The British Fantasy Society Yearbook 2009

[ChrisT]

Stephen, is there a direct debit option for members in the offing? I find they are great as folk always forget to cancel so stay members for much longer

That's a very interesting suggestion! A standing order type of thing might be feasible. I'll make a note to investigate.

I think it's fairly easy to do in Paypal, to accept recurring payments...

[Stephen Theaker]

The tug of war between horror and fantasy has gone on since the BFS started. I don't see this as an identity crisis, though. That we can cover both is one of our strengths.

I agree - it's the wide area the BFS covers that persuaded me to join.

The only time in recent years that I felt things were out of kilter was when I saw a horror anthology being reviewed negatively by someone who admitted to not liking horror or of having any real knowledge of it!

Are you thinking of the reviews of the first and second Black Books of Horror, back in the summer 2008 Prism? He didn't so much say he didn't like horror, but rather that he didn't enjoy the stories that depended on mutilation of the female body, cliche and buckets of blood.

Even if he didn't like horror at all, I don't think there's a problem with fantasy fans reviewing horror books, and vice versa... We don't have so many active reviewers that we can afford to segregate them...

[Stephen Theaker]

To help Stephen (as he has taken so much on) is there anyone who is willing to set up and maintain an author section?

I don't think it requires any special amount of work - I've set up the board and authors can set up their threads. If I notice any duplicate threads I'll merge them.

[Stephen Theaker]

I really think that would bring more people into the forum and then join. The forum should be a hub... a meeting place for all to talk about fiction. At the moment it is too quiet.

The forum is quiet, but saying it is "too quiet" is making a judgment that I'm not sure I'd agree with. It's the online forum for a society that only has a few hundred members, and many of those members don't come online. It's naturally not going to be all that active.

On Facebook, however, I'm sure lots of us have 50, 100, 150 members or friends of the society on their friends list. There's a conversation going on there between BFS members every day. To a certain extent, forums are old news, they are less and less where people come for their day to day chats.

Adrian's argued persuasively in another thread that we could take certain steps to increase traffic through the forums, and I agree completely that it's possible, and I'm happy to take the odd step here and there to encourage that, but I have to focus on stuff that benefits members directly, the stuff their money is spent on. The forums, and the website, are nice to have, and they're the kind of thing that members want to see us doing, but they are essentially frills...

[Stephen Theaker]

Also: does the BFS have any presence on Twitter? There's quite a fantasy community on there, and a lot of the book bloggers are active on there. Granted, that means a high proportion of paranormal romance - and I know how popular that is round these parts - but it's fresh blood and there's a lot of it. (Take that any way you will!) 

We are on Twitter - our news editor, Alasdair Stuart runs it, though I don't know how active it is - he's been very busy of late.

Our Facebook fan page is doing very well, with a couple of hundred fans added in the last month or so.

[allybird]

Thanks for establishing the author section - Steve! I've sent some emails to writers but hopefully news of it will spread that we have a home now.

I agree with Ian that we should have a badge for sites and books. I've had a few emails from authors saying they would get their publishers to put it on their books. Where on the site are those samples someone kindly mocked up...I'll go and look.

Found it...Adrian worked hard on it and we could use one?

http://www.britishfantasysociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=2014.0

The simple square one is good..one fits in with the 40th next year. Any preferences from anyone?

[AdrianF]

Adrian's argued persuasively in another thread that we could take certain steps to increase traffic through the forums, and I agree completely that it's possible, and I'm happy to take the odd step here and there to encourage that, but I have to focus on stuff that benefits members directly, the stuff their money is spent on. The forums, and the website, are nice to have, and they're the kind of thing that members want to see us doing, but they are essentially frills...

I agree with your point that your focus needs to be existing member benefits.  You are human and only have a limited amount of time.  Don't ever feel guilty about it

The website is the window to the world, so in terms of recruitment, it's our most valuable asset.  That said, the infrastructure is in place, it just needs the content.

I suppose a big question is how we can make the BFS relevant within the big scope of genre?  I don't think that's a simple question to answer, but I think the answers themselves might be easy to implement - cherry pick the best / easiest ideas to implement, like the Ask the Authors forum.

Are any of you going to Eastercon?  If so, we could sit down for half an hour and thrash out a few ideas?

[allybird]

I managed to get to Eastercon last year but can't make it this year but there might be others....

Where are you based? Lee Harris organises open nights in York (the last one was in Jan) and has said recently that he wants to make them more frequent and Peter C is organising one in the midlands. Open nights can be set up by anyone in a pub (we mostly find the ones with free rooms). And there are the London open nights.

[allybird]

Great to see all the authors have found a 'home.'

Could everyone who has set up a thread or who is about to do so remember to mention it on their blogs/sites/FB (if they want obviously) with a BFS link back to here. Simon Kurt Unsworth has done that with great results. Over 70 hits...already...a lot of people read his blog and connected to us. 

[AdrianF]

Where are you based? Lee Harris organises open nights in York (the last one was in Jan) and has said recently that he wants to make them more frequent and Peter C is organising one in the midlands. Open nights can be set up by anyone in a pub (we mostly find the ones with free rooms). And there are the London open nights.

I'm actually on Surrey / Hants / Berks border, which sounds incredibly close to London unless you have happened to have ever used the public transport in this neck of the woods.  Horse and cart would be quicker!

[AdrianF]

Also is 'Ask the Authors' limited to BFS members or anyone writing professionally in the Fantasy / Horror genre?  There are a few writers on twitter with books out soon (hence possibly keen to promote) I could try and recruit.

[allybird]

Steve has put a couple of paragraphs up at the beginning of the child board to help everyone get started...

'This board is for authors (or artists) to start their own threads where they can take questions and discuss or promote their work. You don't have to be well-known to start a thread here, or indeed a BFS member. But please do stick to one thread (additional ones will be merged), and don't duplicate posts here that you have made in other parts of the forums. I'd also suggest that you set your personal thread to notify you of new posts in it.

If asking questions of anyone in this board, please do bear in mind that there will often be periods where working writers need to get their heads down, and may not get the chance to drop by and respond straight away. Please be polite and patient.

Thanks.'

[allybird]

I'm coming to the end of the very enjoyable week working with Steve Theaker to set up the author and artist threads on here. Many individual letters sent out and almost 70 authors/artists sharing news now, which is cool....more joining when they get their act together :>) I will still bob in and set up threads for people who want an introduction (just drop me an email) and help with it but writing needs to be done now. Please spread word of the co-operative on blogs etc...thank you 

Steve is snowed under with work this week, after the next mail out is on its way, perhaps we could concentrate on how to get electronic reminders out (many writers told me that they never realise when their membership runs out) and how to get back lapsed memberships...that can't work with a paper mail out obviously because they are lost to us and that is a great shame.

[Debbie]

You'd be surprised, Ally. I used to do periodic mailshots (by email and by post) to lapsed members and used to get enough of a hit rate to justify the expense.

[allybird]

Then it should go on the list, too Debbie. All these methods could be used to build membership.