Has the RWA gone insane?

I'm not a member. I've never wanted to be a member. And now I can see I probably never will be a member.

Seriously, my eye is twitching here. I'm annoyed that publishers like Juno won't qualify (at least right now) for RWA approved status, but conflating vanity publishers with e-publishers? Isn't it hard enough to do this fucking job without RWA undermining our efforts?

I could live with the advances thing, but the vanity definition is a very low blow.

Sorry. I wasn't thinking clearly when I did my OP...

Commencing with RWA's 2008 National Conference, for official publisher participation, a romance publisher must verify to RWA that it: (1) is not a Subsidy Publisher or Vanity Publisher; (2) has been releasing romance novels via national distribution for no fewer than three years, with no fewer than two full-length romance novels or novel-length romance anthologies published in each of three
consecutive years; (3) provides per book advances of at least $1,000 for all books; and (4) pays all authors participating in an anthology an advance of at least $500."


"3. The Board updated the definition of Subsidy Publisher or Vanity Publisher to: any publisher that publishes books in which the author participates in the cost of production or distribution in any manner, including publisher assessment of a fee or other costs for editing and/or distribution. This definition includes publishers who withhold or seek full or partial payment of reimbursement of publication or distribution costs before paying royalties, including payment of paper, printing, binding, production, sales or marketing costs; publishers whose authors exclusively promote and/or sell their own books; publishers whose primary means of offering books for sale is through a publisher-generated Web site; publishers whose list is comprised of 50% or more of its books written by authors who are principals in the publishing company; and publishers whose business model and methods of publishing are primarily directed toward sales to the author, his/her relatives and associates."

"Many" of the smaller presses with RWA recognition have gone belly-up? Do you have a cite for that? I know of one, and that was unfortunate, but I'd like to know if there are more out there that met initial RWA requirements only to fold subsequently.

And if the RWA was really interested in protecting authors, they would not blur the lines between vanity publishers and epublishers. There is a very clear and very big difference between vanity pubs and epubs. Vanity publishers require you to pay to publish. Legitimate Epublishers do not. It is hard enough to get new authors to understand this concept without the RWA throwing this shit out there. I have approximately twenty books with four different epublishers, and I have never paid a single dime to see a book published, and I receive royalty checks every six weeks or so. I think the implication that Samhain, Liquid Silver Books, and Amber Quill Press (to name the publishers I've personally worked with and can cite personal experience) is on par with Publish America or Sterling House is insulting at best and irresponsible at worse. And any writer's organization who truly cared about authors and professionalism wouldn't start down that road. Period.

December, I saw this on a few different author lists initially, but I took this particular text from Emily's blog because I had it open at the time..

I can't speak for EC, but Samhain offers an advance, and they have books available in Borders and Walden. Near as I can tell, Samhain has plans in place to be in all the bookstores soonish. Further, Samhain has recently partnered with Kensington to form a Samhain imprint with Kensington--I guess somebody better let them know they've partnered with a vanity press, huh?

Amber Quill has their own reasons for not being interested in book stores. Trace has explained it many times, and I can understand where he is coming from. But all of their novel-length books are available in print. And my sales with AQP is comparable to my sales with Samhain (where my book is in bookstores).

Liquid Silver Books has recently struck a deal with a distributer and is slowly but surely printing more of their books. I don't know their long-term plan, but given their recent change, I wouldn't be surprised if they were already aiming for book stores.

In other words, RWA doesn't need to encourage epublishers to expand. The market is doing that just fine, as it should be.

Epublishers do distribute through other areas, but what does RWA mean by "primary means"? I know that all my books are sold solely through the publisher's webpage for the first 6-12 weeks (depending on the publisher). My current book Master of Obsidian was released on April 29, for example, and it's still not on fictionwise. And once they hit places like Fictionwise and all the other many, many book storefronts on the web, I can tell from my royalty reports that some of my books never do well on fictionwise, but chug right along at the publisher's website.

So, how close is the RWA going to look at that? Are they going to check sales' figures? "Primary means" is awfully vague, in my humble opinion, and the vagueness of that language can be used against publishers easily. Quite frankly, I wouldn't put it past the RWA to do just that.

but like Christine says, it's a triple whammy. Maybe each thing sounds good on its own, but the combined affect is essentially telling legit presses and authors to get bent.

job don't you think they're doing a disservice to new authors by blurring the lines between legitimate publishers and vanity publishers? You can't think of a single reason why the conflation of legit, royalty-paying publishers and vanity publishers might be a bad idea?

Furthermore, your post is implying that epublished authors aren't professional authors, which is exactly the problem I have with RWA's new benchmark. Nobody is saying that RWA shouldn't have standards. I am saying that RWA's standards should reflect the realities of the current romance market, and not simply the desire to keep out the "riff-raff."