Breaking news!
Mystery Writers of America is now allowing self-published writers to obtain membership. Mind you, you have to meet the income requirements: five thousand dollars obtained from book sales in the mystery category within a year.
That's doable, but tough. Probably requires at least a few books out there, which makes sense. They want to attract the very dedicated and/or the very talented.
It's all detailed out at mysterywriters.org if anyone wants more details.
It's good to see them following SFWA's lead. Though SFWA's requirements are a bit different, they require you to prove that one of your sci-fi books earned at least a thousand dollars within a year's time. MWA allows bundling several books together, at the cost of requiring a greater sum.
My advice, if you're a mystery writer and cracking that amount of income, is to go for it. If you're earning that much from writing the dues are negligible, and it gives you additional legitimacy. Legitimacy is gold, in this market. Every title you can sock away and put on your name gives you that much more leverage and opens up opportunities that would otherwise pass you by.
Not to mention the other benefits. Wanna vote on the Edgar awards? Put books forward to be on their ballot? And probably a whole slew of other things, that I haven't investigated because it's not my field. If it's anything like the SFWA stuff, it's probably pretty useful.
The best part of this is that it's not something with a time limit. Even if you're not earning the money to qualify now, there's no cap on when your time's up. You've got the rest of your life to try and get those numbers up.
Ah, man. This makes me happy. The times they are a changing, and people are realizing that writers are writers, regardless of the path taken. Results are what matters, in the end.
Mystery Writers of America is now allowing self-published writers to obtain membership. Mind you, you have to meet the income requirements: five thousand dollars obtained from book sales in the mystery category within a year.
That's doable, but tough. Probably requires at least a few books out there, which makes sense. They want to attract the very dedicated and/or the very talented.
It's all detailed out at mysterywriters.org if anyone wants more details.
It's good to see them following SFWA's lead. Though SFWA's requirements are a bit different, they require you to prove that one of your sci-fi books earned at least a thousand dollars within a year's time. MWA allows bundling several books together, at the cost of requiring a greater sum.
My advice, if you're a mystery writer and cracking that amount of income, is to go for it. If you're earning that much from writing the dues are negligible, and it gives you additional legitimacy. Legitimacy is gold, in this market. Every title you can sock away and put on your name gives you that much more leverage and opens up opportunities that would otherwise pass you by.
Not to mention the other benefits. Wanna vote on the Edgar awards? Put books forward to be on their ballot? And probably a whole slew of other things, that I haven't investigated because it's not my field. If it's anything like the SFWA stuff, it's probably pretty useful.
The best part of this is that it's not something with a time limit. Even if you're not earning the money to qualify now, there's no cap on when your time's up. You've got the rest of your life to try and get those numbers up.
Ah, man. This makes me happy. The times they are a changing, and people are realizing that writers are writers, regardless of the path taken. Results are what matters, in the end.