There will be a General Business Meeting for all members of SFWA at World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention at the Kansas City Convention Centre, in Kansas City, Missouri, from 10:00 AM to noon on Saturday, August 20, 2016, at which time the SFWA Board will report on its activities.

This is a call for agenda items.

Please email your agenda items to secretary@sfwa.org  by Friday, July 15, 2016. 

Volunteers Needed!

Happy June everyone!

 We have some fascinating volunteer opportunities this month! We have something for everyone. Some are high responsibility, some are low responsibility. Some are ongoing. Some are ad hoc. If you don’t see something here you like, but you are interested in volunteering, please send me an email at volunteer@sfwa.org.

–Derek Kunsken

• Ad hoc Volunteer Opportunity: Transcriber – SFWA has been putting videos on Youtube. The content of these videos would also be very valuable in written form. SFWA is seeking a few volunteers who are willing to listen to some videos and transcribe them into a word processing document. 

• Ad hoc Volunteer Opportunity: Playlist Organizer – SFWA has named over thirty Grand Masters, most recently C.J. Cherryh. Many Grand Masters have interviews and readings on Youtube. SFWA is seeking a short-term volunteer to put together a Youtube playlist assembling and organizing videos relevant to SFWA’s Grand Masters. 

• Ongoing Volunteer Opportunity: Legacy Campaign Committee – SFWA wishes to conduct an outreach campaign to authors and estates to let them know of the help SFWA provides to estates in the resale of author or estate works. Marketing, publicity and outreach experience would be very valuable here! 

• Ongoing Volunteer Opportunity: Assistant to the President of SFWA: A discreet, organized self-starter is needed to help with scheduling, meeting preparation, action item tracking, etc in electronic platforms. 1-2 hours/week. 

• Ongoing Volunteer Opportunity: Financial Review Committee: Under the leadership of SFWA’s CFO, this committee reviews SFWA’s financial documents and provides advice to the CFO on financial matters. Financial experience is definitely needed, but if you understand finances, you could really make a contribution! 

• Ongoing Volunteer Opportunity: Secretarial support to ongoing committees. I’m assembling a list of potential volunteers who might be interested in a quiet administrative role on a committee. This would help the volunteer learn the ins and outs of SFWA business, and also assist the committees in tracking decisions, organizing meeting agendas, and reporting to the Board via the Committee Chairs. 

• Ad hoc Volunteer Opportunities: Con volunteers! SFWA often has programmed activities at cons, including the set-up and tear-down for those activities, and we can always use an extra set of hands. Sometimes we just need people on call at a con, at the end of a text if we need a ten minute job done. So are you going to a major one? Have you always dreamed of being a minion, but didn’t think you could pull off the big yellow Tic-Tac look? We want you on our team!

SFWA Nebula Conference

We are busy working with Jim and Laurie Mann who’ve graciously offered to host and plan next year’s Nebula Conference and awards in Pittsburgh, PA. Look for more information in regards to registration and hotel coming soon! 

Once again, thank you to all who attended the SFWA Nebula Conference. As mentioned in the last Singularity, we said we’d give you some of the great write-ups we’ve seen on social media. 

• Beth Cato
  
• Liz Argall
  
• John O’Neill
  
• Fran Wilde
  
• Lexie Dunne

Recently Reported Sites

• If you appeared on the Mindwebs radio series, which came out of WHA Radio in Madison, Wisconsin and ran in the mid-70s through the mid-90s, your work may be on this site. According to Michael Hanson the series host, there were 169 half-hour shows which presented 188 short stories from 135 different authors. If you appear on the site and prefer to have SFWA list you in an overall DMCA notice rather than submitting your own, please mail the link for your story and include your contact details to president@sfwa.org   
• If you had works published on the Quarterreads site but were not paid for them at the time the site closed, please drop me a line  at president@sfwa.org and include the amount owed to you so I can include this in a consolidated list to Quarterreads. 

• Griefcom continues investigating Hungarian magazine Galaktika for publishing translated work without the permission of the author. If you have recent contact information for any of their staff, please send it to me at president@sfwa.org so I can consolidate the info and pass it along.

ReLire Program

A reminder to members that the ReLire program currently underway in France has scanned many books it considers to be “orphan works” in order to make them available through a public database. This database has been found to contain many titles that are clearly not orphan works or in the public domain, including a number by prominent SF and fantasy authors. On March 21 of this year a new list of titles to be added to the database were released. From that date authors or copyright holders will have six months (ending September 20th, 2016) to register an objection.

Members can access detailed information on how to find out if their works were included and what options are available here. Please email matthew.johnson@sfwa.org if you would like any information not provided there.

Contract Committee News

The first news is that the Contracts Committee has finished, and posted on our page of the SFWA Web site, a major revision of our model Author-Agent Agreement. The version we finished builds on earlier drafts of the agreement. SFWA has produced model contracts since it was created in 1965.  The latest revision echoes back to our first, a Model Author-Agent Agreement written by SFWA founder Damon Knight, that appeared in the first issue of the SFWA Bulletin in July, 1965. We expect this version to be published in the Bulletin.  In the meantime, you can read the Agreement at: www.sfwa.org/member-links/committees/contracts-committee

We are adding material to the Model Magazine Contract we released in September, thanks to the work of two new Committee Members, Jeff Hecht and Rosemary Smith.  We expect to post the revised contract soon.

We are reviewing various collaboration agreements for writers, and expect to post links to several that would be good for SFWA members.  At the same time, we will begin work on model anthology contract.

If you have any questions for the Committee, or are interested in helping us with our work, please drop an email to: Contracts@SFWA.ORG

Jim Fiscus, Chair, SFWA Contracts Committee

Interesting Discussion Board Topics

A round-up of interesting discussions happening on our members-only discussion boards! Remember, you’ll need to sign in at sfwa.org/forum before trying to click on any of these links! 

Help us plan the SFWA Institute initiative: 

• https://www.sfwa.org/forum/index.php?/topic/10011-planning-sfwa-university/
  

Ask your questions/leave your comments for the forthcoming Presidential Hangout sessions:

• https://www.sfwa.org/forum/index.php?/topic/10009-presidential-hangouts/

On author photos (particularly when you don’t think you’re photogenic):

• https://www.sfwa.org/forum/index.php?/topic/9910-selfie-imagepersona/