Epublishing and RWA

If you're a member of RWA, a romance writer, or romance reader, you've probably heard about the recent RWA bruhaha. If not, check out ESPAN's blog, starting with Deidre Knight's letter to the president of RWA, and Diane Pershing's response. In addition, Angela James, senior editor of Samhain Publishing also spoke out and today, Raelene Gorlinksy of Ellora's Cave is posting about the advantages of epublishing.

I'd like to make it clear that I love RWA. If I didn't, I wouldn't be an involved member of it or three other local/online chapters. They're a wonderful organization in that they allow unpublished authors to join and for the most part, they've been great about educating members about the industry. Until recently that is. Among many other issues, now so many of our epubbed authors are stuck in no man's land in regards to entering the Rita contest or the Golden Heart. I'm a member of PAN (Published Author Network) yet because I'm published with an epublisher, I can't enter the Rita, but because I'm too published, I can't enter the Golden Heart (which I don't want to, but still, they shouldn't leave writers out in the cold).

There have been heated discussions on both sides with many people threatening to leave RWA or those who have already done so and I don't think that's the answer. Change comes from the inside so join your local chapter, or ESPAN (or both) and make your voice heard. The real problem I have with RWA is its lack of willingness to educate authors on epublishing. I'm epublished and was lucky enough to have someone look at my contracts before making a decision, but not everyone will have that. I also knew what questions to ask thanks to various classes/articles/posts on Romance Divas. It would be nice if RWA provided education on epublishing contracts and what to look for in a reputable company. Instead, they turn a blind eye and in the long run, this is going to hurt the people they claim to want to protect. In fact, I believe it's already hurting authors. Because many authors who have already sold to NY haven't properly negotiated the digital aspect of their contracts, the royalty norm has been set between 6-12% and that's just beyond ridiculous.

Okay, I'm going to stop with that now because that's not the real reason I decided to post on RWA and epublishing today. I wanted to tell y'all why I love being epublished. First I'd like to say that my ultimate goal is to be published in print. There I said it. I posted about a couple weeks ago, but I just signed with an agent so it's obvious that I'm striving to be published mass market. The thing is, I want the best of both worlds. I love writing for Ellora's Cave and if/when I write for NY, I plan to keep writing for EC. They have a market for the short erotic novellas I write, they pay almost 40% royalties, they pay ON TIME (monthly), they negotiate contracts, and everyone I've worked with or dealt with has been super professional.

I took an online class about six months ago and the instructor is a well known author who got her start in epublishing. I noticed that she had an upcoming release from EC so off loop I asked her why she still wrote for them when she was churning out books in NY. Her answer was simple. She didn't want to put all her eggs in one basket, she sold to them without the help of her agent, and most importantly, many of her EC books (novellas) had outsold some of her NY books. Not to mention they pay her monthly as opposed to getting an advance from NY, then waiting a year, sometimes two, to get the rest of her money.

As far as RWA is concerned, there doesn't have to be an Us vs. Them mentality. Members simply want an education on the changing market and as a representative of romance authors, RWA owes its members to give them that education. If you're interested in making a difference or seeing change in RWA, think about joining the yahoo loop, RWA change: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RWAchange/