflix projects scheduled. Your works are not just sofa change but a major income stream.

At that level, you probably already have a lawyer to organize your career. She almost certainly has already told you this. If she hasn’t, ask her now about setting up living trusts. You can shelter all your assets in a trust that will outlive you. This trust can do anything you want: donate the ongoing income from your movies to worthy causes; allow your as-yet-unborn great-grandkids to afford a Princeton tuition; erect your elaborate tomb next to Chopin’s in Père Lachaise Cemetery. A trust is the main vehicle you can deploy to elude estate taxes. You can set up as many separate trusts as you like to protect one asset from litigation that might devour another.

Most crucially, a trust helps to cut off litigation. Your unborn grandkids may despise one another, but they’ll hesitate to sue if you set up a trust. It’s not a perfect guarantee, but because you’re setting up the trust and declaring your intent for it while you’re still alive, your intent is clear and inarguable in court. Not having a trust is worse. Not having a record of your intent gives your heirs the opening to litigate all the assets away like Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, or to make an embarrassing splash in the media fighting over your millions when you’re incapacitated or dead.

You read in the news now and again of people who did not organize their estates until it was too late. They’re no longer competent, or they died unexpectedly. The rats in their life seized the opportunity to crawl out of the woodwork. Suddenly, accusations fly, the cries of elder abuse or looting of the checking accounts. The dirty laundry is dumped out, the old girlfriends, long-lost offspring, or estranged relatives, all of them clawing for the money the oldster can no longer use. Everyone who admired that actor, author, or artist nods their head. What a shame that this should be her legacy! Do not be the star of one of these loathsome scenarios. Look your demise in the eye—and plan for it.

Editor’s note: SFWA provides the Bud Webster Legacy Kit to help professional creators compile the resources they need to protect their intellectual legacies.

Brenda W. Clough is the first female Asian American SF writer, first appearing in print in 1984. Her 2025 novel is a science fiction novel, His Selachian Majesty Requests. In 2024, she published the 12th book in the Marian Halcombe series, Servants of the Empress. A novelette, “Clio’s Scroll,” appeared in Clarkesworld in July 2023. A historical novel, A Door in His Head, won the 2023 Diverse Voices Award. Her novella “May Be Some Time” was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and became the novel Revise the World. She is active in the SF community, attending conventions and doing podcasts. Her complete bibliography is up on her website, brendaclough.net.

The post Estate Planning for Authors and Creatives appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by J. D. Harlock

Due to the influence of One Thousand and One Nights’ early translations, depictions of premodern Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) in speculative fiction tend to be inaccurate. Dr. Jack Shaheen referred to this reductionist stereotype as “Arab Land,” an amalgamation of Eastern and North African cultures presented as the “Middle East.” This article will clarify certain misconceptions about the region to promote authentic representation. 

Imperial, Royal, and Noble Ranks 

Arab-esque monarchies are somehow an “emirate” headed by a “vizier” under a “sultan” referred to with the honorific “sheik.” Although no standardization exists, some choices stand out as inaccurate. Governance structures have used these terms in various ways, with modern usage having different meanings. Still, they have formed a loose hierarchy in the region.

The Khalīfah is comparable to the Catholic Pope if he also possessed his own sovereign with political and military authority, ruling over the Khilāfah as the theocratic leader in historical eras in which the title had been acknowledged by the Ummah (Islamic world). Akin to an emperor, a Sulṭān rules over a Sultānīyah. A king, or a Malik (m) / Malika (f), rules over a Mamlakah. Under them, you might find a prince, or an Amīr (m) / Amīra (f), who rules over an Imārah, a smaller province in the vein of a principality. Any of these people might have an advisor with varying delegated powers, often called a vizier. A vazīr is the Turkish form of Wazīr (m) / Wazīra (f), with the Grand Vizier referred to as al-Wazīr al-Aʿẓam (m) / al-Wazīra al-Aʿẓam (f). Shaykh (m) / Shaykha (f) could be a title for a tribal leader, which may be inherited. It can also be used as an honorific for a respected figure within the community or a religious figure, in which case it must be earned. 

The -Stans of Southwest Asia and North Africa

When fictional countries’ names end in “stan,” it’s often a reference to the “stans” of Central Asia. The -stan suffix is used for Arab nations where Islam is a prominent feature of the setting, such as in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)’s Urzikstan or The Black List: Redemption’s Kyrkistan, or Six Underground’s Turgistan. No country in Southwestern Asia or North Africa has ever used it because the suffix is derived from the Persian language, meaning “land of,” and is restricted to the Indo-Iranian world or the Turkic world as a borrowed term. 

Romanization

Romanization has an understated impact on worldbuilding when crafting authentic settings. Traditional practices haven’t succeeded in mimicking accurate pronunciations. For example, due to the lack of a letter ح (ḥ) in English, the closest approximation in English is the letter h. Yet, you tend to find names transliterated into “Ahmad,” spelled “Achmed” (Achmed Saves America). The same applies to the letter ج, which sounds like a rougher j, but you end up with “djinn” when writing it as “jinn” is closer.

Furthermore, romanization in other languages, such as French, has led to even further confusion in English. For example, the sh sound is not native to French, and is often approximated with ch. As a result, former French colonies or countries that were under the French mandate used Francophone transliterations, such as Bachir, pronounced closer to “Bashir,” and Chihab, pronounced closer to “Shihab.” This is why it’s important to check that you are using the romanizations closest to the Arabic pronunciation.

Traditional romanization practices have created another issue regarding made-up words meant to sound Arabic. For example, in the romanization of Arabic script, the letter ق (kāf), which has a heavier sound, is often translated as q since another letter, ك (kāf), exists, which has the sounds of a lighter k. To mimic this convention, there’s a tendency for made-up locale names meant to mimic Arabic to pepper in Qs, such as the infamous Qurac (Iraq), Syraq (Syria), and Kahndaq (Egypt) from the DC Universe or Aqiria from the Marvel Universe. This extends to other romanizations of sounds that are indicative of Arabic to the English-speakers’ ears, such as خ or kh for Khemed from Tintin or the suffix  يا or -iyā, which is used in a variety of cases, such as Trucial Abysmia in G.I. Joe. It would be more appropriate for writers to derive names from Arabic words, such as “Bahrain” (Two Seas) or Arabizations of words from indigenous languages, such as Lebanon.

Arabic Dialects

Due to the influence of other languages and local cultures, Arabic dialects vary to the extent that some are nigh-incomprehensible to speakers in other regions. In turn, having Arabs from different areas automatically understand each other without trying to communicate in MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), the formal lingua franca rarely spoken day-to-day, or the need to clarify slang comes off as a bit of a stretch, as is the case with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022). Depictions of Arabic speakers using MSA for no reason, with no discernible accents or the wrong accent, are also problematic—how Ardeth Bay speaks in The Mummy (1999) is unrealistic, as even talking in MSA all the time will have signs of the original dialect’s accent. 

Conclusion

It’s unfortunate that for a region with such diversity, there’s a homogenized depiction of the Arab world that contains no multitudes, coexists with nothing, and possesses no local lineages. Hopefully, this article will be one step in offering tangible solutions for speculative fiction writers worldwide to write authentic Arab-esque settings. Then we can finally put an end to speculative fiction’s history of harmful stereotypes that continue to harm SWANA communities in the West, and promote an accurate version of the region that represents it properly. 

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J. D. Harlock is an Eisner-nominated American writer, researcher, editor, and academic pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of St. Andrews, whose writing has been featured in Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, The Griffith Review, Queen’s Quarterly, and New York University’s Library of Arabic Literature. You can find him on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The post Avoiding “Arab Land” Stereotypes when Depicting the Premodern Arab World appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

SFWA President Kate Ristau:
Tasting Notes from Recent Advocacy, Education, and Outreach

Some days, the publishing industry is like a nice cup of tea: warm, supportive and just the right amount of comforting. Other days, it burns your tongue and scalds your hands. It’s overly sweet or way too bitter. 

Let’s take the metaphor one step further and spill the tea, shall we?

This week, the judge in the Anthropic case ripped apart the proposed settlement in the class action lawsuit. When his reasoning came through, I saw echoes of Jason Sanford’s Genre Grapevine. Sanford discussed how the settlement works off minimal definitions for which books to include in the class. 

The class leaves some authors with an empty cup. 

I am personally one of those authors, holding traditionally published books in my hands that were never copyrighted by my publisher. (If you’ve been wondering about copyright and how it works, you’ll want to check out the latest piece by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Presents, Protecting Your Intellectual Property, which covers the basics, the myths, the scams, and more.)

Sanford and Strauss are concerned about copyright and liabilities, and so are we. The judge read those same tea leaves, and he argued that the settlement is being “forced down the throat of authors.”

That is tough to swallow. 

I want to assure you that, at SFWA, we hear that complaint, that frustration, and that gross tea. We are meeting with our own counsel to discuss the gaps in the class definition, while also working on informing eligible class members about their eligibility. We don’t want any authors to miss out on being compensated for the use of their work.

While all this shakes out, we’re also heading to Washington, D.C., where Isis and I will be meeting with congressional staff and lawmakers to discuss how these cases impact authors, in addition to other concerns such as book bans and the future of publishing.

When we are there, we invite you to join us for Tea in D.C. this Monday, September 15, from 5-6PM at Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse, 201 F St NE, Washington, D.C.

I’ll pour your first cup. We’ll chat about copyrights and claims. And importantly, we will talk about the work you are doing and how SFWA can help you!

It’s going to be a great weekend on the East Coast. Make sure you check out the full lineup of SFWA events at the Baltimore Book Festival.

I’ll leave the tea metaphor to steep for a bit and just say that this situation is complicated. We think your work never should have been stolen. We know this is impacting thousands of SFWA members. We want you to be paid for your work. 

So, for now, make sure you fill out the contact form if eligible for the class action, and join us in D.C. if you can. Some tempests can’t be contained in their teapots, but we’re here for you in any storm.

Keep writing – and we’ll keep putting the kettle on.

Kate Ristau

SFWA President

The post Press Release – September 12, 2025 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware®

Copyright is a complex subject about which there are many misconceptions.

I was reminded of that this week, thanks to an email from an author who discovered that several of their books were included in one of the databases of pirated works used by the AI company Anthropic for AI training. The author wanted to know whether they were eligible to be part of the gigantic $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to pay to compensate writers for its misuse of their intellectual property. (You can read more about the lawsuit, and the settlement, here.)

One of the criteria for eligibility, set by the court, is that copyrights to the pirated works must have been properly registered with the US Copyright Office before Anthropic downloaded the databases. And indeed, the author’s books were all registered in a timely manner…but not with the Copyright Office. Instead, the author used a website called Copyrighted.com, which offers a kind of faux registration using timestamps and its own certificates.

I had to tell the author that no, they weren’t eligible for compensation for their pirated books. In the United States, there’s no equivalent or substitute for the US Copyright Office’s official registration process. The author couldn’t even use the materials they’d gotten from Coprighted.com as prima facie evidence of copyright ownership. Again, only official registration provides that.

In this article, I’m going to cover the basics of copyright, offer some warnings, and dispel some myths. I know that much of what follows will be familiar to a lot of readers—but as the example above shows, knowledge gaps not only exist, but can be damaging…and as always in the writing biz, knowledge is your greatest ally and your best defense. I hope even the most copyright-savvy readers will find something useful here.

Copyright Basics

Copyright, literally, is “the right to copy.” It guarantees the authors of creative works—including books, stories, artworks, films, recordings, and photographs—the exclusive right to copy and distribute the works, or authorize others to do so, by whatever means and in whatever media currently exist. It also ensures that works can’t be copied or distributed without the author’s permission.

The international source for copyright law is the Berne Convention, adopted in 1886 and revised and amended several times since. In the 181 countries that are currently signatory to Berne, including the US, copyright ownership is automatic the instant work is fixed in tangible form—the paint applied to canvas, the musical notes recorded, the words written down. Creators don’t have to do anything else to make that happen.

Contained within copyright is the entire bundle of rights that creators can utilize themselves or license to others. For writers, this includes the right to publish in print and digital formats, to make translations and audio recordings and dramatic adaptations, to create derivative works, and much more—a list that continues to expand as technology makes different forms of publication and distribution possible.

When you sign a publishing contract or agree to the Terms of Service of a self-publishing platform, you grant the publisher or platform permission to publish, sell, and distribute your work for profit, in exchange for a share of the income. Because you own the copyright, granting rights doesn’t mean you lose or abandon those rights: merely that you authorize someone else to exploit them for a time. Eventually, once the contract term expires or the publisher takes the work “out of print” or you terminate the contract yourself, those claims on your rights lapse, leaving you free to re-grant them or to use them yourself, as you choose.

You can’t lose your copyright unless you specifically agree to give it up (as in work-for-hire contracts), and no transfer of copyright is valid unless it’s in writing and signed by the copyright owner. But copyright does expire eventually. For written works, the Berne Convention sets the duration of copyright for individual creators as a minimum of the creator’s lifetime plus 50 years, ensuring that copyright can be passed down to descendants like any other form of property, but also that works will eventually enter the public domain. Many of the countries that have adopted Berne have extended that term: in the US, the UK, and most of Europe, it’s the creator’s lifetime plus 70 years.

In addition to the economic rights described above, Berne invests creators with moral rights, intended to protect authorship by ensuring that works are published with the creator’s name (the right of attribution) and can’t be amended or altered in ways that would damage the reputation of the creator or the work (the right of integrity).

Most Berne signatory countries recognize moral rights. The US is an exception, at least for written works, having decided when it adopted Berne in 1988 that other laws provided equivalent protection. Moral rights really only become significant for US writers when contracts demand that they be waived—a decision that shouldn’t be entered into lightly. (I’ve written in much more detail about moral rights, and the implications of waiving them, here.)

Registration

The Berne Convention ensures copyright protection without requiring creators to take any additional steps, such as registering their copyrights. As a result, many Berne countries have no official registration process.

Others, such as Canada, offer voluntary registration schemes, with registration providing prima facie evidence of copyright ownership—important for legal purposes, because you don’t have to waste time proving ownership if you ever go to court. 

The US is unique in making copyright registration a prerequisite for any kind of copyright-related court action (there’s a complex history on why this is the case, despite the stipulations of Berne). Registering, which must be done via the US Copyright Office, doesn’t increase your protection—by law, you have that already—but you can’t defend your copyright in court unless you’ve previously registered.

If you’re a US author, when should registration happen? Contrary to much misinformed belief, there’s no need to register at the submission stage. Theft really is extremely unlikely at that point. A good agent or publisher won’t want to risk their reputation by stealing, and anyway, it’s a whole lot more trouble to steal your manuscript and pretend someone else wrote it than it is just to work with you. As for a scam agent or publisher, they aren’t interested in your writing at all, only in your money.

It’s not until your work is published—and exposed to a wide audience—that theft becomes a concern. At that point, registration is important.

Contracts from larger US publishers require the publisher to register copyright on the author’s behalf, at the publisher’s expense (though you should always double-check; see the Resources section below). For self-publishers and writers with smaller presses that often leave registration to the author, registration is easy to do online and costs $45 to $65. If you register before the infringement begins or within three months of first publication, whichever is less, you can recover the full range of statutory damages (up to $150,000, depending on the circumstances). Registration also provides prima facie evidence of copyright ownership, as long as it’s done within five years of first publication.

Writers from countries other than the United States can also register with the US Copyright Office. If your work will be sold and distributed in the US, registering is a good idea.

What about authors of short works—stories, articles, blog posts, and the like? The US Copyright Office offers a handy group registration option that allows you to register up to 50 published works at a time, for a single fee of $65. Registration makes sense even if the works are published as part of anthologies or periodicals. Such publications register collective copyrights that protect the publications as a whole but aren’t necessarily adequate to protect individual works.

An Alternative for US Creators: The Copyright Claims Board

Bringing a copyright suit in the event of infringement can be ruinously expensive and is far beyond the capacity of many creators (the Authors Guild estimates the average cost at $400,000). In the US, there’s a recently established low-cost alternative: the Copyright Claims Board.

Approved by Congress in 2020, the CCB allows creators to bring lower-dollar infringement claims (monetary damages are capped at $30,000) without having to hire an attorney or make a court appearance (proceedings are conducted entirely online). Fees are modest—just $100 for a basic claim, only $40 of which must be paid upfront—and as with any US copyright-related legal action, you must at least have applied to register your copyright.

Given that it’s such a new resource, Writer Beware has been keeping a close eye on CCB proceedings since it started accepting cases in 2022 (you can see our collection of posts about the CCB here). So far, and somewhat to our surprise, literary claims are very much in the minority.

Schemes and Scams

In countries without an official registration scheme, how do you prove authorship?

In addition to drafts, notes, outlines, contracts, correspondence, and the like, there are online services that provide timestamps and certificates or other documents that may help to prove authorship. They can be pricey though, and some try to bamboozle you with claims of super-sekrit encryption to prevent tampering or hype about registering on the blockchain. Mostly, they just boil down to the same timestamps and self-issued certificates you can get from websites that use fewer buzzwords.

Unfortunately, there are also many “bewares” in this area: from self-publishing service providers that submit US copyright registration applications as an add-on at a much greater cost than you’d incur if you registered on your own; to faux registration services like the Copyrighted.com site mentioned above, which don’t make false claims but use vague language to obfuscate the fact that what they provide isn’t equivalent to official registration schemes; to scams that falsely present as if they actually are official registration schemes, such as the IP Rights Office and its claim to be “the Copyright Registration Service for the United States.” Not only are these a waste of money, but what you get for your cash may not be anything you can actually use.

Be aware also that there’s no such thing as “international copyright registration” or an “international copyright seal” or an “international book seal”. Scammy publishing/marketing companies (especially those from overseas) want you to believe there is, so they can charge you thousands to supposedly obtain it for you—but it is a completely fictional product whose sole purpose is to drain writers’ wallets. It’s also unnecessary. Per Berne, your US copyright is fully recognized by all other Berne signatories, and vice versa.

Here’s what one of these fake registrations looks like. It’s modeled on real registration certificates from the US Copyright Office, with a bogus International Copyright Office seal and fake signature.  

Copyright Myths

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned misconceptions. Here are a few that I often encounter in my work with Writer Beware.

You don’t have copyright protection until you’ve registered with the US Copyright Office. False. As noted above, you own copyright from the moment you write down the words. Registration is an extra step that gives you additional legal benefits.

You own copyright on your ideas. Also false. Ideas are not protected by copyright law, only their expression. Ideas are part of the public domain, and no one has a monopoly on them. Five novelists may come up with a similar idea, but they will produce five different books.

Manuscripts have to include a copyright notice or symbol for copyright to be effective. At one time, the US did require this, but that became obsolete in 1989 when the US joined the Berne Convention (Berne does not require either a notice or registration to effectuate copyright). A copyright notice can sometimes be useful: for example, including a copyright notice with work published online makes it harder for infringers to weasel out of damages by claiming innocent infringement. But it’s not needed for copyright protection. 

When submitting work to agents or publishers, it’s smart to deter theft by including a copyright notice. This is an instance in which a copyright notice is not useful. As mentioned above, theft at the submission stage is highly unlikely. Reputable agents and publishers don’t want to risk their reputations that way. Just as important, agents and publishers assume you know this. A copyright notice on a submitted manuscript marks you as an unreasonably paranoid amateur.

Poor man’s copyright is a substitute for copyright registration. According to this theory, placing your manuscript in an envelope, sealing it, and mailing it to yourself is equivalent to formally registering your copyright, as long as there’s a postmark or delivery receipt and you retain the envelope unopened. But not only is that not the case—only registration counts as registration—poor man’s copyright probably wouldn’t be useful even as a secondary way of proving authorship, since it’s easy to fake. You could mail the envelope empty—and fill and seal it later.

Resources

The Berne Convention: the international source of copyright law.

US Copyright Office: the only genuine source for US copyright registration.

Copyright Claims Board: a low-cost small claims court for copyright actions that offers an alternative to expensive copyright lawsuits.

US Copyright registration portal. A single work can be registered online for between $45 and $65, and on paper for $125. There’s also a group registration option for short works, for $65.

Copyright Basics. This circular from the US Copyright Office explains the basics of copyright, including what’s protected, the rights of copyright owners, the benefits of registration, and more.

US copyright public records system. Here you can look up works to find out if they’ve been registered…including your own. Part of the unwelcome fallout of the Bartz v Anthropic lawsuit has been authors’ discovery that many publishers failed to register their works, even though their contracts required it. It’s always wise to double-check.

Explore more articles from Writer Beware® Presents

Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults, including the Way of Arata epic fantasy duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City), and a pair of historical novels for teens, Passion Blue and Color Song. She has written hundreds of book reviews for publications such as SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. 

She received the 2009 SFWA® Service Award for her work with Writer Beware, and in 2012 was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award for the Writer Beware blog. She’s webmistress of the Writer Beware website, which she also created, and maintains the Writer Beware database, blog, and Facebook page.

The post Protecting Your Intellectual Property: What You Need to Know About Copyright appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Welcome to the September edition of the SFWA Market Report.

Please note: Inclusion of any venue in this report does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA. Those markets included on this list pay at least $0.08/word USD in at least one category of fiction. This compilation is not exhaustive of all publication opportunities that pay our recommended minimum professional rate. Additionally, SFWA adheres to our DEI Policy when making selections for this report. We strongly encourage writers to closely review all contracts and consult our resources on best contract practices.

New Markets

Otherside (Upcoming)

Markets Currently Open for Submissions

Africanfuturism Anthology (Flame Tree Publishing)
Anomaly (Recently Opened)
Asimov Press
Augur (Recently Opened)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Book Worms (Recently Opened)
Book XI (Recently Opened)
Cast of Wonders (Recently Opened)
Clarkesworld Magazine
Crepuscular Magazine
Factor Four Magazine
Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter
Infinite Worlds
Nature: Futures
Night Shades (Recently Opened)
Planet Scumm (Recently Opened)
Plott Hound Magazine (Recently Opened)
Protocolized
Reckoning
Samovar
Small Wonders
Tales & Feathers (Recently Opened)
The Daily Tomorrow
These Dreaming Hills (Recently Opened)
Three-Lobed Burning Eye (Recently Opened)
Torch Literary Arts
Tractor Beam
Uncanny (Recently Opened)
Uncharted Magazine
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The SFWA Market Report is compiled by David Steffen, editor of Diabolical Plots and The Long List Anthology series, and administrator and co-founder of the Submission Grinder.  The Long List Anthology Volume 9 ebook is now available! You can order it now at Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and others! You can support Diabolical Plots and the Submission Grinder on PayPal or Patreon or by buying books or merch.

Wondering about some missing publications? Check out our July 23 update on Must Read, the publisher of Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF. Our partner, Submission Grinder, is currently not listing these magazines, the first two of which are open for submissions and the latter of which is rebuilding its workflow.

SFWA remains in open dialog with Must Read to support the ongoing development of best practices for contract language, and to serve as an ally to all creators striving to improve the writing ecosystem for authors.

If you have questions about the contracts you receive from any SFF publications, please write to the Contracts Committee to learn more about what is and is not common/ethical practice in our industry.

The post SFWA Market Report For September appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Guy Windsor

All the best stories end with a sword fight, and there are usually many sword fights leading up to the climactic duel between the hero and the villain. It’s important to get these right because, if you kick your reader out of the world you’ve created for them with a confusing, unbelievable, or just plain wrong bit of fight description, you’ll lose the tension you’ve worked so hard to generate.

My top three tips for fantasy and historical fiction writers are:

1.  Do your research (or use other people’s).

2.  Avoid jargon.

3.  Run through the fight in the real world.

Do Your Research (or Use Other People’s)

Base your characters’ weapons and fighting styles on historical sources. Every culture has produced something sword-like for purposes of combat and status. We have archaeological and historical records of swords made from wood, glass, stone, copper, bronze, iron, and steel. The Aztec macuahuitl is a wooden sword with obsidian glass chips bonded to the edges. The ancient Egyptians fought with hooked bronze swords called khopesh. Australian Indigenous people made sharp-edged wooden swords. There are the Chinese dao and jian, the Japanese katana, the ancient Greek makhaira, the Roman gladius, Indian pata, Viking sword, arming sword, longsword, rapier, sidesword, smallsword, saber, backsword, and on and on.

Guy Windsor with a longsword. Photo by Simply C Photography.

Every culture that made swords had methods of using them that were at least as sophisticated as the weapon itself. We know this from archaeological finds, the historical record of descriptions of fights, and, starting in the 1300s, detailed treatises on sword fighting styles.

There is no need for you to be an expert in any of these weapons. But you can base your characters’ armory on existing weapons (the way the lightsaber is based on the knightly longsword) and find out how their weapons would have been used. There are legions of people figuring it out for you already and publishing their findings (like me and my colleagues).

There are two main approaches for figuring out the systems: reconstructive archaeology and historical research.

Reconstructive archaeology is the process of reconstructing the weapons (or other tools) and figuring out by trial and error how they were likely used. In the case of bronze swords, examining the notches on existing blades and comparing them to notches created on new blades by various cuts, parries, and so on, gives us an idea of how these weapons interacted with each other.

Historical research looks to the written record. From the 1300s onwards, we have manuscripts that go into extraordinary depth and detail about specific combat systems, such as Fiore dei Liberi’s Il Fior di Battaglia (ca. 1400), which tells you everything you could want to know about knightly combat, including the dastardly trick of filling your pollax head with blinding powder.

Image from Getty Manuscript Ludwig XV, folio 37, courtesy of the Getty Museum.

We have hundreds of sources from the 16th century onwards, and fencing masters kept writing new ones until the present day. Many of those sources and masters have students devoted to reconstructing their art. Pick a weapon for your character, modify it to suit your story, then find someone who is practicing with it and ask for advice.

Avoid Jargon

Most readers don’t know a macuahuitl from a makhaira, and they didn’t pick up your novel to be taught a lesson; they picked it up to be entertained. The pitfall of doing your research is that you let too much of it leak out onto the page. Any time your reader comes across a word they don’t know, their mind will skip over it, or they’ll get bogged down. Neither one is good. You have been immersed in this world for thousands of hours, so you know it better than they do. If you do have a special word for something (Lucas’s lightsaber, Tolkien’s Anduril, Bujold’s plasma arc), make it clear from the context what it is and how it works.

Most people know what a rapier is, more or less. But a makhaira? This sword is famous, but nobody has heard of it. Alexander the Great fought at Gaugamela with the makhaira given to him by Kition, King of Cyprus. When the Apostle Peter used a sword to cut the ear off poor Malchus in the Bible (John 18:10), it was, in the original Greek, “μάχαιρα”—“makhaira.” When it is written in the King James version of the Bible that Jesus said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword,” (Matthew 10:34), it is again “makhaira” in the original Greek.

A makhaira or falcata made by JT Pälikkö; a makhaira or kopis in the Deutches Klingenmuseum; and a makhaira in the Etruscan Museum, Villa Giulianni, Rome. Photos by JT Pälikkö.

But put that into a novel, and you are guaranteed to send 99% of readers out of the zone and off to a dictionary, where they will discover that the makhaira was popular from about 400 BCE, and was a forward-curving sword, good for cutting, that Xenophon recommended for use by cavalry in place of the straight-bladed xiphos.

Run Through the Fight in the Real World Guy Windsor with a rapier and dagger. Photo by Simply C Photography.

This does not have to be done at speed with sharp swords. You can do it with a pen in each hand, at your desk. But make sure that the scene you are describing works in practice, not just in your head. If you are avoiding jargon, you will find this easier because you can leave space for the reader to imagine the action.

“The villain attacked with a flurry of thrusts and cuts, beating our hero back against the castle wall” is better than listing the specific actions she used. When the specific action matters (if you want to use a dastardly technique to indicate a villainous character, for instance), then block it out move-by-move to make sure the sword doesn’t magically pass through a body part without hurting it. Be very sparing with this—most readers don’t want to work through the specifics.

It’s Your Book

I hope this advice is useful. Do your research, avoid jargon, and run through the fight in the real world. But it’s your book, not mine, so take my rules with a pinch of salt!

Explore more articles from WORLDBUILDING

Consulting Swordsman Dr. Guy Windsor is renowned as a teacher and researcher of medieval and Renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching professionally since founding Swordschool in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. Awarded a PhD by Edinburgh University for his seminal work recreating historical combat systems, Guy has written numerous books on swordsmanship, such as The Medieval Longsword, The Medieval Dagger, Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers and Martial Artists, The Duellist’s Companion, and many others.

He has also created a huge range of online courses, covering medieval knightly combat, sword and buckler, rapier, and related topics. Now, Guy splits his time between researching historical martial arts, writing books, and creating online courses, teaching students all over the world. He hosts the popular historical martial arts podcast The Sword Guy, with guests including Steven Pressfield and Neal Stephenson. His latest book is Swordfighting for Writers. You can find him and his work online at swordschool.com.

The post Writing Sword Fights: Three Tips from a Professional Swordsman appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

A Good Day for Writers Class Action Settlement Values Anthropic Theft at $3,000 per Stolen Work

We are happy to share with you more details from the class action lawsuit against Anthropic.

TL;DR: $3,000 per work stolen by Anthropic.

Here is a short summary of the motion to approve the class settlement (more detail here):

• Subject to court approval, the principal terms are: Anthropic will pay the Class at least $1.5 billion dollars, plus interest.
• With around 500,000 works in the Class, this amounts to an estimated gross recovery of $3,000 per Class Work.
• Anthropic will destroy the LibGen and PiLiMi datasets after the expiration of any litigation preservation or other court orders.

Note that the final list of works affected, which will differ substantially from the list on the Atlantic website, will not be finalized and released until early October. Divisions of each award between author and publisher may be subject to minor variation based on original contract terms. In the case of self-published work, and wherever rights have fully reverted to the author, some award details remain to be clarified.

This is the beginning of a long process.

There are more details provided here and here, and many more coming soon. We will keep you updated on what’s next.

For now, make sure you fill out the author and publisher settlement form, located here, and make sure SFWA has your correct preferred email and mailing address.

This is a great way to end the week – with an acknowledgement of our labor and the possibility of more to come.

Stay tuned, and keep writing!

Your SFWA Advocacy Team

Ongoing Issues to Be Addressed

While this week’s announcement comes as a promising first step towards accountability and the protection of authors’ work for many, SFWA recognizes the persistence of deep uncertainties around this decision, and what it has revealed about our publishing ecosystem.

As noted recently on Writer Beware®, even traditional publishers do not always register an author’s copyright (a key component of eligibility for this Class Action). Indie-published writers, writers whose works are part of complex multi-author texts, and writers who operate outside the US also face challenges when it comes to next steps extending from this first settlement.

There are other lawsuits against other AI companies, some of which are or may become class actions. There are also four potential class action lawsuits starting in Canada.

Authors excluded over technicalities in this first Class Action are welcome to start their own, building on the preliminary success of this initiative.

Lastly, the aforementioned Anthropic settlement has not yet been approved by the court. If enough authors opt out of its terms, it will be stopped automatically.

So what is the best course of action for an author who was pirated by Anthropic but not included in the class at this juncture? Talk to a lawyer about your options. If there is uncertainty about if your work(s) will qualify, fill out the above settlement form. And spread the word, to keep up the pressure on companies that have stolen from literary creators.

This decision is only the beginning of a long struggle to better protect our work.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

The post Press Release – September 6, 2025 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Monica Cross

There is a pervasive sentiment that science fiction and fantasy “don’t work” on stage. So let’s put that to the test. Take Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example, since it is commonly put forth as the beginning of the science fiction genre. Within five years of its initial publication, Frankenstein had been adapted for the stage. By that metric, science fiction has been on the stage almost as long as science fiction has been around. As for fantasy, we see elements of the fantastical entwined much further back. So while we can debate whether the appearance of literal gods in the Greek plays or mischief-making fairies in Shakespeare’s writing constitutes fantasy or if it was simply a reflection of their world view at the time they were written, I would argue that the modern productions of The Bacchae by Euripides or A Midsummer Night’s Dream must be viewed as productions of fantasy today.

The fact that certain types of SFF theater get staged while others are rarely seen comes down to those who make the choices about what sorts of plays to produce. It is producers, theaters, and season selection committees that make those decisions, and it is my experience that many feel like they cannot or should not program SFF plays in their theaters. 

I must add here that I am not talking about all producers. There is a growing number of theaters and producers who not only program SFF plays but go so far as to champion them. Still, the reservations I am discussing here seem prevalent across the industry, and to this day I field questions from industry professionals about the viability of SFF theater.

Common Assumptions About SFF Theater

The primary assumption that producers seem to make is that there isn’t an audience for SFF plays. They assume (and they may or may not be right, depending on their particular audience demographic) that SFF plays won’t sell tickets. This may stem from assumptions about the literary nature of theater versus the pulp nature of genre fiction, which I believe is a false dichotomy, as seen by the popularity of musicals such as Wicked or Into the Woods. I once worked at a Shakespeare company that staged a wildly popular production of The Return to the Forbidden Planet, a sci-fi musical parody that combines the 1956 film Forbidden Planet with its Shakespearean inspiration The Tempest. The fact that the top three examples that come to mind are musicals may be worth noting, but that may also be that (in my experience) musicals attract a wider audience than non-musical plays. The point is that I have seen audiences show up for SFF plays in ways that challenge this assumption about genre plays.

Emily Brown, center as Miranda, from left, Lee Fitzpatrick as Gloria, Allison Glenzer as Petty Officer Anne Arkey, and John Harrell as Ariel in Return to the Forbidden Planet by Bob Carlton at the American Shakespeare Center in 2013. Directed by Jim Warren. Costumes by Erin M. West. Photo by Pat Jarrett.

The other major assumption producers make is that SFF plays are too difficult to stage. And certainly there are elements common to science fiction and fantasy that would be difficult to put on stage. However, those who universally write off SFF theater as unstageable are generally overlooking several key details. 

Several Realities of SFF Theater

To start, it is important to realize that certain types of SFF stories rely less on effects than others. While I love seeing high-concept, high SFF plays on stage (and I’ve perhaps seen more than most because I seek them out at every opportunity), the unfortunate reality is that plays taking place in the near future or sprinkling fabulist elements through an otherwise naturalistic plot are in fact seen as being easier to stage and have more of an audience. These plays often have the side effect of not even registering to audiences (or perhaps even the theaters producing them) as science fiction or fantasy.

Branching out beyond SFF that does not require effects are plays that work within established theatrical conventions. On stage, there are often ways to convey SFF elements without special effects. My go-to example of this is Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The lovers run on stage and Oberon says, “But who comes here? I am invisible; / And I will overhear their conference.” (AMND 2.1) He can accompany this with a gesture or a swish of a cloak, but that is wholly unnecessary. By simply saying that he is invisible and having the other characters walk right past him, we know he is invisible. On stage, so much can be conveyed simply through action and dialogue.

Corrie Green as Helena, Philip Orazio as Demetrius, Aidan O’Reilly as Oberon, invisible while observing the lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare at the American Shakespeare Center in 2024. Photo by October Grace Media.

While so much can be done without special effects or with minimal effects, special effects are cool, and that’s one of the things most SFF people love about the genres. And that does happen on stage and can be done effectively. Just look at what Broadway has been able to do with Frozen: the use of projections, fog, and a fly system bring Elsa’s magic to life in a spectacular fashion. Now, most theaters don’t have a Broadway budget, and certainly Broadway hasn’t always been able to create special effects in a captivating manner (for that, I direct you to the pitfalls of Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark). So there is certainly a trick, and often a lot of money, to effectively staging the impossible. If producers aren’t daunted by the ingenuity needed to develop such stage tricks, they often are by the money required to successfully pull it off.

The Future of SFF Theater

Despite these perceived obstacles to production, the field of science fiction and fantasy theater continues to grow. New Play Exchange, which describes itself as “the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers,” reports that across the 61,630 scripts their website boasts (ranging from one-minute plays and monologues to full-length plays and musicals), there are 3,499 scripts tagged with the science fiction genre and 6,438 scripts tagged with the fantasy genre. Their tagging system allows for multiple genres per play, so there is likely some overlap between those two categories. Even assuming maximum overlap, over 10% of the (mostly unpublished) plays listed in that repository are considered by the playwrights to be SFF. So, when producers are ready to put SFF plays into their seasons, the plays are already waiting for them.

This article is the first of three pieces I’ve written as part of a series exploring SFF theater. In the forthcoming articles, I will provide further information on the history of SFF plays and offer advice to authors who are interested in writing for the stage.

Explore more articles from SFF on Screen and Stage

Monica Cross is a playwright based out of Wisconsin. She has an extensive background in theater, including acting, directing, dramaturgy, and design.

Monica has taught at New College of Florida, Ringling College of Art and Design, and University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. She has worked at the American Shakespeare Center, Urbanite Theatre, and Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival.

Monica’s plays have been produced by Silk Moth Stage, Whiskey Theatre Factory, The Sarasota Players, MadLab, Theatre Odyssey, The Hippodrome, and various Fringe Festivals across the United States. Her work has been a semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries, and a finalist for Wisconsin Wrights. Her writing has been published in The Best 10-Minute Plays 2023, The Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2024, The Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2025, and The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2025 (all through Smith & Kraus), as well as Ten-Minute Play Festival, Volume Four: 2018 – 2021 by Theatre Odyssey.

Monica holds an M.Litt. and MFA from Mary Baldwin College and has most recently trained at the Kennedy Center Summer Playwright Intensive. In addition to being a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, she is also a member of the Dramatists Guild. For more, visit her website at www.monicacross.com and her portfolio on NPX.

The post Where Is All the SFF Theater? appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

The Nebulas Keep on Rolling! Join Us in November for Quasar, Our Fall Nebula Event Filled with Panels, Seminars, and More!

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is delighted to announce Quasar, a Fall Online Nebula Event. With virtual programming running from November 15-16, we’re going to keep this year’s wonderful Kansas City energy going. We can’t wait to see you out!

Attendees for this year’s Nebula events in June are already guaranteed free admission! Your ticket for earlier online events carries over one last time, before SFWA programming kicks into higher gear in 2026. Take advantage today by using promo code 2025Nebulas on a special ticket type below:

https://membership.sfwa.org/event-6301796

(And yes, we’ll name-match to confirm!)

For those who couldn’t join us in June:

We hope you can now!

Our Programming Team is grateful for all the terrific feedback received via survey data. For our November event, we have dynamic programming for professional-development panels and seminars, along with much-requested office hours with seasoned industry peers and experts.

Signups for specific events and office hours will be rolling out in September and October, so for $50 today you’ll be all set to receive key planning emails to make your virtual experience all the more memorable.

Oh, and did we mention that Grand Master Nicola Griffith will be joining us to deliver a keynote address? You might remember her last moving speech for us, at the Nebulas this year in June. What a gift it’s going to be to hear from her again!

The best part of community is the ability to keep a wonderful conversation going, and that’s exactly what we have at SFWA: diversely talented creators who’ve achieved a level of success and who keep on striving to do better for themselves and those around them.

Quasar is another opportunity to develop our professional skills together, and to knowledge-share and network with one another in the process.

Do you know any non-SFWA members who might be interested? Let them know!

A wealth of learning awaits for only $50.

So save the date, SFWA – and see you in November!

The post Press Release – August 28, 2025 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Rosemary Jones

Pulp magazines ruled the newsstands in the early 20th century. They provided readers with science fiction and fantasy, as well as other genre stories, for a low cost. Millions of copies were sold. Until one man decided he didn’t like the pulps and invented the mass market paperback, which would become the leading cheap book format by the 1950s.

Or at least that’s how the story goes. A plaque installed at the Exeter St Davids station in 2017 commemorates the moment Sir Allen Lane looked over the fiction available for sale at the newsstand and couldn’t find anything worth reading on his train trip. Wanting a “good book” at a pulp price, he came up with the idea of the Penguin paperback featuring quality fiction and nonfiction reprints. Beginning in 1935, the British publisher sold exclusively standardized paperbacks for sixpence each.

Lane started in publishing at Bodley Head, the prestigious British publisher founded by his uncle, John Lane. A champion of James Joyce and other literary stars of the 1920s, Lane was ideally positioned to secure reprint rights. Penguin began as an imprint of Bodley Head, but Lane and his brothers quickly spun it off as its own entity.

Penguin did not use the famous train station story in their book about their 21st anniversary, published in 1956. Instead, the author, Sir William Emrys William CBE, notes that a number of low-priced reprints already existed in a paperbound format, but “many of them dealt only in the more expendable kind of fiction.”

From left to right: The Penguin Story, 1956, with cover photo by Guy Gavett showing Penguin rack at W. H. Smith & Son; The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, 1960 edition with small black-and-white cover art added to white band; and Lost Horizon by James Hilton, 1961 (#6100 47th printing), Pocket Books, cover art uncredited. Photo by Rosemary Jones, from the author’s collection.

Lane’s innovation, according to Williams, was to find a way to bring the best literature and nonfiction to a larger mass of readers in the economically tough times of the 1930s.

Besides the low price, Williams argues that Penguin’s other advantage over its paperbound predecessors was to create attractive books. Certainly, the Penguin paperbacks provided a great example of branding from the start. Rather than having individually designed covers, all Penguins looked alike. Fiction had orange-and-white covers with the Penguin name in a cartouche over the title in the top orange band. The book’s title and author’s name were set in Gill Sans font in the middle white band, and a penguin logo was printed in the middle of the bottom orange band. All early Penguins were the same size too: 7 ⅛ inches tall by 5 ⅛ inches wide. By 1937, the venture was so successful that a flock of variations took flight from the publisher: Puffins, Pelicans, and King Penguins. The main colors now included orange (general fiction, including science fiction), green (mysteries and crime fiction), blue (biographies), and cerise (travel and adventure).

Very quickly, readers began to associate Penguins with color-coded mass market paperbacks rather than flightless birds. The fact that Penguin numbered all their paperbacks appealed to collectors almost from the beginning. The idea of “numbering” appeared on earlier softcover books issued by other European publishers, such as Tauchnitz Editions, and would be used by paperback publishers for decades.

Williams’s history ignores The Albatross Press in Germany, which launched before Penguin and used a very similar format, complete with color-coded titles. Publishing English language reprints for Europeans, the Albatross books were remarkably successful, but the company was gone by 1939. Arguably, it was Penguin and their American counterpart Pocket Books that truly made the paperback “mass market” by selling to millions of readers in the 1940s and inspiring numerous other publishers to get into the paperback business.

Pocket Books Follows Penguin

In the United States, Pocket Books tested their first pocket-sized paperback in 1938, The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, by selling it only in the New York area. They went into mass production the next year with Lost Horizon by James Hilton, an award-winning romantic fantasy adventure, and nine other titles. Their books sold for 25 cents each for two decades. As Pocket recounts their history in a later edition:

“In June 1939, [Lost Horizon] became the first title in the first list published by Pocket Books, Inc., the firm which began the ‘paper-bound revolution’ in modern publishing. For twenty-one and a half years, it remained Pocket Books #1 at 25 cents, through forty-six printings, totalling nearly 2,000,000 copies. Finally, in 1961, it, too, yielded to the increases in prices and became Pocket Book #6100 at 35 cents.” 

Penguin Books Ltd. also opened a branch in the United States around the same time. This division quickly brought together Ian Ballantine, who would become a prominent name in science fiction paperback publishing, and Kurt Enoch, one of the Albatross Press founders, who had fled Nazi Germany with his family. The pair would eventually part company with Penguin to head their own companies, forming Bantam Books (Ballantine) and New American Library (Enoch).

Paperbacks Boom in the 1940s

Despite the hardships of World War II, the early 1940s saw a boom in the demand for paperbacks. Not only were those cheaper for the average citizen, but the format was ideal for soldiers to carry in their pockets. Publishers received government contracts to supply books to the troops. Penguin cut a deal to print exclusive editions for Canadian troops in return for Canadian paper, helping them achieve even greater quantities of books despite Britain’s shortages.

Pocket and other American publishers participated in the Victory Book Campaign, sponsored by the American Library Association, the Red Cross, and the USO. Readers were urged to donate books by dropping them off at the nearest public library because “Our Boys Want Books,” as the first page of a 1942 Pocket Book proclaims. American publishers also gave away books, shipping an estimated 122 million books of all types to the troops around the world.

Pocket Books was quickly followed by Avon, Dell, and Pyramid, among others. Many of these copied Pocket’s small size, 6 ½ inches tall by 4 ¼ inches wide. Unlike Penguin, the American rivals took full advantage of the newest color printing and lamination techniques to produce the full-color illustrated covers desired by sellers. Particularly striking were the Dell Mapbacks, which provided a stylish illustration on the front and a map of where the story took place on the back. 

Eventually, the American mass market paperback size grew to 7 inches tall and 4 ¼ inches wide, designed to fit on standardized racks or spinners in retail spaces.

The Canadian Harlequin Books began as a paperback reprinter of various genres in 1949, including “science-fiction thrillers.” The company switched to focusing exclusively on romance in the 1960s. Harlequin also parlayed a specific brand cover style and distribution through non-bookstore outlets into financial success.

From left to right: The Golden Amazon’s Triumph by John Russell Fearn, 1958, Harlequin Books, cover art uncredited; Pilgrimage: The Book of the People by Zenna Henderson, 1961, Avon reprint of Doubleday hardcover, cover art uncredited; and Sunburst by Phyllis Gotlieb, 1964, Fawcett Gold Medal original (developed from shorter version published in Amazing Magazine), cover art uncredited. Photo by Rosemary Jones, from the author’s collection. Paperback Originals and Ace Doubles

Nearly all paperback houses published some science fiction or fantasy, but mostly editions of classic authors like H.G. Wells or reprints of hardcover bestsellers. In 1949, Fawcett launched Gold Medal paperbacks, which published “originals” written for the line, including science fiction. 

Another source of new science fiction was the Ace Double, started in 1952 by Ace Books. Early copies sold for 35 cents. Each double contained a reprinted novel and an original novel arranged in an innovative flip format with two front covers. Ace also reprinted pulp favorites with fantastical covers and frontispiece illustrations. By the end of the 1950s, fantasy and science fiction accounted for the bulk of Ace paperbacks. 

From left to right: Dell Mapback mystery with map of Australia on back, Great Black Kanaba by Constance and Gwenyth Little, 1944, cover art uncredited; and Ace Double, Secret of the Lost Race by Andre Norton (first book publication) and One Against Herculum by Jerry Sohl, 1959, cover artists uncredited. Photo by Rosemary Jones, from the author’s collection. Tolkien Says Buy Authorized Editions

Also in 1952, Ian and Betty Ballantine created Ballantine Books and quickly acquired a fantasy and science fiction catalog. Ballantine and Ace competed for the genre’s authors and readers, including a Lord of the Rings clash in 1965. Ace reprinted the trilogy without the permission of the still-living author due to a loophole in copyright law. Ballantine published an “authorized” edition with a famous back cover note from J.R.R. Tolkien: 

“This paperback edition, and no other, has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it, and no other.”

From left to right: Bantam editions of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien with “only authorized edition” on back cover, 1968 (seventeenth reprinting), cover art uncredited; and Dune by Frank Herbert, Ace, copyright 1965 but published by Ace starting in 1967 (later printing circa 1970), cover art by John Schoenherr. Photo by Rosemary Jones, from the author’s collection.

Ace dropped their Tolkien books after only one printing, copyright law was amended, and Ballantine triumphed with a massive fantasy bestseller. However, Ace scored an equal mega-hit in 1967 when they picked up the paperback rights for Dune by Frank Herbert from Chilton, a publisher of car repair manuals.

From left to right: Ace early 1960s reprints of 1920s pulp fiction. The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs, cover art by Frank Frazetta; Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlin, cover art by Ed Emsh; and Planet of Peril by Otis Adelbert Kline, cover art by Roy Krenkel Jr. Photo by Rosemary Jones, from the author’s collection. The 1970s Bring More SFF Imprints

Paperback imprints specializing in science fiction and fantasy continued to expand. DAW (1971), started by Donald A. Wollheim and Elsie B. Wollheim, was the first US paperback line to begin as exclusively a fantasy and science fiction house. 

Harlequin returned to science fiction with Laser Books in 1975. They published 58 paperbacks, including early works of Tim Powers, before shutting down the imprint in 1977. 

From left to right: Hans Solo at Stars’ End by Brian Daley, 1979, Del Rey, cover art uncredited; Day by Night by Tanith Lee, 1980, DAW, cover art by Don Maitz; Forerunner by Andre Norton, 1981, “Jim Baen Presents” Tor, cover art and interior illustrations by Barbi Johnson; The Goldcamp Vampire by Elizabeth Scarborough, 1987, Bantam Spectra, cover art by E.T. Steadman; and The Coachman Rat by David Henry Wilson, 1990, Baen, cover art uncredited. Photo by Rosemary Jones, from the author’s collection.

Del Rey (1977) was more successfully spun off Ballantine as a science fiction and fantasy imprint under the editorial direction of Judy-Lynn del Rey and Lester del Rey, publishing the original Star Wars novels and more. Tor (1980) and Baen Books, started in 1983 by one of the Tor founders, Jim Baen, featured both established and new authors in the genre. Bantam Spectra (1985) emphasized original fantasy and science fiction.

Ebook Competition and the Future of Paperbacks

Harlequin eventually returned to the fantasy market in the early 2000s with imprints such as Luna and Nocturne Bites. These included trade paperbacks and ebooks, marking a shift away from the mass market paperback format by the world’s largest paperback publisher.

Still, at the start of this century, paperbacks were available for purchase everywhere. While prices rose, the books remained affordable and easily portable reading material, perfect for a commute or enjoyment at home, just as Lane envisioned in 1935.

However, as we celebrate nine decades of mass market paperback, publishers are beginning to abandon the format.

A new cheap way to consume popular fiction, the ebook, cut into mass market paperback sales. By the 2010s, the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo devices dropped in price. Reading a book on a mobile phone or tablet became popular. All of these inventions made it possible for readers to carry literally hundreds of ebooks on a trip in the same space as a single paperback.

Trade paperbacks, 8 ½ inches tall and 5 ½ inches wide, became an economical and good-looking print alternative to hardcovers for producers and consumers. With the availability of quality print-on-demand machines set up for this format, the attractiveness of mass market paperbacks diminished for the industry.

Recently, the news has been full of articles about retailers, distributors, and publishers forsaking the mass market paperback format. While it may never disappear totally, it might enter the category of “cool old stuff” like vinyl records, reproduced largely as a nostalgia buy for those of us who grew up wanting to be paperback writers.

Explore more articles from THE HISTORY FILES

Rosemary Jones had her first two fantasy novels issued as mass market paperbacks by Wizards of the Coast. The print editions of her four novels for the Arkham Horror line were all formatted as trade paperbacks by Aconyte. She also wrote several guides on collecting books published in softcover, hardcover, and ebook over the years. Always fascinated by changing fashions in how books look, Rosemary lives with more than 2,000 books bought for reading and research. More information about her writing and collecting adventures can be found at rosemaryjones.com. You can see books from her collection on Instagram at lost_loves_books.

The post Happy 90-Something, Dear Paperback. Here’s Hoping You Survive to 100 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Save the Date! Check Out Our SFWA Roster for Baltimore Book Festival!

This notice was first sent to all active SFWA members on August 19, 2025.

Our conference summer isn’t over yet!

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is staging events at the Baltimore Book Festival this September. We’ll be there (with bells on?!) in collaboration with Neon Hemlock Press, and in panel partnership with the good folks at the Horror Writers Association.

Partnerships and community-building are what it’s all about in SFF, and we can’t wait to share with you in that dynamic process.

Join us at the SFWA stage on Saturday, September 13 for a full day of events featuring many SFWA members in conversation with a rich world of other storytellers in genre.

Highlights include…

Twisting History: How Speculative Fiction Reimagines History

A lively conversation between active SFWA members Tom Doyle and Alan Smale, with Chidumebi Njoku-Browne and Nicole Glover, led by Mir Seidel.

Speculative Stories of Becoming and Breaking Free

A radiant chat between our own Charlie Jane Anders and Xan Kaur!

How Horror Healed Me

Active SFWA Member Darius Jones, sharing a table and great narratives with Nicole Wolverton, Douglas Gwilym, and Red Lagoe.

Magical Realism and The History of the Charmed and Capitol Cities

Our very own Christiane Knight, guiding a rich historical romp for Leslye Penelope, Be Steadwell, Justina Ireland (C), and Morowa Yejidé.

Salvation: Life After Sinners

In collaboration with the HWA, it’s SFWA Executive Director Isis Asare! You’ll find her crafting conversation with Justina Ireland and active SFWA members Somto Ihezue and Stacy Nathaniel Jackson.

We’re going to cover a wealth of intersectional SFF stories on September 13 in Baltimore, and we so hope you can add your presence to the mix.

Save the date, and let us know if you can make it out!

RSVP Today for SFWA Meetup Planning!

The post Press Release – August 21, 2025 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Holly Lyn Walrath

1. Any creative endeavor that springs out of grief is worthwhile.

You had expected your father to die eventually. Ever since the quad bypass of the early 2000s. Your father certainly expected it, given how many times he said he hoped he’d make it to the next big thing—your graduation, your wedding, your first book publication.

What you didn’t expect was the Parkinson’s. How it riddled his brain and took away his words. How, by the time your first poetry book was published, it was already too late for him to read it. All those lost words needed a place to exist; as if by publishing books, you could draw them back from the void.

Poetry is perhaps the most rational vessel for grief. But it’s also a vessel for community. In starting a small press, particularly with a focus on poetry, you will find yourself holding the vessel, and your job is to fill it with works that matter. And when those works start to fill up the hole the grief caused, you will realize you are the vessel too.

2. The financial stuff only compounds year by year.

Yes, you should pay the taxes (although if you make a mistake, the tax guys are pretty kind to small businesses) and set up the business licenses per your country and state. Yes, you should file copyrights for your books. You’re a steward of the authors you work with, so it’s your responsibility to do this correctly.

But no one tells you that when you publish several books a year, every year the financial stuff gets harder. My advice: Fight tooth and nail to keep things small for as long as possible. There is simplicity in small. It’s like a poetry chapbook—beautiful in its shortness, holdable. The bigger your community gets, the more time and energy it will take to pay the bills.

3. No writer ever negotiates the money in a contract—and they should. 

There will be far too many contract negotiations. There will be plenty of questions from authors—and those are just fine—but also, there will be too many impatient agents used to dealing with big publishers and not humans. For the love of your own peace of mind, hire a contract lawyer to consult on your contract, build it from a contract that came from a reputable, larger press, refer often to the SFWA sample contract and Author’s Guild sample contract, and relax knowing that it’s solid.

Be as transparent as possible. List your rights in any submission calls and offer sample contracts to those who ask, so writers can learn what a good small press contract looks like. Authors will hardly ever ask for more pay, even when they should. Bemoan the authors you couldn’t publish because they wanted to wait for more money, but be proud of them when they succeed. 

4. Amazon is a necessary evil, but that doesn’t make it a god. 

Yes, you should probably list your books on Amazon. Yes, it’s where books live or die on the internet. Yes, you’ll need to learn about the algorithm and keywords. But also: Yes, Amazon is currently being pumped full of AI works. Yes, Amazon raises its rates on small press publishing each year. Yes, Amazon is probably shadow-banning marginalized writers. And also: No, Amazon is not the only option. There’s Ingram, Draft2Digital, and even more low-key options like Lulu. No, you don’t have to use Amazon if you don’t want to. But also: Yes, you should learn to be flexible if you want this thing to be sustainable. 

5. Formatting will take up far less time than you think, unless it’s poetry. 

You’ll probably learn more than you ever wanted to learn about printing. It’s useful if you have a print background, but not entirely necessary. The formatting won’t take as much time as you expect, with the caveat that poetry is the exception. Poetry formatting is like a living thing. You’ll find yourself constantly making concessions for the goal of accessibility. This is worthwhile because the goal is getting the books into the hands of readers, and ebooks allow readers with accessibility needs to read your books. 

6. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always apply to small presses. It’s more like “If you build it, they’ll complain it isn’t getting built fast enough.” 

There will be days when you’ve received 10 emails from authors wanting to know when their book will be published, and you will send the same, rote response that essentially boils down to “not yet,” but inside, you will want to scream: “If you stopped emailing me, I could actually sit down and finish the work!” You will not be perfect. You will answer 30 or more emails a day. Some days, you will want to yeet your computer into the void and hope the emails destroy themselves in the process. You will contemplate whether there is a virus you could engineer that would make emails eat themselves alive. You’ll never really learn sustainability; you’ll just learn how not to drown while treading water. 

Publishing, especially small press publishing, especially poetry, is slow. Speed does not make it better; it makes it worse. All that formatting? It takes a careful, hyper-focused eye to ensure the reader gets the best possible experience. 

But along the way, there will be volunteers. Volunteers who slush read. Volunteers who beta read. Volunteers who proofread. Volunteers who run newsletters and write social media posts. Volunteers who give advice and feedback. Volunteers who make you feel less alone. 

7. A community is like an amoeba that you can hug. 

You will eventually learn that no small press operates with just one person. The community will eventually grow beyond you, which is the biggest lesson. They become the audience and the sounding board. They become the people you thank on panels; they soften the blow of all the hard truths for those in the back who ask, “So how do you do it all?” 

One day, you’ll wake up and realize: I built it, and now there are a hundred volunteers or more. You’ll realize that what you really built was a community.

Explore more articles from SPECULATIVE POETICS

Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer, editor, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Glimmerglass Girl (2018), Numinose Lapidi (2020), and The Smallest of Bones (2021). She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. In 2019, she launched Interstellar Flight Press, an indie SFF publisher dedicated to publishing underrepresented genres and voices.

The post Seven Lessons for My Past Self on Running a Small Press appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

SFWA Members: Watch Your Inboxes for Invitation to a Class-Action Lawsuit

This notice was first sent to all active SFWA members on August 12, 2025.

This summer, SFWA and other members of the Authors Coalition of America (ACA) have been involved in legal proceedings against Anthropic AI, which was trained on books downloaded from pirate websites.

The good news for authors is that Anthropic is now going to trial so the court can determine the amount of damages they will be liable for because of their use of our pirated books.

The court has decided this is not fair use, and a class-action lawsuit is now underway.

SFWA is now being subpoenaed for contact information from past and present members. This data will be used by lawyers to contact potential participants who fit the definition for this class-action lawsuit, so they can receive monetary damages.

You can find a partial list of pirated books used for Anthropic AI here.

Please note that not every book is eligible for this class-action lawsuit through the Authors Coalition. Per the court ruling on a definition for this case, an eligible text will have been registered with the United States Copyright Office within five years of publication and before being downloaded by Anthropic from LibGen or PiLiMi, or within three months of publication.

As this unprecedented case develops, SFWA will share more resources with members to support authors in decision-making around the defense of their work.

We strongly encourage all writers to share word of this lawsuit with writers outside of SFWA and other writers’ advocacy groups. You do not need to be an active member of any writing organization to participate in this legal action. If an author’s work falls under the aforementioned definition, they may be eligible to join this class-action lawsuit.

Thank you for your attention to this matter—and SFWA members: Watch your inboxes for more.

Sincerely,

SFWA’s ACA Commission & Board of Directors

The post Press Release – August 15, 2025 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by the SFWA Publications Crew and Victoria Strauss

Editor’s note: This article is part of the SFWA Presents: Get to Know… series, which includes informational pieces about SFWA programs, committees, and initiatives, and also interviews with the SFWA volunteers who work to support their fellow writers in the industry.

Don’t miss Part 1 of our interview with Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, where we traced the origins of this vital voice in author advocacy, explored the most common scams targeting writers today, and learned how the Writer Beware team investigates and exposes bad actors in the publishing world.

Victoria Strauss received the 2009 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award for her work with Writer Beware and was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award in 2012. The Writer Beware team also includes Michael Capobianco and Richard White.

Are there any systemic vulnerabilities within the publishing industry that make it prone to scams? If so, what can be done to address these?

I think the absence of regulation and licensing in publishing creates some vulnerability. There are no licensing or training requirements for literary agents, for example; anyone who feels like it can call themselves an agent, whether or not they have relevant skills or training. That’s what made it possible for so many scammers to purport to be agents in the pre-digital era. And there are still many inexperienced or marginal agents who probably wouldn’t be in business if they’d had to qualify for a license. I’m not advocating for a licensing scheme for agents, necessarily. But the lack of any enforceable outside standards does enable abuse.

More broadly…publishing is no different from any other creative industry. The central problem in relation to fraud is that where desire is high and access is limited and success is difficult to achieve, scammers cluster at the gates.

There do seem to be more scams targeted at writers than at other creatives, but I think that’s largely a function of the fact that there are so many writers. The rise of self-publishing has played a large role in that—not just because it has ushered in huge numbers of books, but because self-publishers need a wide variety of services, and as noted above, that has proved to be a very lucrative area for dishonest and predatory actors.

Have you faced any backlash from exposing scams in the literary world? If so, how did you handle it?

Writer Beware has been sued three times for defamation by scammers we exposed. They were frivolous suits intended to intimidate, with the scammers probably assuming we wouldn’t be able to fight back—but we did and prevailed in each case (including one where we won our court costs). The truth is a defense against allegations of libel or slander—but the real burden of a lawsuit is that you have to respond, no matter how malicious or stupid it is, and that can be both frightening and emotionally exhausting. SFWA, thankfully, has always had our back, something we’re very grateful for.

There was also once an entire website devoted to discrediting Writer Beware and other anti-scam activists, created (we believe) by one of the scammers who sued us. 

I’ve been targeted personally, as the person most publicly associated with WB. I’ve been doxxed, trolled, harassed on social media, gotten nasty emails, had my books vandalized with one-star reviews and ratings and my blog posts with insulting comments, gotten a couple of (non-credible) death threats. Scammers lie about me to writers who mention WB: I’m a disgruntled ex-employee; I have my own publishing company and am trying to discredit competitors; I’m in the pay of this or that company to say mean things about this or that other company. I’ve been impersonated—in one case to troll me, in another to actually try to defraud a writer in my name.

I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the years. I won’t say it doesn’t bother me to be targeted, depending on what’s being aimed at me, but in most cases it’s stupid rather than credible, and experience has given me a pretty good sense of the difference. 

I probably am jinxing myself by saying this, but honestly I’m surprised there hasn’t been more—I’ve never been subjected to the Gamergate treatment, for example. I think partly that’s because I am very, very guarded online and share very little personal information about my life and the people in it. I also avoid political discourse (especially these days) and don’t argue on social media. I also tend to stay away from writing highly opinionated pieces in order to stir up controversy; that’s really not what Writer Beware is for. 

I think all of this makes me at least somewhat less tempting to troll. But what I do at Writer Beware certainly pisses some people off, and knowing how hideously so many women are treated online, I can’t help wondering sometimes why it hasn’t been worse.

How do you manage the emotional aspect of assisting writers who have already fallen victim to predatory practices? Is there a personal toll on you as author and creator, especially long-term?

I’ve learned to compartmentalize. You do have to armor yourself to some degree against the sad and terrible stories. Not just the facts of the scams themselves, but the fallout: the life impact of losing large amounts of money, the disillusionment when what seemed to be a caring and competent publisher turns out to be nothing of the sort, the writers who give up writing or abandon the quest for publication because of the trauma of being scammed. 

One of the hardest things for me is accepting that sometimes I simply can’t help. I’m not just talking about situations where the money is lost and the scammer has vanished and there’s effectively nothing to be done, but about the times when I can tell that my advice isn’t getting through and the writer will probably forge ahead with a bad or fraudulent deal, in spite of the gut feelings that led them to contact me. In those cases, I’ve learned that there’s not much point in arguing (and in fact it’s often really not welcome), and it’s better just to stand down. People will do what they want. But it can be hard to step back and let them.

On the brighter side, very often there is something I can do to help, whether that’s offering advice, referring to resources, even just providing a sympathetic ear or letting writers know they’re not alone in whatever it is they’ve experienced. I focus on that. I often hear from writers who were able to say “no” to a questionable publisher or a scam service provider or dodgy agent thanks to a WB blog post or one of my social media posts. Those are the best emails! And why I keep doing what I do. Not to make it about me, but it’s important to me to put some good out into the world, and I really do feel that I accomplish that with Writer Beware.

Are there any obstacles to getting your message out to people? Are the scams always evolving or just preying on different people as time goes by? 

Scams prey on the people who have the most need—but who those people are changes over time (trad-pub aspirants in WB’s early days, self-publishers now). The nature of scams changes with time and technology, but the throughline is the same.

Social media is the source of many ills (not least in being heavily populated by scammers), but it has benefited WB by greatly increasing our reach, not just through our own online presence but also through word of mouth. Still, those who don’t know about us don’t know about us, and that’s always the challenge. It’s a balance between trying as hard as possible to reach as many people as possible and accepting that there will always be more people to reach.

Has your advocacy work with Writer Beware ever led to policy or regulatory changes within the publishing industry?

Not that I know of. We do feel that we’ve helped raise awareness within the industry. But publishing and agenting don’t really have a regulatory framework in that sense.

Scams are a shadow industry that mimics the real publishing industry but has no true point of contact other than the writers. Though there’s always been some level of scam awareness among publishing people (the late Janet Reid, for instance, was very active in discussing scams), for most of WB’s existence, the legit pub industry didn’t take much notice of scams because scams only peripherally affected them.

That’s changed with the increase in impersonation scams over the past few years. Publishing people have been forced to pay attention, thanks to reputational issues and a deluge of questions from authors who’ve been approached by impersonation scammers. This is reflected in the warnings you see now on so many agencies’ and all Big Five publishers’ websites, and also in the Authors Guild’s focus on scam warnings.

What common questions and concerns are people writing to you about? How do you balance raising awareness about scams while ensuring writers remain optimistic about the publishing industry?

As many complaints as WB receives, we get far more questions. 

The most frequent are from writers who’ve encountered something they think might be a scam but aren’t completely sure and want to check. This could be an email or phone solicitation for an overpriced re-publishing offer, or a deceptive pitch for expensive junk marketing (marketing that’s cheap to provide, sold at a big markup, and of little value for book promotion), or someone impersonating a real literary agent or publisher or production company promising to transition the writer to the big time. Or it could be a flashy ad for a publishing service provider on Facebook or Instagram, where a large number of scammers advertise. 

I also get questions about contract clauses, publishers’ and agents’ reputations, contest guidelines, and what is and isn’t standard business practice. I also hear about just plain odd things—like the bookstore that was deluged with inquiries after a bizarre AI-created Stephen King tribute website purported to sell tickets to a completely fictional King appearance there. 

Writers often ask me to recommend a reputable publisher or agent. That’s not something I do; agents and publishers specialize, and the best agent or publisher for one writer might be the worst agent or publisher for another. It’s really best for writers themselves to make the choice. Instead, WB tries to provide knowledge and tools so writers can do that safely.

On optimism…I often hear from writers who’ve been so badly ripped off by fraudsters, or abused by a problem publisher or unskilled agent, that they feel like they can’t trust anyone. Of course this isn’t true. Yes, there’s a lot of fraud and incompetence out there—but there are also many, many good and reputable people and companies, and it is entirely possible to connect with them. The purpose of scam awareness isn’t to freak writers out about how many dangers there are but to empower them to know the dangers so they can recognize and avoid them. 

This is something I always try to remember to point out when I’m doing interviews and have been talking scams for an hour. Scams aren’t all there are! There are good people out there, and you can find them.

Considering the evolving landscape of publishing, do you foresee any new challenges or opportunities for Writer Beware in the next few years?

Probably not a very original answer, but I think generative AI will increasingly be a challenge. There are the copyright battles, of course, and the often troubling adoption of gen AI by publishers and publishing ventures, and the questions about how best to integrate AI clauses into publishing contracts.

But where I’m mostly encountering gen AI right now is in its backroom use by fraudsters to improve their presentation and workflow—for example, in the use of chatbots to create perfectly formal and grammatical emails and websites (poorly written English used to be a major marker for these scams, which are staffed by people who are fluent English speakers but not English writers…but no more), or in the use of gen AI to make it cheaper and quicker to create book covers, format text, generate marketing materials, and so on (not that the scammers charge any less). 

I’m also pretty certain it’s being used by fraudsters and opportunists who contact writers with offers of some sort of service (fake literary agents, shady marketers, pay-to-play reviewers). Increasingly, these solicitations include accurate details or summaries of the writers’ books (along with suspiciously fulsome praise) that have the definite whiff of prompts fed into a chatbot.

Other than that, I really just see Writer Beware keeping on keeping on. I’m not good at prognostication; if you’d asked me this question in 2014, I’d never have predicted the tsunami of publishing and marketing scams from overseas that are now the biggest class of scams and the most dangerous for writers who self-publish. I’m sure there will be surprises in store!

Could you share a memorable story—either of successfully helping a writer or of encountering an especially audacious scam—that stands out from your work?

I have lots of weird scam tales (I keep promising myself I’ll write a blog post with a list of them), but in terms of audacious, there are few to beat PageTurner Press and Media.

PageTurner was (note the past tense here) one of the biggest and most brazen of the Philippine publishing scams. WB received hundreds of reports and complaints: super-aggressive phone and email solicitation, poor quality services and failure to deliver, constant upselling pressure, prolific impersonation of literary agents, publishers, and production companies with bogus offers requiring large payments, forged documents including acceptance letters and contracts with the names and logos of well-known publishers and movie studios. PageTurner also ran at least two fake film companies charging enormous fees for fictional film deals. We heard from writers who lost huge amounts of money to these frauds, including one who lost more than $600,000.

Publishing scams tend to fly under the radar of law enforcement. They’re a niche white-collar crime that doesn’t threaten the general public, and the average financial loss tends to be small by law-enforcement standards. Also, overseas scams that operate in the US and UK do business under different names in their home countries, making them hard to trace (PageTurner’s Philippine parent was called Innocentrix), and rely on their foreign location to shield them from consequences.

But PageTurner was so greedy that it broke through all those barriers. Writers reported it to the FBI, and the FBI took notice. In December 2024, PageTurner’s CEO and VP—both residents of the Philippines who were visiting family in the US—were arrested, along with a US-based accomplice. They’re currently in custody awaiting trial (in 2025). All told, the FBI estimates that the scam took in at least $44 million and defrauded more than 800 writers, many of them elderly.

For a fuller account, see my blog post, which provides lots more details.

Thank you, Victoria Strauss and the Writer Beware team, for being a trusted ally and protector of writers. You make the industry safer and stronger for all of us, and we’re grateful for your invaluable work.

For more information, please visit Writer Beware. For questions, comments, and concerns, please contact Writer Beware at beware@sfwa.org. Especially if you have documentation that can help with an investigation. Thank you!

Explore more articles from SFWA Presents: Get to Know…

Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults, including the Way of Arata epic fantasy duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City), and a pair of historical novels for teens, Passion Blue and Color Song. She has written hundreds of book reviews for publications such as SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. 

She received the 2009 SFWA® Service Award for her work with Writer Beware, and in 2012 was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award for the Writer Beware blog. She’s webmistress of the Writer Beware website, which she also created, and maintains the Writer Beware database, blog, and Facebook page.

The post SFWA Presents: Get to Know…Writer Beware® (Part 2: Challenges and Advocacy) appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Welcome to the August edition of the SFWA Market Report.

Please note: Inclusion of any venue in this report does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA. Those markets included on this list pay at least $0.08/word USD in at least one category of fiction. This compilation is not exhaustive of all publication opportunities that pay our recommended minimum professional rate. Additionally, SFWA adheres to our DEI Policy when making selections for this report. We strongly encourage writers to closely review all contracts and consult our resources on best contract practices.

New Markets

Africanfuturism Anthology (Flame Tree Publishing)
Dreams Divine
Of Swords and Roses
These Dreaming Hills

Markets Currently Open for Submissions

Asimov Press
Augur (Recently Opened)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Cast of Wonders (Recently Opened)
Clarkesworld Magazine
Common Bonds Anthology Series
Crepuscular Magazine
Factor Four Magazine
Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter
Haven Spec Magazine (Recently Opened)
Infinite Worlds
Mmeory (Recently Opened)
Nature: Futures
Odysseus
Old Moon (Recently Opened)
Orion’s Belt
Protocolized
PseudoPod (Recently Opened)
Reckoning
Samovar
Small Wonders
Tales & Feathers (Recently Opened)
The Cosmic Background
The Daily Tomorrow
The Valkyries (Flame Tree Publishing)
Torch Literary Arts
Tractor Beam (Recently Opened)
Uncharted Magazine
Utopia Science Fiction

Markets Recently Closed for Submissions

A Breath of Time (Permanent)
Abyss & Apex
Anomaly
Cloud Lake Literary (Permanent)
Diabolical Plots
FIYAH
Flash Fiction Online (FFO) (Originals)
If There’s Anyone Left
Inclusive Future Magazine (Permanent)
khoréo magazine (khoreo)
Mysterion
Night Shades
Of Love and Dragons (Permanent)
PodCastle
Solarpunk Magazine
Taco Bell Quarterly
The Deadlands
The Fabulist
The Orange & Bee

Other Opportunities

Apex Monthly Flash Fiction Contest
The Tomorrow Prize
Apex Drabble Contest
Cosmic Chronicles Literary Prize

Upcoming Market Changes

Anomaly‘s Submission Window begins and ends soon.
Apex Monthly Flash Fiction Contest‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Apex Monthly Flash Fiction Contest‘s Submission Window begins soon.
Augur‘s Submission window ends soon.
Augur‘s Limited demographic submission window: trans, disabled, and/or BIPOC creators and creators residing in Canada/Turtle Island begins soon.
Cast of Wonders‘s Limited demographic submission window: authors less than the age of 20 ends soon.
Cast of Wonders‘s Submission window begins soon.
Common Bonds Anthology Series permanently closes soon.
Cosmic Chronicles Literary Prize temporarily closes soon.
Dreams Divine permanently closes soon.
Escape Pod‘s Submission Window begins soon.
Haven Spec Magazine‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Mmeory‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Odysseus permanently closes soon.
Of Swords and Roses permanently closes soon.
Orion’s Belt temporarily closes soon.
Planet Scumm opens soon.
Plott Hound Magazine‘s Submission Window begins soon.
PseudoPod‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Tales & Feathers‘s Submission window ends soon.
Tales & Feathers‘s Limited demographic submission window: trans, disabled, and/or BIPOC creators begins soon.
The Valkyries (Flame Tree Publishing) permanently closes soon.
These Dreaming Hills‘s Submission Window begins soon.
Three-Lobed Burning Eye‘s Submission Window begins soon.
Uncanny‘s Submission window begins and ends soon.

The SFWA Market Report is compiled by David Steffen, editor of Diabolical Plots and The Long List Anthology series, and administrator and co-founder of the Submission Grinder.  You can support Diabolical Plots and the Submission Grinder on PayPal or Patreon or by buying books or merch.

Wondering about some missing publications? Check out our July 23 update over Must Read, publisher of Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF.

The post SFWA Market Report For August appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by the SFWA Publications Crew and Victoria Strauss

Editor’s note: This article is part of the SFWA Presents: Get to Know… series, which includes informational pieces about SFWA programs, committees, and initiatives, and also interviews with the SFWA volunteers who work to support their fellow writers in the industry. Part 2, on challenges and advocacy, is available here.

Sponsored by SFWA, Writer Beware® investigates and exposes fraud and bad practices in the publishing industry. Its continuing mission is to educate writers and authors at all stages of their careers about hidden dangers in the industry and ways to protect themselves. To learn more about this important service, we talked to Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware. She received the 2009 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award for her work with Writer Beware and was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award in 2012. The Writer Beware team also includes Michael Capobianco and Richard White.

Writer Beware has been essential in protecting authors from fraud. What inspired you to start Writer Beware, and how has its mission evolved since its founding in 1998?

I’m often asked if Writer Beware reflects my own experience of being scammed, but the answer is no: I was never cheated or ripped off (though I easily could have been, given how little I knew about publishing when I first started querying). 

I began joining online writers’ groups in the late 1990s (yikes, hard to believe it was so far back). I was struck by the number of stories about crooked literary agents, predatory vanity publishers, and dishonest editing services—and by the fact that the same publisher or agent or editor names appeared over and over, and that there seemed to be so many connections between the different scams (for example, crooked editing service Edit Ink not only paid kickbacks to agents who referred writers for services, but ran its own fake agencies as referral mills). 

Here was a whole ugly underbelly to the publishing industry that I’d had no idea existed. Like so many writers, I’m intrigued by new or strange things. I became fascinated by the scam stories and began to follow them and search them out. 

I joined SFWA in (I think) 1998. SFWA has always been concerned with advocacy and education; just by coincidence, the then-webmistress of the SFWA website was looking for someone to create a page of writing scam warnings. It seemed a perfect match for my own interests and my desire to get more involved as a new member, so I volunteered. (Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, you can see how the Writer Beware webpage looked in August 2000, the year after it was launched.)

Around the same time, unbeknownst to me, the late Ann Crispin, who was then SFWA’s Vice President, was seeking to set up a writing scams committee. A kind soul introduced us, and we hit it off and decided to join forces. Ann was the public face of WB, for which she was a fierce and tireless advocate, and I, being more of an introvert, worked behind the scenes, maintaining the website and building what was to become Writer Beware’s database.

Ann and I became fast friends, and her death in 2013 was a huge blow, both personally and professionally. Her energy and drive are really, really missed.

Today, WB consists of me, Michael Capobianco (who fills many other important roles in SFWA!), Richard White, and another member who prefers not to be publicly named. Though the range and prevalence of writing scams has expanded since we started (has it ever), WB’s mission remains the same: to track and expose schemes, scams, pitfalls, and other bad practice in and around the publishing industry, with the aim of giving writers the tools and knowledge they need to avoid being exploited or ripped off.

What are some of the most common scams targeting writers today, and how do they differ from those in the past? How has technology impacted the prevalence and sophistication of literary scams?

Writer Beware was founded in the pre-digital era, when really the only viable path to a writing career was the agent-to-commercial-publisher route. Accordingly, most scams purported to facilitate that, from fee-charging agents, to vanity publishers, to outside editors who falsely claimed that “professional editing” was necessary to get past agencies’ and publishers’ gatekeepers.

However, the digital revolution has opened additional career paths for authors, primarily self-publishing, but also an enormous expansion of the small-press sector. An agent is no longer the be-all and end-all of a writing career, which has made it much less lucrative to be a scam agent. They’re still around but relatively scarce these days. 

Vanity publishers, by contrast, are more numerous than ever (often attempting to disguise their true nature by claiming to be “hybrid”). Profiteering contests and awards (which exist to enrich their owners, rather than to honor writers) are also more common than in the past. But the most common fraud right now is a whole new scam sector focusing almost exclusively on authors who self-publish or publish with small presses. Both of these are extremely crowded and competitive markets where it’s increasingly hard to stand out. So marketing is a big opportunity for scammers. Self-publishers also need services—cover design, formatting, etc., either à la carte or as soup-to-nuts publishing packages—and that’s another big open door for fraudsters.

More recently, the scam industry has shifted heavily overseas. Is there a reason why international scams are booming now?

These days, most self-publishing and marketing scams operate from the Philippines, Pakistan, and India. In part, this is due to outsourcing. Sometime in the mid-2000s, big publishing service providers like Author Solutions and vanity publishers like Tate Publishing began trying to cut their costs by transferring much of their marketing and production work overseas. 

In the Philippines, for example, there’s a large, educated, English-speaking workforce that’s also less costly than equivalent workers in the US. Inevitably, some of the more entrepreneurial-minded of these workers, seeing how lucrative it was to convince writers to spend large amounts of money to publish and market their books, decided to set up their own copycat enterprises to compete with Author Solutions and other American companies.

But where the American companies’ business practices were often deceptive, with high-pressure sales tactics and poor customer service (Author Solutions especially has long been the subject of consumer complaints), the overseas operations crossed the line into fraud, taking money for services they didn’t deliver, selling fictional products like “book insurance,” impersonating publishers and film companies with bogus offers requiring huge upfront fees, and more.

Don’t get me wrong: There are still plenty of US-based publishing scams, and many in the UK and Australia as well. But the vast bulk of questions and complaints WB receives are about these unscrupulous foreign operations, which often do business under multiple names and rely on their overseas locations to shield them from consequences.

I maintain a resource on Philippine publishing scams on the WB blog. It includes a (depressingly large) list of scam company names.

How much research and outreach to sources goes into a Writer Beware feature? Can you delve into the specific investigative processes you use to uncover scams and questionable practices?

I mainly find out about scams, problem publishers, bad contest guidelines, and similar, from people who contact me to report them. Mostly, I hear from writers, but there’s also outreach from agents and publishers, especially these days with impersonation scams so common. Occasionally, rarely, I’ll be contacted by law enforcement or private investigators. 

Social media is also a source—often when someone posts about a scam or other publishing-related problem, people who are familiar with WB will ping me so that I see the post. I also follow industry experts and news sources, which helps me keep track of what’s happening in publishing—for example, the UK’s proposed changes to copyright in order to accommodate AI training. But the vast majority of discovery comes from direct contact with the people affected.

Often, those contacts will include a full description of the problem or experience; if not, I ask for more detail. I also request documentation to support whatever is being reported: contracts, emails, marketing materials, other relevant items. If further research is needed (which is always the case for blog posts), I use a variety of mostly online resources: web searches, Whois lookups, Publishers Marketplace, Companies House and other business registries, court dockets, to name a few. Depending on the type of complaint, I may contact the subject of the complaint to ask questions or request comment (when I write about problem publishers, for example).

I am careful to document anything I write about on the blog or warn about on social media, and my posts are based on multiple complaints (not rumor or hearsay or one random writer’s sour grapes, contrary to what some WB haters allege). This is important for accurate reporting, of course, but we also need to protect ourselves against legal liability.

In keeping with that, WB doesn’t accept anonymous complaints. Anything shared with us is confidential—we never publish names or unique identifying details without express permission—but we do need to know that we’re dealing with real people. We also need to hear from the affected person themself—if you contact me because your friend has been scammed, I’ll ask you to ask the friend to get in touch directly. 

How do you approach creating alliances with industry professionals to maintain the credibility and reach of Writer Beware?

We’ve been around long enough that many industry people know about us just from word of mouth. We provide solid research and balanced viewpoints; I think we’re well-known for that. And while we don’t have the huge following that some of the more in-your-face publishing pundits do, I think we have a record of credibility that writers and publishing industry people trust.

WB staff attend conferences and conventions, participate in panel discussions, and give presentations and workshops to writers’ groups. We liaise with professional organizations like the Authors Guild (Michael Capobianco has way more connections in this area than I do). I’m active on Bluesky and on WB’s Facebook page, and I’ve been doing quite a lot of interviews and podcasts lately—just getting the word out about Writer Beware and the need for scam awareness.

In less pleasant outreach, I’m increasingly having to contact agents and publishers to inform them they’re being targeted by impersonation scams. These are everywhere now—again, part of the scam tsunami from the Philippines. I maintain a list of frequently impersonated people and companies on the WB blog. 

Writer Beware maintains an extensive database of bad actors in the industry. Your work includes introducing new authors to these dangers, but it has its challenges. Would you please describe your ongoing mission of warning authors?

We’ve been building our database since the late 1990s, and it is HUGE. In my basement, I have a five-drawer standing file cabinet and a bunch of banker’s boxes from pre-digital days, when I printed everything out and stashed it in manila folders. But since 2005 or so, my data collection has been exclusively digital. I don’t miss the paperwork!

I’m often asked why we don’t make the database public. There are a couple of reasons. For one, WB is a tiny volunteer operation, and we just don’t have the resources for the constant maintenance and updating that would be needed to keep such an enormous public resource current.

For another, it would be a magnet for lawsuit threats and other attempts to intimidate us (as happened with the old Preditors and Editors, which hosted an extensive list of public warnings). Honestly, we’d prefer to spare ourselves and SFWA the aggravation. (Not that we don’t get threatened—see below.)

We do freely share the information in the database, though, via these aspects of our mission:

• The Writer Beware website is a regularly updated, general-purpose resource that identifies where writers might encounter scams and bad business practices, how to recognize these, and suggestions for avoiding them. The website includes sections on literary agents, vanity publishers, small presses, freelance editors, self-publishing, and more. Included are scam warnings, discussions of good and bad business practices (the more you know about how things should work, the easier it is to identify malfeasance when you encounter it), and links to trustworthy resources to learn more and help with research (for example, if a writer is looking for a literary agent).
• The Writer Beware blog hosts my detailed posts about specific schemes and scams, coverage of important publishing-related issues (for example, the controversies over generative AI and copyright), general reporting on what’s happening in and around publishing (such as two recent publisher bankruptcies), and general information helpful to writers (such as discussions of contract clauses). I also love featuring the weird stuff that lurks around the edges of the publishing industry, such as the long, sad history of attempts to create an author reality show, or the romance fraudster who faked a literary competition.
• Writer Beware’s social media includes a Facebook page and my presence on Bluesky (I’m @victoriastrauss.com). I post articles of interest, Writer Beware updates, and alerts and warnings that don’t require a detailed blog post. 
• Writer Beware’s email service (beware@sfwa.org) is where writers can lodge complaints, alert us to bad or strange or confusing things they’ve encountered, and—most of all, because this is the most frequent type of email we get—ask questions about…pretty much anything writing- or publishing-related. If there’s any information in our files, I will pass it on, and if I don’t know anything, I’ll say that too. This is where the WB database really comes into play—both adding to it based on complaints and reports, and digging into it to find information I can share in response to questions.

The above should make it clear that WB is much more than just scam warnings. While scams and bad practice are the core of our mission, we also try to follow and report on a much wider range of issues of concern to writers and people in publishing.

One more thing: Scams and frauds are a danger to writers. But so is incompetence. “Literary agent”, for example, is not an entry-level job; it requires specialized skill and knowledge that are best acquired by working in publishing or for a reputable agency. People who come to agenting without that background may not be able to provide competent representation. They may not drain their clients’ bank accounts the way a scammer would–but otherwise, the end result is little different: wasted time, no publishing deal, and possible career damage.

In Part 2: Writer Beware’s reach and reputation have grown over the years, but the challenges facing writers are evolving just as fast. From the rise of impersonation scams to the emotional demands of advocacy, the second half of our conversation with Victoria Strauss explores deeper vulnerabilities in the publishing industry and the ongoing commitment it takes to support fellow writers.

For more information, please visit Writer Beware. For questions, comments, and concerns, please contact Writer Beware at beware@sfwa.org. Especially if you have documentation that can help with an investigation. Thank you!

Explore more articles from SFWA Presents: Get to Know…

Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults, including the Way of Arata epic fantasy duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City), and a pair of historical novels for teens, Passion Blue and Color Song. She has written hundreds of book reviews for publications such as SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. 

She received the 2009 SFWA® Service Award for her work with Writer Beware, and in 2012 was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award for the Writer Beware blog. She’s webmistress of the Writer Beware website, which she also created, and maintains the Writer Beware database, blog, and Facebook page.

The post SFWA Presents: Get to Know…Writer Beware® (Part 1: History and Mission) appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by the Planetside Crew and Stephen Kotowych

Editor’s note: This article is part of the SFWA Presents: Get to Know… series, which includes informational pieces about SFWA programs, committees, and initiatives, and also interviews with the SFWA volunteers who work to support their fellow writers in the industry.

To the untrained eye, it might seem like SFWA’s annual Nebula Awards Showcase volumes would be fairly simple to produce. What’s the big deal, right? Just reprint shorter prose that originally appeared in other publications and list descriptions of winners and finalists in other categories. All of them are the cream of the crop in any given year, according to SFWA voting members. In reality, the process is complex. A tiny, dedicated team rolls up their sleeves to make each volume a beautiful thing to behold. Leading the charge is Stephen Kotowych, the series editor, and M. L. Clark, SFWA’s communications and marketing coordinator.

In the following interview, Kotowych recounts how he leapt straight into the Showcase “fire” and explains some of the complications involved. He also describes how Showcase has needed to bend-and-flow during the current “golden age” of novellas. And he reveals why he finds the whole experience so rewarding.

Why did you decide to raise your hand when you learned that SFWA was looking for someone to work on the Showcase series?

Largely because I felt I had the skillset necessary…and because I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into!

Late last year (2024), the then-Interim President Anthony W. Eichenlaub sent out an “ask not what SFWA can do for you, ask what you can do for SFWA” email asking people to think about one thing they could contribute to SFWA as the organization underwent some internal turmoil. Someone on the SFWA Discord wondered why we no longer put out the Nebula Awards Showcase volumes, and someone replied that Showcase 56 had essentially been sitting for years on a digital shelf somewhere, in need of a few final tweaks to be ready.

I spent 15 years as an acquiring editor in the Canadian publishing industry, and I’d already edited several indie SFF anthologies, including the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction series, which are published through my Ansible Press. So I was already familiar with the production needs of an anthology and had the skills to finish off Showcase 56 rather quickly. I’m a freelance business writer now and can make my own schedule, so I could also make the time around other projects.

With that background, I felt like the “one thing” I could do was to help get the Showcase series back on its feet, so I raised my hand. It was never pitched as “Here—now lead the Showcase series,” however. That offer came later from SFWA.

How much time was involved in getting the editions ready for publication? And what kind of tasks were involved?

After Showcase 56 was put to bed, I found out SFWA needed help getting Showcase 57, 58, and 59 done before the 60th Nebula Awards. Well, I was glad that I had the flexibility of a freelancer’s schedule because it did take a lot of time on a compressed schedule.

We brought out Showcase 56 through Showcase 59 between October 2024 and March 2025 and then went immediately into work on Showcase 60 to ensure we had physical copies available at the Nebula Award ceremony at the start of June. Having a whole year to plan Showcase 61 is going to feel like total luxury.

While Showcase 56 was basically done when I came on board, we had to put 57, 58, and 59 together from scratch—getting reprint permissions, signing contracts, commissioning a wonderful new interior layout to standardize the typeset and design for the series.

Can you tell us about any challenges you encountered during the process?

I think the biggest challenge was the compressed timeline. We caught up on five years’ worth of anthologies in the space of about five months. It was an exhilarating whirlwind, but it was a lot.

Other challenges included the persnickety-ness of all the individual ebook and print retailers. Each wants files in a slightly different format. No huge differences, but enough that it was time-consuming to get each one just so for each retailer’s in-house needs. So there was a lot of back-and-forth, uploading new files, particularly the covers. Even following their directions to the letter and using the templates they provided got us replies of “Just kidding—do it again this entirely different way.” Tons of fun.

There were also some unique challenges due to the unusual typesetting needs of certain stories in various showcase volumes. We had a wonderful new interior template designed for the series by Laurie McGregor at Page Turn—very clean and modern. That really helped in getting everything laid out the right way for those stories that needed special formatting to correspond with the authors’ vision of the text. 

M. L. Clark really did amazing work wrangling InDesign to get everything laid out in our template for both print and ebook formats for each volume. I am completely indebted to them in that regard, as I am utterly hopeless with anything more than the most basic typesetting of simple paragraphs.

What did you find most rewarding, or meaningful, about the whole experience?

Well, it’s always rewarding to have a finished book in your hands. That never gets old.

It was also wonderful to get more of an insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of SFWA. I’ve never volunteered for the organization before, and I’ve only ever lurked on the chat boards. (I can’t keep up with the Discord, I’m afraid.) So, there were a lot of internal processes and volunteers I was previously unfamiliar with. It was really inspiring to see all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to keep the organization up and running.

It was also great to interact with the authors who are included in the Showcase anthology. Some of them I’d met or interacted with online previously, but it was a real treat to get to know them a little better, even if only via email. Everyone was very encouraging and seemed really excited about the Nebula Showcase anthologies coming back after their unexpected hiatus.

Check out our entire collection at SFWA Nebula Awards Showcase Series!

It goes without saying that the anthologies can’t include entire novels—or all nominated novellas. They would be gargantuan! But it seems like excerpts might solve the problem. What was the reasoning when SFWA decided not to include excerpts in the novel category? And in the novella category, why only include an excerpt of the winner?

Yes, in our new format, we’ve elected to focus on publishing full stories and fewer excerpts or original essays. Reaction to so many excerpts of longer works in previous volumes was mixed. If you don’t believe me, you can go check out some of the reviews online. 

Longer works like novels were meant to be experienced in full and not in part, so I can understand how some readers might feel frustrated to only get a section of a work. So, in the Showcase series going forward, you’ll be able to read the full short story and novelette winners and finalists. There will also be descriptions of winners and finalists in other categories, like the Best Novel, Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and Game Writing. Hopefully, that will intrigue readers enough to seek out those works in full.

One exception to this “no more excerpts” switch is in the Novella category. We’re living in a golden age of science fiction and fantasy novellas. Ironically, however, for the purposes of the Nebula Awards Showcase, this golden age poses certain problems. Unlike in years past, when we could have reprinted full novellas (published as they mostly were in SFF magazines where reprint rights would be available), many of today’s novellas are published as standalone books. As a result, reprint rights to the full work are simply not available.

So, in recognition of the novella’s special place as a mid-point between short fiction and novels, we have elected to offer an excerpt of the winning novella alongside descriptions of the finalists in that category, in hopes that the excerpt and the descriptions will whet readers’ appetites for the complete stories.

As with all things Nebula, this new format is a stage in the ever-evolving presentation of the awards. We may tweak it or adjust it or toss it out in years to come. We’ll have to see how it is received. But for now, we mostly hope people enjoy the books.

Were there particular stories that really stood out for you personally in the issues you worked on?

Haha—yes. But I’ll never tell. As the series editor, I should probably appear as neutral as possible.

Thank you, Stephen, for sharing your perspective and for your work in guiding the Showcase series forward.

Recent Nebula Award Showcase volumes are available on a wide variety of retail sites. Next year’s volume will be available for preorder shortly before the annual Nebula Award ceremony takes place.

Explore more articles from SFWA Presents: Get to Know…

Award-winning author Stephen Kotowych has been hailed as one of speculative fiction’s “talented up-and-comers” by Publishers Weekly, and as the author of “gloriously wild ideas” by Locus. He is a World Fantasy Award finalist and winner of Canada’s Aurora Award, Spain’s Premi Ictineu, and the Writers of the Future Grand Prize.

His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and have been translated into a dozen languages. In addition to serving as the series editor for the Nebula Award Showcase, he is the series editor and publisher of the Aurora Award-winning Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction series.

The post SFWA Presents: Get to Know…Our Showcase Series appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

SFWA’s Role in Resisting Book Bans through Court Challenges

Writer, 

I spent the weekend at the Willamette Writers Conference, where Charlie Jane Anders was our Friday night keynote. She spoke to us about being curious and weird and unpredictable, while another theme was running in the background: we are writing in the middle of impossibly hard times. 

The arts are being defunded. Books are being banned – taken off library shelves. Stories and authors are being silenced. 

We are being told what to read, what to think, and how to live in the world. 

Writers have to refuse that silencing. We have to tell our stories. But how do we do that in the face of challenges to our intellectual and creative freedom?

That’s where we come in.

On July 24, SFWA jointly signed onto an amicus brief with nine other literary organizations. We are challenging a 2023 Iowa state law that would remove hundreds of books from K-12 libraries. Books like A Handmaid’s Tale, Maus, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 

Can you imagine a world without these stories?

I’ve already seen some of my favorite books banned across the United States. In fact, Every Heart a Doorway by Seannan McGuire was banned in a Florida school district. Honestly, that makes me angry. McGuire’s series upended my thinking on worldbuilding and setting and magic and possibility. She made me think about our highly distinct and wildly transformative experiences of childhood. She helped me remember that it’s okay to be different – that how the world defines us is not necessarily who we are. We are more than someone’s story of us. 

We are our own story, and we need to share the world as we see it. 

That’s the core of why we push hard against book bans, but also – this is our industry. This is our livelihood. Laws like SF 496 impact our book sales and distribution. As an organization that supports writers and the work they produce, we won’t stand for unfair and prejudicial practices that limit our sales and also impact future acquisitions and editing. 

We fight against book bans to protect our work and the freedom to read, to think, and to create, unencumbered by the demands and expectations of the political climate. 

We will continue to fight for you and your work, as we focus on empowering an inclusive, resilient, and diverse creative industry where our stories can shine.

Keep creating,

Kate Ristau 

SFWA President 

The post Press Release – August 5, 2025 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Steve Horton

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a series titled Writing by Other Means, where authors share personal experiences and industry intel around different production contexts and writing tools.

If you’re anything like me, the four walls of your home are not the ideal place to write prose. It’s too familiar. There are too many chores to do and too many distractions. A house always has something that needs attention, taking you away from the much more important task of puzzling out a scene in your latest, sure-to-be award-winning short story.

For me, the solution is simple: Find your nearest coffee shop establishment and start writing. For some writers, a library or coworking space may be just right, but for my money, a coffee shop can’t be beat. But wait! There are some all-important tips to keep in mind before setting up shop at just any establishment.

Photos taken by the author while writing in different coffee shops.

1. Local coffee beats Starbucks

Your local mom & pop (or small chain) coffee shop may not beat Starbucks on pricing. However, shopping locally puts the dollars back into your community instead of in the coffers of some faceless corporation, especially one widely known for union busting. Besides, local coffee just tastes better. 

2. Always pay the toll

When you write at your favorite local coffee bean proprietor, be sure to buy something. First thing in the morning, coffee! Caffeine affects everyone differently, but many folks with that creative gene get a burst of focus from it rather than the jitters. If you’re setting up shop later in the day or can’t have caffeine, some decaf or hot tea or hot chocolate fits the bill. Think about getting that Danish. Reward yourself for being creative. Don’t worry about the calories. Calories during writing don’t count.

3. Scope out the best seat in the house

Local coffee shops and national chains have something in common: They’ve only got a few comfortable chairs and couches, and the rest are wooden monstrosities. Don’t get stuck with the wooden chair, as the pain will set in long before you’ve solved the crucial ending to your story. Also, consider sitting far away from the ear-splitting conversationalist.

4. The music might be terrible

Bad music can be incredibly distracting. I hate to keep picking on Starbucks, but this business is infamous for playing awful music that nobody wants to hear. Some places play your average ’90s or ’80s hits, or even more recent music, depending on their clientele. If you don’t like it, consider bringing earbuds to drown out the awfulness.

5. Consider writing by hand

Another recent article here at Planetside extolled the virtues of writing with a pen and a pad of paper. It’s difficult to transport a typewriter into a coffee shop, and the clackety-clack sound will probably distract your coffee mates. They’ve got modern word processor gadgets that make writing easier without distractions. For my money though, nothing beats a good pen and a lined notebook for the direct path from the story to your brain. If you don’t have ink everywhere and a callus on your finger by the end, you’re not writing enough.

If you must write with a laptop, turn off the Wi-Fi and save your work locally, syncing to the cloud when you’re back online. It’s important to remove all distractions, and reloading your email repeatedly counts as a distraction. 

6. For God’s sake, stay off your phone

Yes, I know coffee shops are excellent places to play Pokémon Go or Balatro. You’re waiting on that all-important email from your literary agent or from that publishing venue you’re really hoping says yes this time. It can wait. Leave it in your pocket and put it on silent. Reward yourself when you’ve made significant progress on your story and you’re done writing for the day.

7. Listen and peoplewatch (but don’t stare)

Being in a public place while writing, you can see humanity in its natural element. This is not an effect you can achieve while locked in your office or study. Observe those around you—without staring at them. Listening to that couple on their first date or in the middle of a breakup might help you start a story or crack a problem. Those two best friends laughing with their macchiatos might put you in the right frame of mind to tackle a difficult scene.

8. Stay until you make significant progress

It’s important to park yourself in that coffee shop chair, sip your drink and eat your Danish, and get a significant amount of writing done. You are more than capable of writing the rough draft of an entire short story— beginning to end—or writing an entire chapter or two of your novel. The only reason you should have to get up is to use the restroom or stretch, get another drink, or move your car because you parked in a two-hour parking spot and can’t afford to get a ticket.

9. Repeat your business

If you have a positive coffee shop experience and made great strides in writing, awesome! Return to that place. It is now your Zen garden. Get to know the staff, and they’ll start treating you like a beloved regular. Remember, many world-famous stories were written in the dark corners of coffee shops. 

10. Give that place some free advertising!

Once you’ve won the Hugo or Nebula and are giving that great speech, or you’re writing your acknowledgments, be sure to shout out that coffee shop for all it did for you. Your magnum opus may very well not exist without that delicious coffee and environment that the shop provided. It’s priceless.

Editor’s note: Got your own rituals for writing in coffee shops or public spaces? We’d love to hear them. Pitch us your ideas on writing beyond the desk and join the conversation!

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

Steve Horton is the New York Times bestselling writer of the graphic novel BOWIE: Stardust, Rayguns, & Moonage Daydreams. He lives near Chicago and has a bunch of other cool projects in the works.

The post Ink Stains on Fingers and the Smell of Coffee: A Guide to Writing Elsewhere appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by J. D. Harlock

Editor’s note: This piece is part of the series Perspectives in Translation, where creators discuss the many facets and challenges of translating fiction. The terms “source language” and “target language” will be used throughout this series.

Even though Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is taught in curriculums all over the Arab world, we only use it as a formality. This is why it’s difficult for speakers of particular Arabic dialects to understand others without knowing their distinctive syntax and semantics. Local variations tend to vary based on a combination of historical, socioeconomic, and political factors, with some so far removed from MSA that some experts now categorize them as separate languages. When translating science fiction and fantasy into Arabic, these circumstances pose unique problems.

Recently, I was part of the team that translated Volume One of Crestar and the Knight Stallion. In contrast to the typical assignment I received in Beirut, this superhero graphic novel targeted a diverse readership of Arabs. Readjusting my approach to that audience taught me valuable lessons on translating speculative fiction into languages where dialects should be factored into how certain words, phrases, interactions, and scenes should be communicated.

Lesson #1: Write a Preface for the Translation

A common fixture of academic translations that I think should be used for creative works is the inclusion of a preface written by the translator(s). This preface should delve into your approach to the material (i.e., it should elaborate on the purpose behind the endeavor and its target audience, challenges during the process and their solutions, and relevant background information). Not only will a preface clarify the intentions behind any significant liberties taken, but it will also provide the historical background necessary for readers to understand the socio-cultural nuances that were navigated. It’s especially useful for speculative fiction, as lore tends to be a product of the time and place it was written. Only so much subtext, context, and worldbuilding can be preserved in translation without requiring it to be outright spelled out to readers in other languages somewhere in the finished text.

Lesson #2: When There Is No Consensus, Default to the Traditional Conventions

Debate is a normal part of the translation process, even when you’re not working as a team. But so are deadlines. As soon as it reaches a point where everyone—from the original writer to the publisher—has had their say in the matter without anyone budging on their position, then it’s clear no one will change their minds. This back-and-forth can test your patience when attempting to figure out how to get “technobabble” across to the average reader in a language without similar tropes. To complete the project within the timeframe and budget allotted (and not to stir any unintended controversy), the safest option is to use the diction approved by a widely recognized authoritative establishment. In my case, it’s usually MSA as regulated by the Supreme Council of the Arabic Language in Algeria, the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo, the Iraqi Academy of Sciences, the Jordan Academy of Arabic, the Academy of the Arabic Language in Libya, the Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat, Arab Academy of Damascus, or Bayt al-Hikma Foundation.

Lesson #3: Accept That There’s No Way to Capture Everyone’s Experience with the Arabic Language

Arabic is a language spoken by over 400 million Middle Easterners and counting. In addition to the plethora of regional variations that evolve over time, new varieties of the language are now spoken exclusively by a diaspora of hundreds of thousands worldwide. This fact alone should make it clear that no translation can cater to the requirements of Arabic readers without sacrificing authenticity in favor of using MSA.

Adding to your troubles is that accuracy isn’t feasible in some instances, as large swathes of the Arab world don’t have access to the internet to be researched on. Some dialects can also be hard to understand for most readers, especially when it comes to words borrowed from foreign languages to describe technological innovations that are subject to phonetic changes. It’s best to combine the dialect and MSA to make it clear to readers what the character’s background is meant to be—while also being perfectly legible to most readers who can only understand the text in MSA.

Lesson #4: Add Annotations to Avoid Disruption

Some ideas don’t travel well without requiring a significant rewrite of the original text to factor in the context needed for newcomers to be fully immersed in the tale. Unfortunately, doing so could compromise narrative progression, which will invariably diminish the overall quality of the final product. In light of this issue, I recommend using annotations such as footnotes or endnotes to properly maintain the story’s pace. In my experience with translating speculative fiction, footnotes come in handy to explain minor worldbuilding elements that aren’t worth covering in an introduction, while endnotes are more suited for elaborate explanations of the lore that weren’t factored into major decisions in the translator’s approach.

Lesson #5: A Dedicated Glossary Streamlines Terminology Management  

Oftentimes, the transliterated word from the text’s original language is better suited for translation. Take, for example, the names of American brands. Listing a fast-food chain in the glossary with a description of it is less time-consuming than figuring out the local equivalent. Glossaries come in handy in SFF in this regard, specifically when preserving neologisms, as it’s best to have the term transliterated and then defined more in-depth in the glossary than it is to toil for hours coming up with a new one.

Conclusion

The complex interplays between MSA and its various dialects show the importance of the strategic use of the entirety of a translator’s toolkit. They also highlight the time and cost-effective approaches that find a balance between working within the constraints provided and trying to preserve the artistic integrity of the original text. Of course, no translation can fully encapsulate the diversity of Arabic readers, but a thoughtful approach ensures that the original work’s essence resonates in any language.

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J. D. Harlock is an Eisner-nominated SWANA American writer, researcher, editor, and academic pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of St. Andrews, whose writing has been featured in The Cincinnati Review, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, The Griffith Review, Queen’s Quarterly, and New York University’s Library of Arabic Literature. You can find him on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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