And here I was thinking nobody noticed my entourage. Next year I’ll be more discreet, at least while in the bar.

It was great meeting you, Jane. (For those of you who haven’t seen her – She’s tall, slim, elegant, and oh so pretty.) Can’t wait to see you next year in SF.

Ruth

Very interesting discussion. Let me weigh in with another perspective, this from a small-press published author, who has made most of her royalties on digital sales from her publisher’s website. And one who has no intention of resigning from RWA. Why would I leave the organization that has helped me so much just because of a blip in the organization’s policies? This controversy doesn’t pass my 5-year test, as in, will it matter in 5 years? Not a bit, IMHO.

The furor was raised by the definition of vanity presses that encompassed all epublishers. The later clarification, to the effect that “primarily” was not the intended word and “exclusively” should have been used to describe sales from the publisher’s website, does sound ludicrous coming from a group of people who make a career out of carefully selecting their words. Add to that the fact that only now is a task force being organized to study the epublishing portion of the industry, and the situation gives every impression of a BoD that formulated policy in total ignorance.

“Publisher recognition” never made sense to me and I’m pleased to see it fall by the wayside. However, the argument that RWA intends to protect its members from publishers that do not meet RWA’s standards is questionable. As the guidelines for participation in editor appointments at National were presented, publishers who do not meet RWA’s criteria may still participate at the national conference by paying a fee. How many members who wouldn’t do their due diligence before signing a contract – or even, heaven forfend, before submitting! – will bother to pay attention to, or be put off by, which publishers had to pay to participate and which didn’t?

As for royalty income, to date I’ve made at least $1K on every one of my ebooks – some of them have brought in a lot more than that in the first month. That’s with my current publisher. When I was with LTDBooks (years ago but who’s counting?), and before that the pioneer Dreams Unlimited, epublishing was in its infancy and such an ROI was inconceivable. Times have changed, and the industry will change with it. ‘Tis the nature of the beast.

Oh, and I’d really like to see a royalty rate of at least 30% on digital sales added to the RWA expectations of an acceptable publisher. Given the low overhead and minimal cost of sales for digital copies, I see no justification for a publisher paying authors the same royalties as for print sales.

I also agree with TeddyPig that the magnitude of the reaction has to do with the way three eoresses were given the RWA recongition many of their writers craved, or at least appreciated, only to lose it scant months later. In a reversal fo the old adage it would be better not to be recognised at all, than recognised and dropped–and the whole vanity issue is a hot button.

Still chuckling. ;)

WHY when we book can’t they just say you’ll be in room whatever? But they won’t. So every year I have to go around telling people, or taking calls from the front desk so they’ll tell people.

The funny thing is as we were all getting ready for the party, we realized that there was no room number on the invitation.

I think this is the funniest thing in the entire post. What a way to weed out guests. Invite them and then hide the party. Hehehe.

Well see, I can respect that reaction. It was a BIG deal to the writers when the ePubs finally got recognized. People started to feel they were being seen as professionals. It did give a sense of validation.

I did go to the librarian’s day organized by the phenomenal Cathie Linz on Wednesday and had a great discussion about eBooks. Libraries and eBooks is still a frontier (to be well not just conquered, but entered!)

Malle

All I can say is Angela James you are all that and a bag of chips.

No one will ever convince me otherwise.

Well. Thank you :) I hope that I never manage to convince you otherwise!

She is, and Doritos at that.

Whoo, feeling the love now!

All I can say is Angela James you are all that and a bag of chips.

She is, and Doritos at that. :) It’s always a relief to read Angie’s calm, professional, informative comments in the midst of hysteria. It was also a relief to have her home to explain what was going on because I thought the changes (other than the vanity wording) were positive for authors and I couldn’t figure out why many of my fellow e-published authors were frothing at the mouth and spewing the anti-NY/RWA vitriol again. I thought I was missing something.

I’ve never been to a National conference, but I’m going to seriously give it some thought in the future. Not San Fran because I can’t be a coast away from my kids and enjoy myself, but I might try for DC. It sounds like this year was awesome, and it’s the first year I’ve really regretted not being there.

All I can say is Angela James you are all that and a bag of chips.

No one will ever convince me otherwise.

Memory like a broken colander, man. *shudders* Also? Gonna be the Marriott Marquis. *eye twitches* Y’all, I went there last year. I’m skeered to go trekking again as it is. On the plus side, maybe all the construction’ll be done by 2013.

That is to say, Jane, I’m quite envious. Very, actually. It sounds like a place where, for the most part, everyone felt like they belonged. Like a crazy family reunion where you see people you haven’t seen years, and makes you all giggly. Where the muckity muck thinks you’ve been sipping the wine a bit too much. ;) I’m glad you had fun. You do a lot for the site, so it’s nice to see that you get to bear the fruits of it.

Vanity Press publishing has always carried with it not-so-positive terms and many authors felt was a serious blow from an organization they’d previously felt a part of

I would have to agree with Angie on this. One of the things I talked about with Crissy Brashear at the Samhain breakfast at RWA (okay, maybe harped on is a better description) is that a legitimate, royalty-paying epublisher does not meet the basic definition of a vanity publisher.

Vanity Press: a printing house that specializes in publishing books for which the authors pay all or most of the costs. –dictionary.com

The kind of epublisher Angie described (Samhain) does not make authors pay for their books to be published. So, not only is the term less than positive, it’s also inaccurate. Hey, I’m a librarian, forgive me for being anal in the area of describing/defining/categorizing–this is what they pay me for in real life.

Angela, I understood more in your single post than in a dozen rants I passed through today. Thanks.

Thank you. In another lifetime, I worked on a treatment team in a psych hospital. I learned quickly that to be a good advocate for the patients on that team, I needed to be able to speak rationally and calmly while presenting facts. The psychiatrist and/or psychologist was rarely impressed if I drove myself to tears in impassioned pleas or arguments. This is just another form of advocating, same principles apply.

Let me ask–apart from the publisher benchmark, there was a qualifying writer’s one for PAN. Is that right? 1k earned on a book. I hope I have this right. If so, and going by what you’ve just told us, then it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for an ebook author to routinely earn 1k–not in an advance, but in royalties? So the writers would be reasonably protected–if I have it right.

Let’s say the book sells for a cover price of 5.50 (for us this a book of 60-100k words) and the author makes 40% of the royalties. The author would need to sell around 450 copies of the book to earn the $1000 benchmark, in I believe 18 months was what the board set as the term. That’s definitely doable, in my opinion.

And the process and culture of epublishing is something that needs to be better understood in order to make things fair and equitable in RWA land?

Yes, I believe I attempted to explain this to Allison Kelley and Stef Feagan during our brief chat at RWA, but I strongly feel that much of the uproar you’re seeing across the internet comes from something which seems simple, but is a loaded term: vanity press. Had the attempt not been made to define it quite so broadly, and in terms which have never been used before (namely the one small portion about publisher primarily selling their books from a publisher-generated website) then I believe a huge portion of this upset could have been avoided. From what I’ve been seeing, it’s that in particular which has epublished authors feeling targeted and segregated. Vanity Press publishing has always carried with it not-so-positive terms and many authors felt was a serious blow from an organization they’d previously felt a part of, under the publisher recognition policy.

Let me ask–apart from the publisher benchmark, there was a qualifying writer’s one for PAN. Is that right? 1k earned on a book. I hope I have this right. If so, and going by what you’ve just told us, then it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for an ebook author to routinely earn 1k–not in an advance, but in royalties?

So the writers would be reasonably protected–if I have it right. And the process and culture of epublishing is something that needs to be better understood in order to make things fair and equitable in RWA land?