Awards season is starting soon. Time for a primer on SFWA's Suggested Reading List! The list is a great way to find new books, stories, games, and media, and get up-to-date for the upcoming awards season. Let's have a thread! 1/11
The Suggested Reading List is created by SFWA's 1800+ members. It's always being added to, with new listings appearing as members make recommendations for work they loved. 2/11
Only SFWA members can add to the list. We would LOVE it if *every* SFWA member added their favorites. The more members participate, the better and more useful the list is. We especially would like to see more recommendations for indie books and diverse works! 3/11
The list includes six categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Games, Bradbury Award, and Andre Norton Award. 4/11
Sometimes there's confusion about what the categories mean. The prose categories are defined by word count:
Novel >40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short Story <7,500 words
This reflects the richness of SFF short fiction markets. 5/11
Novel >40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short Story <7,500 words
This reflects the richness of SFF short fiction markets. 5/11
Games is a new category on the list! SFWA welcomed games writers as members in 2016. Bradbury is for media, and Andre Norton is for middle grade and young adult books. 6/11
SFWA members (if they're logged in) can see how many recommendations each work on the list has. Everyone else just sees individual items, unranked. 7/11
So how do you get your work on the list? If you're a SFWA member, you can add it yourself, but (to be frank) many members find that a little... unsavory. What you really want is for a SFWA member to love your work and add it! It's a huge compliment and worth bragging about. 8/11
How to get on SFWA members' radar? If you're a member, make a post on the SFWA discussion board forums for each category. Include title, author, word count & publisher. A lot of writers include epub, mobi, and PDF files. (Yes, being a SFWA member sometimes means free books!) 9/11
If you're not a SFWA member, you can still have your work posted to the SFWA forums. Email the info to the Nebula Awards Commissioner, and they will post your information and files for you. Email nac@sfwa.org. 10/11
tl;dr SFWA's Suggested Reading List is great! Use it, post to it, love it! Here's the link: sfwa.org/forum/reading/ 11/11
