New SFWA President Russell Davis is really hitting the ground running, announcing several more radical changes to the organization he just took the reins of the beginning of this month.
Now comes word that the SFWA Bulletin (see our earlier article) will be shifting from its nearly-always four-times-a-year publication schedule to six issues per year, “with one issue always coinciding with the Nebula Awards Weekend and another issue intended to appear at WorldCon.” They’ll expand the focus of the publication, to cover “video games, graphic novels, anime, media tie-ins and any other subgenre or potential market that offers opportunities for speculative fiction writers.” Additionally, “a new, reduced advertising rate schedule has been developed for regular advertisers, and special rates are available to SFWA members.”
In other news, the long-running SFWA Forum (the internal, members-only discussion publication, which had been published six times a year), will be dropping the print publication entirely, going to an all-electronic format. “The final printed and mailed issue of the Forum will appear in August, and effective October 2008, the Forum will go to a quarterly, electronic format.” Davis notes this move is partly a cost-saving change (the current price tag for the Forum is more than $12,000 a year), and partly a recognition of the changing face of long-distance communications. When the Forum debuted, it was nearly the only means of mass contact among the members, and as such, was the home of letters and arguments that flowed back and forth on the issues of importance (and unimportance) to the members. Explaining the move, Davis says “the vast majority of member discussions are [now] taking place in online forums.”
Davis also says a redesign of the SFWA web site, www.sfwa.org, is currently underway.
And, “as part of [the organization’s] ongoing effort to streamline member services and make SFWA a more functional and flexible organization,” Davis announces the creation of the new Ombudsman Committee, chaired by Lee Martindale. The committee’s purpose is “to ensure, promote, and facilitate communication of the will of the membership of SFWA to its Board of Directors.” The committee apparently will act as a liaison for members trying to contact the Board, and also a distillation device, finding the sense of the membership from the multiple, often contentious, online discussion fora.
[Edited: we originally misspelled SFWA President Russel Davis’s last name as Davies. We apologize to Davis and our readers. We’ve corrected this article.]