I’ll be blogging from RWA Nationals in San Francisco at the end of the month along with about 10 other bloggers. I’ve set up a special page here at Dear Author that will contain both substantive posts (hopefully with lots of pictures) and my tweets (the one liners that give you kind of a [...]

Last year I kind of did a live blog from RWA using Twitter. This inserted hundreds of 2 sentence blog entries onto DA. It annoyed some people. So in preparation for this year, I’d like to hear what readers would want in terms of liveblogging the event.
I didn’t go to many seminars [...]

So the story that Publisher’s Weekly reported on today is that a small print inspirational publishing house is getting the RITA shaft. The Publishers’ Weekly article says that Tsaba House publisher was barred from submitter her own book, Sanctuary, for a RITA Award based on the fact that Tsaba was not an RWA [...]

The Board approved the following 2008 Award Recipients:

RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award – Vicki Lewis Thompson (this used to be the Lifetime Achievement Award but was renamed to the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award)

RWA Emma Merritt Service Award – Linda Winstead Jones

RWA Service Award – Jill Limber, Nicole Burnham

RWA Vivian Stephens Industry Award [...]

This will make some authors deliriously happy, but RWA is no longer providing press passes to internet media at the annual convention.
Over the past several years, RWA has had a lenient Conference press-pass policy; however, due to the increased number of on-line outlets, RWA is no longer able to waive registration fees for [...]

There are heated discussions on various loops and blogs regarding the accusations of plagiarism against a published romance author. Some questions have also been raised regarding RWA’s stand on the matter. To be clear, RWA does not condone plagiarism or any type of copyright infringement. (Please see RWA’s Code of Ethics http://www.rwanational.org/cs/code_of_ethics).
RWA takes all accusations [...]

First up is the Apple iPhone issue.
On Thursday, Apple released an iPhone firmware update that adds several functions incluing TV out functionality (meaning you can hook up the iPhone to the TV and watch the video iPhone content on the TV) and the ability to buy music over a wifi connection from [...]

RWA released its slate of Board candidates. Article 8 of the Bylaws explains the procedures for Election. Elections are conducted during the fourth quarter of the RWA fiscal year with one Regional Director from each region shall be elected each year.
If you are unhappy with the way that RWA is run, this is [...]

Three weeks ago, the Romance Writers of America handed out its RITA awards which is deemed by the industry to be the highest award an author can achieve. It’s an award, though, that is the target of a great deal criticism for everything from its categories to the entrance fee to the way in [...]

New Vanity and Subsidy Publisher Definitions from RWA were announced after a board meeting on July 25th. This is the entirety of the decision found at RWA website.
* * *
At the request of members, the Board has re-visited the definitions of “Subsidy Publisher” and “Vanity Publisher.” After considering the advice of legal [...]

I can see that the blog time is wrong and will change that. I also have realized that I forgot to post an afternoon review. Many apologies. It’s frenetic here and I doubt that many reviews will be going up this week. I hope you’ll understand.
I got back to the room [...]

Met Jami Alden, author of Delicious and Taste of Honey, she apparently loves Sybil. We ran into her again in the Goody Room with Monica McCarty and Bella Andre. McCarty has a three book series coming out from Ballantine starting in August.

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 [...]

Kristie J here reporting from Dallas
Considering the fact that I haven’t flown in over 27 years, things went swimmingly well. I got to the airport on time, got my boarding pass no problem. Things though have changed in 26 years. I didn’t have [...]

Today I leave for Dallas for the RWA National Convention, toga optional. At Blogging National, there are 150+ blogs listed and nearly all of them, as far as I can tell, are author blogs. This makes complete sense because “Nationals”, as it is called, is a writer’s convention. So why am I [...]

In March 2007, RWA decided to review the Publisher Recognition standards. Currently the standards require the following:

publisher pay royalties
not a subsidy or vanity presss
length of business minimum of 1 year
sold at least 1500 hardcover or trade paperback or 5,000 of any other format of one romance book

Selling to the publisher qualifies a member for [...]

Dear Jane,
Thank you for offering me the opportunity to comment.
You are most likely aware that RWA's mission is to advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy. In striving to fulfill its commitment to members, RWA established standards that publishers must meet to participate in [...]

If you were expecting an ebook weekly article, come back next Sunday. We are taking a little detour today.
Last week Barbara Samuel put up a plea at Romancing the Blog for Readers to pay more attention to the RITAs. She titled her post “Why Readers Should Care About the RITA Awards.” I [...]

Samhain Publishing has receieved RWA Publisher Recognition which means that one of its titles sold 5,000 copies in a single year. I’ll speculate that one or more of the following titles sold the requisite number:

Blackmailed by AnnMarie McKenna. While this book was not my personal favorite, I saw it [...]

Loose Id has receieved RWA Publisher Recognition which means that one of its titles sold 5,000 copies in a single year. I can’t begin to guess which Loose Id title(s) that may be, but Huzzah for Loose Id. Their Gecko is better than your Gecko.
Via Michele [...]

Dear Ms. Heart:
I am probably the wrong person to review this book as I generally don’t like short stories unless your name is O. Henry and I am not a fan of erotica. I think this is an erotica novella and not a romance but I am getting more and more confused about [...]

A good friend of mine, Jolie, is a bookseller who specializes in selling romances. She goes to RWA every year. This time I begged her to write up a report about what she found out at the conference about the future of romance. This is her report:

RWA 2006 – Hotlanta!

Another RWA conference [...]

I have only been to one Literacy Signing. I lugged a suitcase full of books from my house to the signing much to the chagrin of Ned who was forced to carry it everywhere (at least when there was no porter in sight). I was excited about finally getting to meet some of [...]