Romance Writers of America Join?

For general membership, you don't have to have anything published. You need to have finished a romance 20k words or longer. (Or multiple romances that combine to 20k+) If you have not done that, you can join as an associate member. The main difference is you can't vote.

For me, RWA would not be worth if it weren't for my local chapter. If you have a local chapter, you'll probably be able to go to a meeting as a guest for free to see how it is.

I didn't have the money to join, but I would love to one day!

In order to obtain PRO status the "one complete original work of romance fiction of at least 20,000 words" does not have to be published.

If you have a novella length story on your hard drive that is complete, that is a romance and has a satisfactory ending (HEA or HFN) you can submit it. A friend of mine submitted a novel she trunked seven years ago to obtain PRO status. And I can guarantee that she will never let that book see the light of publication. LOL Just upload it and wait. My approval took about a month.

Only for PAN status do you have to be published. For that, you do have to provide a verifiable ASIN or ISBN.

Is it worth joining RWA if there aren't any chapters in your area? I know they have online forums, too, but it's hard to know how active they are from the outside looking in.

A friend is a member of both the RWA Contemporary Romance and Passionate Ink online groups. The ConRom is "dead as a door nail" and PI doesn't have much worthwhile activity either.

One of the best online groups is RWA Beau Monde, which is for historical romance.

I know there's a Rainbow RWA for LGBT Romance.

The RWA online forums are pretty... lackluster. LOL And I've recently moved from the PRO to PAN sections and can say that goes for both of them.

There are online groups within RWA tailored for almost every niche one could write to. So it can be worthwhile to embrace membership even if there is not a local chapter in your area. I don't personally belong to any of the online chapters, because my local is Le AwesomeSauce, but I know many who do, and get everything they need in those online groups.

One edit, if you'll indulge me: PAN and PRO status are largely meaningless outside the RWA, but meaningful within it. You can be a general member, then apply for PRO status, which only means you've finished and/or pitched and/or sold a project. However, PAN status is much harder to qualify for. I have sold 13 different novels and 16 contracts, and I have satisfied myself that I will never be "published enough" to qualify for Published Author Network in RWA. It's been 14 years. My first sold novels never qualified because at that time there was an "approved publisher list" and I sold to someone else. Then it was that e-published books didn't qualify, so of course during those years I was busy selling to e-publishers. Then it was okay to self-publish, but now you have to make 2.5 times as much on that book as your advance might be from a trade publisher. Correct me, someone, if I'm wrong about the current figures.

So you can sell one book to a big house in your lifetime, and qualify for PAN, and you can sell over and over again and never qualify at all.

Forgive in advance if this has been a bit of a rant.

Thanks for asking this question...I've been wondering about joining myself. We do have a local Chapter where I am, so I guess it's time to go to a meeting and see if it would be worth it.

Deb Kinnard said:

So you can sell one book to a big house in your lifetime, and qualify for PAN, and you can sell over and over again and never qualify at all.

Forgive in advance if this has been a bit of a rant.

Click to expand...

Deb, they changed the qualifications for PAN as of Nov. 1. I took this straight from the RWA website.

General PAN Membership
Any RWA General or Honorary member in good standing who has earned at least $1,000 on a single published Eligible Novel* or Eligible Novella** shall be eligible for membership in PAN, provided however that works offered through Predatory Publishing companies shall not qualify.
Provisional PAN Membership
Any RWA General or Honorary member who has
(1) contracted for the publication of an Eligible Novel* or Eligible Novella** for an advance of at least $1,000, but said work is not yet commercially available; or
(2) published an Eligible Novel* or Eligible Novella**, but not yet earned $1,000 shall be eligible for provisional membership in PAN, provided however that works offered through Predatory Publishing companies shall not qualify.


I didn't receive an advance with my contract and I still qualified for PAN. All I had to provide was a verifiable ASIN or ISBN number. It took less than two weeks for approval.

My understanding is the Provisional PAN allows more people to qualify than before, but you may not be able to vote until you reach General PAN status.

Cheryl, thanks for the update. As yet, I haven't made the minimum on any one novel. But it's good to see it may eventually be in reach.

I've been a member for over ten years. Some of my best friends in the industry today are those I met in chapters. While I don't have a local chapter, the online groups are awesome, and there's always the chance to meet them in person at the RWA conference, where there is typically an in-person meeting for each chapter. But I love the online forums for the chapters!

I'm an RWA member, and agree to check out a local chapter first before joining. The primary reason I am in RWA is my local chapter. I'm in Chicago area and very fortunate to be within distance of two active chapters. I'm on the program committee for my local chapter and we inentionally bring in programming to suit both published and pre-pubbed authors. RWA is a wonderful org if you are not yet published, but I do agree that the local angle will give you the most worth.

Interesting to note the feedback on the online chapters. I did not know for example contemp romance chapter was not very active. I'm a member of YARWA for Young Adult and we are very active. Kiss of Death chapter is also very active and is responsible for the Wednesday twitter hashtag #1lineWed where anyone can share a that week's theme of a line from a work in progress. The Pro community is fairly active.

The other recommendation I have is to attend a regional RWA event. You can search them online under Events. I attended RWA Spring Fling in the Chicago suburbs in 2012 having no intent in joining Romance Writers. I went because big name agents were there. Many chapters host annual or bi-annual events which are like mini conferences. Some are one day others are more like workshops with a guest author or writing instructor. The national conference is great too, but I encourage writers to start small before the big one.

ETA: someone made reference to some local chapters perhaps being not inclusive for certain genres or types of writers. That very well may be the case. However, RWA as a whole recently issued a statement on diversity and their commitment. They have some great additions to the board who are passionate and very determined at alligning RWA with inclusiveness to all writers of romance.While chapter cliques is difficult to enforce at a national level, being on chapter leadership I can tell you this is being addressed and I don't believe discriminatory behavior will be tolerated. Now, each individual chapter reporting issues may be another matter.

One of my critique partners writes gay romance and received a horrible response from a contest judge. In our chapter, that judges comment would never have made it to the writer--we would have reassigned the entry and discussed with the judge if they felt the need to recuse themselves from the entry, to go through the contest director. My hope is that chapter leadership will address these issues as they come up at a chapter level.