This is the new theme. I’m still tweaking it but I think I got all the major non-display screwy bugs out. Please let me know if I’m wrong.
Breaking down RWA Eligibility
It’s hardly a surprise that I believe that RWA needs to find ways to embrace digital publishing. But the more I think about the need for RWA to change its ways, the more complicated I find the issues to be. This is a post that sort of details where I am in my thinking process. It’s not an official statement from RWAChange. It’s just what I think about the question.
When I first started thinking about RWAChange, my initial impression was that RWA’s list of Eligible publishers was nothing more than paternalism. Why require an advance to be paid? Who is RWA to determine what makes an author “career-focused”? After reading through the Bylaws and the Policies & Procedure Manual, and listening to what people have to say, I think I’ve concluded that the question of what publishers lands on the list of RWA Eligibility is very important to its membership for one very simple reason: Money. Not RWA’s money. Not the RWA Board’s money. But my money, and your money, and the money of anyone who attends the RWA National Conference.
Here’s what I’ve gleaned about RWA Eligibility from the Policies & Procedures Manual:
Only RWA Eligible publishers can accept pitch appointments at Nationals. Only RWA Eligible publishers can hold spotlights at Nationals. (According to Diane Pershing, but not according to the P&PM, [Edited to add: my apologies to President Pershing; this is covered in the Policies & Procedure Manual at 8.14; I missed it the first time.] only RWA Eligible publishers can offer workshops at Nationals, too). RWA Eligible publishers are comped at Nationals–that is, they don’t have to pay the hefty registration fee. (In exchange for this, they must take pitch appointments and/or speak in workshops.)
What does that mean to you as a member?
RWA Eligibility adds value to your conference if you are unpublished:
- It allows you to schedule pitch appointments with industry professionals who purchase, publish, and represent manuscripts.
- It gives you access to workshops run by industry professionals who will give you an inside view as to craft and market outlook.
- It provides publisher spotlights, book signings, and other events that help you see what’s selling, and what publishers are excited about.
- It creates an event where editors and agents come together, and networking opportunities abound (last year at Nationals, I was still unpublished, but my book was on submission–and my agent dragged me around to meet the editors who had it on their desk. This was invaluable to me in my decision-making, because I could see who I “clicked” with.)
RWA Eligible Publishers also provide value to published authors (and I suspect it provides more value to them than to the unpublished):
- It broadens your audience: At the publisher-sponsored signings, and at the literacy signing, hundreds of readers may obtain free books from you and try you out.
- It provides natural marketing: If your book is highlighted at a publisher spotlight, many people may put it on their list of books “to buy” to see what’s so hot about it.
- It provides a forum for you to meet with your editor and agent.
- If your publisher throws a party (as many publishers do), you will meet with other authors who work for your publisher and be able to network.
- If you’re looking for a new agent (or a new publisher), or looking to write in a new genre, you get all the benefits that the unpublished authors do. (For many authors, the difference between “published” and “unpublished” are just not that large, believe it or not!)
None of this is a surprise. RWA Eligibility for publishers does a great deal of work for you as an author, most particularly at the National Conference. So why not recognize more publishers as RWA Eligible? More publishers = more value, right?
The flip side of this is that it does it at at cost. If you look at the list of industry professionals listed on RWA’s conference site, please keep in mind that many of those professionals are not paying a conference fee. That means that, in determining how much you are paying for conference, part of the cost that you are bearing is the price of the meeting space, the price of comping lunch for those editors and agents, and so forth. If those editors and agents were not comped, the price of Nationals to the individual might fall from (say) $475 to $400 (I don’t know what the amount is–I just made it up for illustration purposes, so don’t complain it is too large or too small.)
Of course, the fall-off in quality would be pretty clear, too. You wouldn’t have pitch appointments. You might not have editors giving workshops on what they look for in a submission, or agents answering questions about how to write a query. Editors might not come at all, and then many authors might choose not to attend because they couldn’t meet with their editor, and so you’d miss out on those workshops on craft from published authors and those networking opportunities. RWA comps these editors (and their activities) because they believe that the added $75 (or whatever it is) to the ticket price of conference is worth the value that editor attendance adds.
(I’ve heard that RWA did try to get rid of comping altogether–with the end result that industry professionals did not show up, and the conference was not a major success for those who attended.)
The more RWA-Eligible publishers there are, the greater the cost to the paying attendees. I’ve seen people claim that RWA doesn’t open up eligibility to e-publishers for monetary reasons. This was presented as something hugely sinister, like RWA was selling out publishers for filthy lucre, and I don’t think that is a fair representation at all.
It’s not RWA’s organizational money that is at stake here. It’s ours, the authors who attend conference. I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t want to pay $800 to go to conference just so that the Mesopotamian Press of Bluebirds, a group that publishes three authors and sells 60 copies of books each year, can hold a publisher spotlight and pitch appointments, and their editors can attend for free. Neither do I want to pay $300 to attend a conference where my editor and agent don’t show up, and neither do three quarters of my good friends on the author circuit.
RWA Eligibility is like a spigot that must be finely tuned: Set the bar for eligibility too high, and you exclude too many publishers; as a result, the authors affiliated with those publishers, and writers who wish to be affiliated with them, stop attending Conference and Conference loses value. Set the bar too low, and you include too many publishers, and the price of Conference becomes too high. Somewhere in between is a happy medium: the place where the value of Conference is high, but the price of Conference is not exorbitant.
It’s not paternalism to set standards for RWA Eligibility (which was my initial thought); RWA Eligible publishers are publishers that conference attendees subsidize, at their own very personal dollar cost. I apologize for calling it paternalism; now that I’ve thought it through, I’ve changed my mind.
The only thing I disagree with in the current Policies and Procedures Manual (on this point) is where the spigot has been set. I think the advance model is not the only way to build a career, and I think there are significant advantages to the e-business model that RWA should recognize. As such, I would like to see a standard for determining RWA eligibility that includes intelligent e-publishers, who offer the means for their writers to make a career of writing.
Should this standard let in all e-publishers, or all small press publishers? No–that would be too costly for the membership of RWA, and would provide too little benefit to justify the added cost. But just as we don’t want to exclude all print publishers from RWA Eligibility, or the cost of conference suffers, we also don’t want to exclude all e-publishers. If e-publishers must pay for their conference fee, if they cannot hold pitch appointments or spotlight their top authors, they might not show up, and then their e-authors won’t show up either. If e-authors see no benefit to going to RWA, they won’t hold workshops, won’t network with others. . . .
When Diane Pershing said there were only two digital workshops suggested to RWA’s workshop committee this year, that should have been a warning sign, not an indication that nobody cared about e-publishing. That signaled that the National conference is not providing sufficient value to the people who are skilled in e-publishing–even though there is tremendous interest among the membership to learn more about e-publishing. RWA’s current stance is driving e-authors and e-publishers from Conference, and that means that we are all losing value.
You’ll note I haven’t talked about where the spigot should be set, except to say that the current model is too restrictive. I’ll try to cover what I think there in later posts.
Oops!
I just realized I was also supposed to announce the winners of the proof copies of the Dangerous Book of Excerpts.
So, the winners are: Crystal Fulcher, Bonnie Ferguson, and Danielle Yockman.
Send me your snail mail addresses and you’ll get a proof copy of The Dangerous Book of Excerpts.
GOTH winner (and squees)
The winner of the ARC of Goddess of the Hunt is . . . Lorelei Brown! Yay! Lorelei, e-mail me your address and it will go out in the mail tomorrow.
And while we’re at it, I want to register two squees. First, for Maggie Robinson. You may remember that she sold her first two sensual erotic historical romance to Berkley Heat a month or two ago–to be marketed under Margaret Rowe. Now, she’s sold four books and two novellas to Kensington Brava. Congratulations, Maggie! You are going to be a superstar!
Second, I want to take a moment to squee for Vicky Dreiling. A year and a half ago, Vicky and I both had historical romances that finaled in North Texas’s Great Expectations contest. Vicky took first place; I took last. But before they’d announced the judging results, we had exchanged a few e-mails, discovered that we met at RWA Nationals the year before. We both had our ups and downs in the months that followed–and sometime in May last year I sent her this in an e-mail:
I just have this feeling about you, too–even though I’ve never read anything you wrote except those 100 words I saw on Bookend’s website. I just *know* you’re going to sell, and when you do, I’m going to be first in line to buy that book.
And guess what? Vicky Dreiling just sold a trilogy to Grand Central!
So go congratulate these ladies. And hopefully, in a year, I will be giving away ARCs to their books. 🙂
Coveting the Goddess
Many of you know that I am Tessa Dare‘s biggest fangirl. (And no, I am not referring to my weight.)
It’s been hugely exciting for me to watch everyone fall in love with her, starting with the agents who wanted her, to the auction that ensued when Goddess of the Hunt went on submission. Now her book is only slightly more than one month away from release, and reviews are beginning to show up. In the last week, I’ve seen reviews from the two major print sources that review romances.
Library Journal gave Goddess of the Hunt a coveted starred review, and said: “This is an exceptional debut novel, from the first hilarious “practice” session to the gradual melting of Jem’s outward reserve and Lucy’s maturing realization of whom she really loves. VERDICT A beautifully crafted tale that captivates with sassy wit, a lush, sweetly intense sensuality, and an abundance of beautifully articulated, appealing characters.”
And today, Publisher’s Weekly chimed in. It also gave Goddess of the Hunt a coveted starred review: “Dare seems to have fit all the best of romance into one novel, from sensuous interludes and crafty humor to endearing multidimensional characters. Readers will eagerly anticipate the two sequels due in the fall.”
Now, you may notice that I’ve referred to both those reviews as “coveted.” But let’s face it. What’s really coveted isn’t the review. What you are coveting right now is . . . an early copy. Oh yes, those are coveted. But, you say, ARCs were few and far between. Tessa gave away her last ARCs on Dear Author; and auctioned one off for charity for a fairly hefty sum. There are no more ARCs to be had.
Except . . . what’s this?
Oh, my. That would be . . . an ARC. Of Goddess of the Hunt. In my hot, greedy, cunning little hands.
Tell me, do you covet it? Yes? Well, one of you will get it. Here’s what you need to do to win a chance to get the last Goddess standing.
- Post on your blog, or post a tweet, about Tessa Dare’s Goddess of the Hunt.
- Post a comment on this blog post, with a link to your blog. If you are entering a tweet, mark your tweet with the hashtag “#goth” to enter and make sure to reference the author of GOTH by including @TessaDare.
- Enter by Thursday, June 25th, at 6 PM EST to win.
- One winner will be chosen by random drawing to receive the truly coveted ARC of Goddess of the Hunt. Two other winners will be chosen, also by random drawing, to receive slightly less-coveted proof copies of “The Dangerous Book of Excerpts.” “The Dangerous Book of Excerpts” contains an excerpt of Goddess of the Hunt (longer than the one on Tessa’s website), an excerpt from Surrender of a Siren (longer than the one on her website, which is nonexistent). It also contains excerpts from my own works, but pshaw; those are not coveted at all! These exhibit some signs of wear and even have scribblings in them, as they really were used as proofs.
Enjoy! Covet! And spread the word–Goddess of the Hunt managed to “fit all the best of romance into one novel.” And that is something to talk about.
Edited to add: Romantic Times comes in with a 4 1/2 star review and a TOP pick! “Dare is on the path to stardom…. Dare uses wit and wisdom, humor and sensuality to relate a tale of tangled love that reveals her ability to touch hearts with her appealing characters.”
‘Scuse the mess
I’m fiddling with the appearance of the blog at the moment. Might take me a couple of days to sort out.
Excerpt & bonus!
I’ve finally posted a short teaser excerpt (700 words) for my October novella, “This Wicked Gift.” There’s a special bonus there for those of you who go look…. Hint: It’s pretty!
You’ll get a longer excerpt in a little while, but I thought you’d enjoy seeing this now.
June (and winners)
First things first: The winner of the Jackie Barbosa giveaway is…. Sarah Anderson! Yay, Sarah! Send me your snail mail address & I’ll send your prize right out.
Second things second: It’s June! And that means that courtneymilan.com has changed its feathers once again. This month, it is light green.
Cover Tease
So, I’ve seen my cover for PROOF BY SEDUCTION, and it is lovely. But I’m not sure if I can show it to anyone yet.
In any event, since I am still waiting for the go-ahead, I thought I would share one of the things I loved about this cover with you: The font they used for the title.
Isn’t that gorgeous? Okay, the title isn’t in red on the cover of my book; it’s in white (the rest of the cover is a fairly rich purple). But I had to make it red here, just for fun.
I love it! The rest of the cover is even better (including, um, the part that is most interesting to me and least interesting to you, namely, my name). But I’ll have to wait to post it until I get the official go-ahead.
For now, you’ll just have to believe that the rest of the cover is as gorgeous as the title. 🙂
Behind the Red Door (Giveaway)
Today is, once again, the semi-official something-annual holiday of “Buy a Book Not Written by Courtney” day. And the holiday it is, is Buy Jackie Barbosa’s Behind the Red Door, a single-author anthology which collects three erotic novellas.
Now, I have to admit, novellas are an interesting art form. That is: As an author, you have to tell (a) a complete story (b) with character growth on the part of the hero and heroine without (c) skimping on description. Add in the requirement that the story must be erotic, and you have a further constraint: You have to use a large number of your words for sex. What I sometimes see happening with such erotic novellas is that the characters and/or the plot get lost in the erotic elements. It’s hard not to fall into this trap; you have a small number of words, and so much to accomplish with them. This might make you think that novellas are doomed to be inferior to whole books, that by necessity they must be limited creatures. But this isn’t true. A great novella can be even better than a book–a finely crafted piece of work, every sentence, every word serving double or even triple duty in its service of character, heat, and story. And this means that plot, character, and yes, eroticism, are constantly present–because she weaves them into the story with a deft touch.
Jackie delivers three novellas that fit that bill. The stories have a powerful economy to them. And even though her heroes and heroines have a great deal to overcome, Jackie also manages to weave a thread of sly humor into all their interactions. I don’t want to offer too many spoilers, but let me just say that to find a story that mixes eroticism and emotion in equal measures, and then present it, alongside questions of family feeling, takes a lot. And with BEHIND THE RED DOOR, Jackie does this not just once, but three times. I adore these novellas, and hope that you will too!
In celebration of “Buy a Book Written by Jackie Barbosa” Day, I’m going to be tromping off to neighborhood stores to take pictures in the wild of BtRD. And one lucky commenter will win a copy of the book!