SciFan: Information About Writer Listings


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	Writer Listings at SciFan


	SciFan is a database of fantasy and science fiction books and writers. This page is dedicated to writers (or their representatives) who want to get listed on our site or improve their entry. For more information about who we are and what we do, check out our FAQ.
	[ad] Want more exposure? Advertise on the SciFan home page to reach our dedicated readers! Click here to order.


	What's in it for writers and why should you bother?

Being listed on SciFan is free so all it's going to take from you is some time to provide us some content. We think it's well worth your trouble for the following reasons:

SciFan is one of the leading online resources dedicated to science fiction and fantasy books (including backlist titles and books from new authors), so you'll get free, targeted exposure.

We organize content in many different ways (by author, series, themes, year, etc). so the more information you provide, the more your books are likely to be seen by readers.

If you represent the estate of a dead author, your goal is probably less promotional but see this listing as an opportunity to contribute to keeping the works of the author alive.

Please try to stick as close as possible to our guidelines below, as this will help us put the content online as fast as possible, thanks!


	What writers does SciFan list?

Our main focus is authors who wrote at least one science fiction or fantasy book (novel or short story collection). We include books from other genres (historical fiction, romance, horror, mystery, ..). if there's a fantastic or SF element in their story.

We list writers from all over the world, dead or alive. To be listed you need to have written at least one book that fits the following conditions:

It has been published in a "paper format" (i.e. not just as audiotape, ebook or cdrom, we're speaking hardcovers and paperbacks here).

It is or has been available for sale in the United States through major bookstores, including Amazon.com.

It is written in, or translated to, the English language and has been properly edited.

We occasionally mention non-fiction books related to SF&F, such as author biographies, essays about the genre, or science books that touch traditional SF themes (e.g. human cloning), though as opposed to fiction books, we don't have the goal to be exhaustive in these categories.

On the other hand, we're not interested in comics/graphic novels nor role playing game rule books or campaigns (if you find any in our database, that's a mistake and we'll remove them). We list collections and anthologies, but we don't handle short stories individually.

We keep the right to choose who we list or not, and our choice is final. Being included in our database is completely free. We believe in the editorial integrity and neutrality of our database. We want to be as inclusive as possible within the limits of our goals (readers are the ultimate judges about who's worth reading), and we strictly partition advertising from content.


	Bibliographic information

For each book, here's the data we're looking for:

First date of publication (month and year).

ISBN number (must be available through Amazon.com or Alibris, new and/or used, we'll favor the latest available edition).

Cover art as a jpg (preferred) or gif file. We resize all covers to a 140-pixel height. It's more convenient if the cover is named after the ISBN number (e.g. 0765305860.jpg).

Series to which the book belongs, if any. We need the series chronological reading order, if there's one. If you wrote several series that belong to a common universe, we need to know how they relate to each other (i.e. what is the reading order of the series within their universe).

Main theme(s) (see a list here). Some books are listed in half a dozen themes, which helps readers discover them and quickly see what they're about. If you have written several books about the same themes, this will automatically appear on the page about you as well. Theme information is also used in the pages about series and new books.

Short synopsis that describes what the book is about (please keep to the plot/mood, we won't use neither anything that explains why it's the best book ever written, nor review quotes).

Award information (e.g. Hugo nomination, Nebula winner).

First novel information (i.e. if you wrote several novels, which one was the first published?)

We're interested not only in your past and current books, but also in your forthcoming titles. Since our site is built on top of a database, and everything is cross-referenced, the more information we have about each book, the more readers will be likely to find them, whether they browse or search the site by writer, series, year, theme, or look at new and upcoming releases.

The site is done in a way that lets users navigate freely from lists to specific books and vice versa (i.e. the title page will link to writer/theme/series pages depending on its content). Think of SciFan.com as an Imdb.com or Allmusic.com about SF/F literature instead of movies or music. What we want in our database is informational material, not advertising copy (we do have advertising opportunities, see more below).


	Biographic information

For each writer, here's the information we're looking for:

Publication name (the name on book covers).

Pseudonym(s) if any (we create different entries for pseudonyms and link them to the real person's page).

Date of birth (if you want it public) and nationality.

Short biography written in the third person. Please provide something factual at about 100-200 words. Keep to facts (e.g. place where you were born, where you studied, what kind of studies and jobs you did, what are your hobbies, your familial status, etc.). We will censor any blatant self-promotion, and this isn't the place to promote your books or web sites either (we have other parts of the database just for that, plus advertising slots).

Mugshot. Preferred photo format is 140-pixel high jpg, focused on your face (but almost anything will do, we'll reformat it to fit our page template). You're of course not obliged to provide a picture, though we think they help readers relate to writers.

Web site links to either your official or third-party sites, including interviews. We choose what we link to, and we won't link to sites that compete directly with ours for book sales.

A list of the SF/F writers who influenced you (those who gave you the impulse to write and who influenced the way you write or what you write about).

A list of your favorite SF/F writers (but didn't influence you).

A list of your favorite SF/F books and series.

This should eventually reveal interesting trends when we have enough data to aggregate, as we'd like to calculate who are the most influential writers among their peers (think of a kind of "literary genealogy,") and what do SF&F writers enjoy the most in the genre.

This page shows how a full entry looks. We also feature the five latest biographies on our home page.


	How to submit your information

Please review carefully our guidelines above, then e-mail us your material. Thanks for your time, we're aware we're asking you hard work (not to speak of our tendency to be anal retentive control freaks!) but we think the way we're doing it is in our common interest.

Please send plain text e-mails, not HTML or attached word processor documents. Sometimes we're able to handle new entries within minutes, but it can take us months as well, as SciFan is not making enough revenue yet for us to allocate someone working full-time on data entry. Please bear with us while we work through our often quite big e-mail backlog!


	Advertising on SciFan


	As we already mentioned, being listed in SciFan is free and not conditional to any purchase with us. That said, we have thousands of readers every day, including more than 200 visitors to our home page where you can purchase advertising through this self-service page. We honestly think SciFan is very targeted to science fiction and fantasy book readers, we get a lot of positive feedback from readers, and our traffic and sales keep growing. But the best way to make your own opinion is to have a look around our site.


	Linking to SciFan

We welcome links from other sites, though we don't oblige anyone to link to us. We don't have a graphics or banner for that purpose, a text link will be just fine, thanks. Here's an HTML example (you can of course use your own text to describe us):

<a href="http://www.scifan.com/">SciFan: the database of fantasy and science fiction authors and books</a>

This will look like this: SciFan: the database of fantasy and science fiction authors and books


	Anything else?

Your questions and comments are welcome. If you like what we do, please support us by providing accurate and comprehensive information about you and your books, this should help both you and us. You can also mention us to other writers you know (provided they fit the criteria explained above). And if you really like us, check out how you can help us further.



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