Shelflings

[Dave Brzeski]

Excellent job Stephen. Love the cover. I look forward to spreading the download link around as soon as it's available.
I assume there's a nice ad. for the BFS in there somewhere? 

[Rolnikov]

Thanks! I've been working more or less on the assumption that it'll be a members' only publication, but if it's free to the public I'll put a bit more in about the BFS next time.

[Peter Coleborn]

SHELFLINGS #1, compiled and typeset by Stephen Theaker, is a new BFS ezine featuring reviews that were commissioned and edited by Craig Lockley, Phil Lunt and Jay Eales for the British Fantasy Society website.

So you didn't use any reviews commission by Jan and me? Interesting.

BTW, the image refuses to appear 

[Rolnikov]

Not as far as I know - all those used were I think uploaded by Phil and Craig in January, February and March. If any of those were originally commissioned by the two of you, just let me know and I'll update the credits. I did make a draft copy available to the reviewers, and I'm afraid no one mentioned your involvement!

Have moved the picture to Dropbox, hopefully will work now.

[Dave Brzeski]

I can't see much to be gained by restricting it to members only & was assuming it would be free to all. If it gets spread around members' blogs for free download, then the advertising can only be good for all the authors & the BFS in general.

[Peter Coleborn]

Yes thanks, image appears now.

As for reviews -- I think you'll find that most of the mainstream book reviews during the first few months of 2012 were, in fact, commissioned by me (and Jan) -- I sent out to the team the books for review up to December last year. Given the time necessary to read and review books, the reviews wouldn't be in until a month or so later. I told the reviewers to send the reviews to Phil and so he, and Craig, would've posted them on the website. I am disappointed that Phil didn't mention this. I'm not surprised by my omission from the notes you were provided with. There's been a new broom mentality, currently. Sad, but I sort of expected it...

[Rolnikov]

I'm happy to leave it to the committee to decide, David, although overall I'd rather give people another reason to join, rather than another reason why they don't need to.

[Rolnikov]

Nothing to do with a new broom mentality, Peter, I'm sure, more that no one noticed!

[Peter Coleborn]

Nothing to do with a new broom mentality, Peter, I'm sure, more that no one noticed!

I don't know if that's worse, that no one noticed. 

[Rolnikov]

Six months is a long time in the BFS... 

[CarolineC]

... although overall I'd rather give people another reason to join, rather than another reason why they don't need to.

Non-members can read the reviews on the website anyway, so it seems better to me if this new publication is member-only. As Stephen says, if non-members want it as an ebook rather than reading them on the site then they'll have to join!  

[Rolnikov]

Oops, no, I meant four months!

[Dave Brzeski]

Fair enough Caroline, but I still think a free reviews ebook anybody can download, with advertisments for the Society would do more good than a members only publication, which actually contains nothing non-members can't access for free in the first place.

[Peter Coleborn]

I tried downloading the ePub version. It opens in a sandbox (whatever that is) and by the time I've read the prompt the download is terminated and disappears. Weird.

[cavscott]

I've just tried to download it from the link in the email and it worked OK.

Is anyone else having problems?

Cheers,

Cav