*crickets*
There reaches a point where the leadership of an organization becomes so self-destructive in its stupidity that those watching move beyond anger, beyond pointing and laughing, and on into pity. Now they're insisting they never, ever, not in a million YEARS meant to exclude epubs like EC, Samhain or Loose Id. We MISUNDERSTOOD their INTENTIONS. *insert wide-eyed pout*
Maybe because their intentions were couched in a shittily worded document that isn't worth the pixels it's transmitted in?
Juno Books editor Paula Guran makes excellent point about just how thoroughly the RWA has shot itself in the foot with this latest boneheaded move. Make sure you read the comments.
Is the lawyer they hired to draft the language in their latest policy change the ne're-do-well nephew of a board member? I'm askin'.
In other news, after cooking right along for the first four days of the Seventy Days of Sweat, I hit a spawn-shaped roadblock (my son is having issues with a bully at summer day-camp) and I now find myself 1800 words in the hole. But I'm pretty sure I can climb out again if I can convince my family to leave me the @#$% alone for a few hours.
Tonight is the Rita Awards ceremony. Every limb and digit on my body is crossed in hopes that my brilliant and ever-stylish crit partner, Barbara Caridad Ferrer, will win at least one of the categories in which she has finaled. God knows she deserves it, and so does her book.
And that's about it. You may have noticed that I'm trying to blog more often. That's in response to people who email me and say, "Why don't you blog more often?" Well, you see where that gets us. BORING. All I can do is hope the Rita ceremony provides fodder for more interesting posts. Who knows? Maybe they've planned an extravaganza of fuckery to rival Reno. One can only hope.
SelahMarch.com - Romance of Dubious Virtue
3Comments:
At least all of this hoopla makes blogging a little more interesting!
Back in 2001, there was a move by RWA to exclude all e-pubbed authors as being recognized as published authors, and a lot of that was justified by blaming low advances (no one actually cared about the money, just about keeping the riff raff out of the hallowed ranks of PAN.) That bigotry and narrow-mindedness was ultimately why I quit.
I think that was also the year that RWA award judges began refusing to read romantica because of content. Then we had the whole graphic standards thing in 2005, with Ann Jacobs being bounced from the RWA BEA booth for her cover.
Now e-pubs are being shoved to the back of the bus again because of advances, and their publishers are being dismissed as unprofessional. What a surprise.
Jerry Falwell founded the idea of a moral majority running everything by obtaining positions of power, entrenching the disciples all around you, and using the power and the disciples to influence the vote and enforce codes of conduct on people whether they like them or not. All of this is presented as being "good for the country" and anyone or anything opposed to it is evil.
Funny how that's almost identical to what's been going on in RWA for the last six years.
I rather liken it to the PTA mothers who look down on those of us who bring "slice and bake" cookies or box-mix cakes to the quarterly cake sale. As you've mentioned before, Lynn, it doesn't much matter what the stuff TASTES like -- only the manner in which it's presented.
There's significant evidence that the Board wasn't aware that each the royalty rate on ebooks from small presses is generally between 35% and 50%, and therefore the "standards" they used to tout -- 1,000 trade paperback sales or 5,000 sales in any other format -- exceed the advances of some of their "recognized" publishers. I understand there's a committee forming within the Board to study epublishing. One would think they would have done THAT before handing down ANY "standards," no?
Here's hoping the RWA moves out of the stone age before it becomes entirely irrelevant.
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