I am the Vice-President of the ESPAN Chapter of RWA and am so proud to have had Deidre choose our chapter to call for a change within the RWA. You can find her fantastic blog post at ESPAN.
The bottom line is that RWA is supposed to serve the needs of all its members and while you can’t be everything to everyone, you can fit the needs of most. That “most” no longer includes solely traditionally published authors. Epubbed and small press authors are part of the mix too and, judging by the reaction on these issues, not a minority part.
Right now epublished (not to be confused with self-pubbed or vanity presses) and small press authors are too published for the Golden Heart, but not published enough for the Rita. They can earn PRO status and PAN status, but aren’t considered “career-focussed” authors because their publishers do not offer an advance or are not mass-produced. Yet, for the most part, their royalty percentage is quite large compared to that of their counterpart.
Some epubbed authors far surpass the $1k PAN requirements, some don’t. Just like some NYC print authors
Just like with traditional print authors, epubbed authors are good, bad and everywhere in between. So why not let them play on the same field? Why are they treated differently? Why are we creating division between our authors by declaring some are more published than others?
You have my support! I will check Deidre’s post Friday…interested to know RWA President’s response!
by Jax Cassidy June 18th, 2009 at 7:35 am ♦PS. I mentioned you in my blog…
by Jax Cassidy June 19th, 2009 at 7:00 pm ♦