UFO Can Haz Funny Cartoon

April 19, 2013

I’ve been cheating on this blog with all the other blogs.

While I’ve been egregiously ignoring my blogging duties here, my interviews have popped up at the W1S1 site and Emma Larkin’s blog this week.  I even cavorted with several podcasts, appearing on The Gamer’s Dome (which, incidentally, is what actually lies beyond Thunderdome) and having an awesome disagreement about the merits of Babylon 5 on an episode of the DJ Grandpa podcast which is scheduled to air this coming Monday.

All of this, of course, is in the effort to raise awareness of the ongoing UFO2 Kickstarter campaign. I’m willing to dispense my cheap jokes elsewhere, dance in front of SF conventions wearing a zombear suit, and even allow my my voice to be heard on podcasts, in order to raise awareness of this book. Because it is scientifically proven (aka I read the list of referring links on the Kickstarter page) that doing such things helps bring new backers to the project.

You and I know that the readers of this blog are the smartest, wittiest, and most interesting SF fans anywhere. FDA won’t let me claim this outright as a fact, so I’m insinuating it instead. And now, you have an opportunity to prove it. Click on this link and pledge to the UFO2 Kickstarter campaign.  Not only will you get an awesome collection of humorous short stories, but you will also help prove beyond doubt how awesome you all are. Because I will be able to click on the Dashboard of the Kickstarter account and see how much support is coming from *this site*. And then I will be inclined — nay, morally obligated — to blog a lot more often.

Think about that.

And while you think, I shall leave you with this awesome cartoon, courtesy of writer and illustrator Douglas Sterling:

alien

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

UFO2 Submission Guidelines Are Posted

April 5, 2013

We are going to have an open submission period in May.  SFWA and Codex members have an “early pass” and can submit now. The guidelines are posted here:

UFO Series

There are some changes from the last year’s guidelines, so please read carefully. So far, more than 50% of the handful of submissions we already received either failed to remove the identifying information from their document (annoying, since I have to then do it before forwarding the story to associate editors) or failed to include the info I asked for in the subject line (much less annoying, but still indicates inattention to guidelines), or both!

A minor guideline infraction like that won’t hurt anyone’s chances — after all, the editors who are reading the submission won’t even be aware of it — but it doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it here 🙂

Meanwhile, the Kickstarter campaign is in full swing. We raised $1500 in the first 48 hours and are up to 60 backers as of the writing of this post. Now that we got past the initial rush, the tough slog begins. We must raise an average of $250 per day in order to meet our funding goals. So please consider pre-ordering your copy of UFO2 via Kickstarter sooner, rather than later, and help us spread the word of this project to others:

 

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UFO2 Kickstarter is live

April 2, 2013

Unidentified Funny Objects 2 is coming to the bookshelf near you this September!

I already have stories from Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick and Ken Liu. In addition, Esther Friesner, Jody Lynn Nye, and Tim Pratt agreed to contribute stories to this volume. And we hope to announce several more headliners this month.

Meanwhile, I can really use everyone’s help. Funding a quality anthology is *expensive*. It cost about $15,000 to create and print the original UFO book. I think I can keep these costs down to under $12,000 this time around, but it’s still a lot of money. So I went back to Kickstarter in order to help cover some of these costs. If you enjoyed the first book, or simply think the idea of an annual humor SF/F anthology is a good one and it’s something that should exist in the world, please consider supporting this project on Kickstarter.

Also, please help spread the word. The more money I can raise this month, the more cool stuff I’ll be able to do for this book and for the UFO web site.  I will blog lots more about this project, but for now the text of the Kickstarter campaign should cover most of the basics. Check it out!

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Hugo Noms and Adventures in Self Publishing

March 30, 2013

The Hugo Awards nominations were announced earlier today, and there is some great reading material on that list (and a number of things I haven’t yet read as well). The complete list of nominated works and publications is posted here.

I was especially pleased to see John Scazi’s “Redshirts” on the list, which I enjoyed and which was on my Nebula ballot but did not make the final cut there. I was disappointed not to see Ken Liu’s “The Waves” which remains the best thing I’ve read in 2012, but Ken is on the ballot with the excellent “Mono No Aware,” one of only three short stories to make the ballot this year.

And, of course, I’m disappointed not to have made the Campbell ballot. I never felt like I had a great shot, but a number of fellow writers and editors told me that I was on their ballots, and so I allowed myself to hope, at least a little. And even though I didn’t make it, those nominations mean a great deal to me, and I thank those of you who made room for me on your ballots from the bottom of my heart.

The Dragon Ships of Tycho

At the beginning of the month I made my first foray into the world of self-publishing.  I chose 3 stories that are sufficiently similar in length, style and content, and made each of them available on the Kindle for $0.99 each. At the end of each story there are plugs and pictures of the cover for the other two. I figured that the readers who bought one and liked it, would then snap up the other two. I didn’t know what to expect in terms of sales, but figured that the numbers — good or bad — would be similar across the three stories. Boy, was I wrong.

Here are the actual sales of the three stories, between March 5 and March 30, according to Amazon:

A Better Tomorrow – 1 sale

Price of Allegiance – 3 sales

The Dragon Ships of Tycho – 36 sales (35 in the US and 1 in France)

I dearly wish I knew what set “Dragon Ships” apart from the other two stories, so I could figure out a way to replicate its success. Is it a more evocative name? A more engaging description of the story? Something else entirely? Or just blind luck?

My next step is to try other venues. Last night I uploaded the stories to B&N, Kobo, and Smashwords. My experience with UFO suggests that the sales in those venues are tiny compared to Amazon. but I’m very curious to see if “Dragon Ships” will continue to outperform the other two stories across platforms.

 

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The Great Short Story Ebook Experiment

March 8, 2013

I finally did it — I took several of my previously published short stories and made them available as e-books. They’re currently up on Amazon and over the next few days I’ll be making them available on B&N, Kobo, and Smashwords.
I made the plunge for several reasons:

* New readers. There are tons and tons of people out there who enjoy and buy e-books (including short stories) on places like Amazon, but aren’t an active part of SF/F fandom and aren’t even aware of some of the fine magazines and anthologies these stories appeared in originally. An optimal scenario for me is to have someone who’s never heard of me before buy an e-book, love it, pick up the other ones, and then come over to this page to see what else I’m up to.

* The skills. After working on this project, on and off, for the last month I have learned several things. I have a very rudimentary understanding of how to create a book cover and how GiMP works. I learned how to create a digital book from scratch. I learned how to format it properly for various e-readers and platforms. These are all skills that will likely come in handy as I work on future UFO Publishing projects (though I’d still much rather let professional cover artists and book designers create THOSE books, at least I can understand some of what they’re doing better).

* The data. I want to know as much as possible about the business. What sort of sales can I, as an author, generate on each platform? Which promotions and advertising works, and which doesn’t? Posting a few short stories is a low-budget way to tip the toe in the self-publishing waters and see what’s up.

* The money. Seriously, I don’t expect much. Each of these stories is priced at $0.99 and when one sells, Amazon will give me $0.35 of it. So I won’t be putting my kid through college off these short story sales. Probably. But… who knows, right? What is one of these goes viral? Once the e-book has been created and uploaded, there is no more cost to keeping it online indefinitely — in either time or money. Even before I had the chance to write this post and “officially” announce the existence of these particular e-books, several people bought “The Dragon Ships of Tycho.” At this rate I’m getting dangerously close to earning enough for a medium coffee from Dunkin Donuts.

I’m no expert on self-publishing, but I did have several ideas in mind that I hope will help make these e-books successful (besides writing the best possible stories I can, of course):

* Offer a well-edited, well-formatted, easy to read book. You’ll be surprised at how many self-published books (novels, even) are poorly edited and poorly formatted. I spent a fair amount of time making sure this wasn’t the case with my stories.

* Offer more to read. I intentionally waited until I could publish several stories at once that stand a good chance of appealing to similar readers. This way, should a reader happen to enjoy the story, there’s something else they can pick up right away. Each of these stories features a little ad for the other two at the end of the book.

* Great cover art. I can’t stress how important this is. There are so many self-published and small publisher books out there with mediocre covers. I really wanted my stories to stand out and spent a lot of time looking for perfect pieces for each story. I was fortunate enough to team up with several amazing artists from around the globe. The art is theirs. The layout (in 2 of 3 cases) is mine — so don’t blame them for it!

Without further ado, here are the three stories:

The Dragon Ships of Tycho

Human diplomats race against the clock to forge an alliance with a one-time adversary who possesses a fleet of dragon warships.

Originally from the Galactic Creatures anthology edited by Elektra Hammond (Sparkito Press/Dark Quest Books)

Cover art is “Space One” by the British artist Andy Fairhurst.

Price of Allegiance

Earth’s ambassador to the Galactic Union wants his superiors to choose loyalty over technological advancement. But, when it comes to the interstellar politics, the choices are never what they seem.

Originally from Penumbra magazine (Musa Publishing)

Cover art is by the French artist Benoit Dromby

A Better Tomorrow

On a crippled spaceship, as the air is running out, one man must fight to protect the cryogenically frozen colonists, even at the cost of his own life.

Originally published in Interstellar Ficiton magazine.

Cover art and cover design by American artist Aimee Cozza

Unlike the other two stories, A Better Tomorrow is available online for free. You can read it here. So why publish an e-book, you ask? It’s all part of the experiment. As I wrote above, there are many people browsing and buying on the Kinde, Nook, and other devices who are not familiar with web zines, and I’m curious to see how the sales of this book will compare to the sales of the other two, which are not available online for free.

So there you have it. Let the experiment officially begin!

If you want to pick up one of these e-books or if you already read these stories and would like to do me a kindness of posting a brief review, please follow the links below:

The Dragon Ships of Tycho

Price of Allegiance

A Better Tomorrow

I will post the links to other sites once these books become available on there.

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Hijacking the Space Marines

February 6, 2013

Science fiction writer M.C.A. Hogarth recently had her eBook “Spots the Space Marine” taken down by Amazon because of the DCMA notice served by Games Workshop. They claim that she infringed on their intellectual property by using the term “space marine” in the title of her book.

Games Workshop is a company that is best known for their Warhammer series of miniature games. They have a Warhammer Fantasy setting which is a chock-full of elves and orcs and other stock fantasy characters. And then they have Warhammer 40,000 — a space opera setting which includes, you guessed it, some space marines.

At some point Games Workshop decided that they’re entitled to a trademark of the term “space marine.” Their lawyers have been aggressive about contacting various game companies and smacking them down for using the term. And now, they are going after science fiction authors for doing the same.  According to M.C.A. Hogarth’s post, GW lawyers told her that they believe “their recent entrée into the e-book market gives them the common law trademark for the term ‘space marine’ in all formats.”

I’m not a lawyer. For all I know Games Workshop may legally have the high ground on this. But it doesn’t mean what they’re doing is right.

The term “space marine” has existed in science fiction for decades before Games Workshop decided to use it in their game.  There’s a Wikipedia entry that catalogs many instances of such use from back in the 1930s. And here’s a cover of a 1936 issue of Amazing Stories featuring a space marine story:

Amazing_Stories_December_1936

Space Marines haven’t gone out of style in the 30s, either.  Starcraft video game franchise uses them today.  In 1997 there was a movie titled “Space Marines,” according to IMDB. Heinlein wrote about space marines in several of his stories.  But, if Games Workshop has its way, the Heinleins of today and tomorrow will no longer be able to use this two-word combination.

This blows my mind, especially given just how much Warhammer games rely on the SF and fantasy tropes created by those who came before them. They did not invent space marines, and while they’re most welcome to use them, this use should not be exclusive.

Can you imagine Hasbro, the current owner of Dungeons & Dragons intellectual property, claiming that they own terms like “Magic User” or “Elf Wizard” because those are some of the character classes in D&D? Or perhaps suing fantasy writers over the use of the term “mana” since they also own Magic The Gathering? At some point the legalese needs to stop and become replaced with common sense.

If Hogarth were to enter a legal battle with Games Workshop, she may or may not emerge victorious. I don’t know, because — again — not a lawyer. But this isn’t likely to happen. It costs too much money to litigate and isn’t at all practical for someone making a few hundred bucks off an eBook to take on such a challenge. Fortunately, there is an alternative, and that is to win in the court of public opinion. If enough people speak out against the actions taken by Games Workshop, the people in charge may notice, and they might elect to back off.

You can spread the word via blogs and social media, and link back to M.C.A. Hogarth’s web site.

If you are a Games Workshop player you can ask the owner of your Friendly Local Game Store to express your displeasure to their Games Workshop sales rep.

Consider buying some of M.C.A.’s books to help her make up for the potential income loss caused by this book being removed from Amazon.

Let influential bloggers and journalists know. There are already some major sites that picked up the story (see BoingBoing post on this), but more is always better.

In a trend started by Fran Wilde, a number of SF writers added “Space Marine” to their name on Twitter, and they want others to do that, too.

Twittergrab

If you are reading my blog, you’re very likely a reader (or writer) of science fiction. That means you should very much care about this case. Because, to quote Fran Wilde, they are trying to steal our words.

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Win a copy of Unidentified Funny Objects!

January 8, 2013

There’s a giveaway on GoodReads that’s beginning tomorrow. Click to enter!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Unidentified Funny Objects by Alex Shvartsman

Unidentified Funny Objects

by Alex Shvartsman

Giveaway ends January 23, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

And if you don’t want to wait for a chance at a freebie, you can buy a copy on Amazon, B&N, Kobo or directly from UFO Publishing.

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Shameless Self-Promotion Post – Amazon Edition

December 17, 2012

This week I’ve been tinkering with Amazon (and other sites) in order to make the UFO ebooks available for purchase. And as of this afternoon, we have liftoff:

UFO ebook on Amazon

UFO paperback on Amazon

And while I was learning how to make books available via Amazon, I also finally took a few minutes to set up my author profile:

http://www.amazon.com/Alex-Shvartsman/e/B00APRCWU4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1

Want to get your hands on a FREE paperback copy of UFO? Visit Deborah Walker’s blog and tell her a joke in the comments thread. One lucky reader will receive their own copy of the book!

And finally, Kazka Press just released At Year’s End — an anthology of holday-themed flash fiction edited by L. Lambert Lawson. It includes a reprint of my story “Nuclear Family” which originally appeared in Kasma SF (not to be confused with Kazka. Both are fine semi-pro publications and I’m honored to be published by them).

yearsend

Having recently learned how important reviews are to selling books on Amazon, I took a few minutes to review “At Year’s End.”  You can read my review on the anthology’s Amazon page.  This is also sort of a roundabout way of mentioning how important reviews are to selling books on Amazon. So, if you read and enjoyed Unidentified Funny Objects, would you please take a moment to rate it and write a sentence or two?

 

 

 

 

But it also prompted me to

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UFO Launch Party

December 12, 2012

ufocover

 

I’m hosting a launch party for Unidentified Funny Objects this weekend. It will take place at Kings Games in Brooklyn NY. It is scheduled for Sunday, December 16 at 5pm. Several of the authors will be in attendance to read from their stories and to sign the books.

I’m expecting to receive the shipment of trade paperbacks from the printer on Friday.  Hardcovers may take a few extra days, but should arrive early next week. I will then ship out all Kickstarter orders and direct web site pre-orders, as well as all contributor copies.

E-books are being worked on as we speak and should be ready in the next few days. I’ll begin e-mailing them out as soon as they’re finished. PDF is ready, we just need a little more time to format .EPUB and .MOBI files.

Please come by and celebrate the release of UFO with me!

 

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Submissions Open for a One Sentence Story Mini Anthology

December 9, 2012

oss

Back in the spring, a bunch of writers on Twitter challenged each other to write the longest (and, of course, most interesting) flash stories consisting of only one sentence. This blog post explains the back story, features my own entry, and links to the stories posted by all of the other participants who chose to post their stories publicly.

Matthew Bennardo liked the idea so much, he decided to produce and publish an anthology of one sentence stories. For the next two weeks Matthew is accepting submissions, with guidelines outlined on his blog. Check it out!

 

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