I read a lot of blogs and news releases and do my best to keep up with industry news and last week when the latest RWA response from President Diane Pershing came out, even I couldn’t hold my tongue. I posted an immediate knee jerk response and fortunately many others far more eloquent than I also responded.  After spending half my day watching the fall out online, I asked myself “Why are you letting this get to you? You have a book to write.” and I promptly turned off the internet and went back to work which is far more productive than arguing about RWA.

However, over the weekend I stewed about it and I read some more blog comments and just shook my head in disgust.  Controversy begets debates and arguing, which is good, but it also brings out the worst in some people and the next thing you know people are talking about authors behaving badly again.

As a brand spanking newbie writer back in 2006, I rushed to join RWA and my local chapter and LOVED it.  As you’ve heard from so many people the chapter level groups can be a writer’s best friend. For a while…for some longer. How well your chapter meets your needs is not a one size fits all.

After my publishing career, and yes it is a career path thank you very much, began in 2007 things with RWA went downhill fast.  By the end of 2008 I said enough is enough, I don’t need this stress and left RWA behind me. And to be honest it’s a decision I have questioned more than once.  I feel like I should belong, that somehow I am letting my local group down and ultimately missing out on the bigger picture.

But if I sit down and ask myself “What is RWA doing for me?” I come away with nothing worth the price of admission or the time it takes to deal with the stress of controversy.

With RWA I am neither PRO or PAN because the rules for both are f*cked up. When they changed the rules for PAN to $1000 in sales the first year, I thought “ok” I can live with that. Especially since that included novellas as well as novels.  I hadn’t quite reached that level but I knew I was well on my way.  So I waited for the logical PRO changes that would mirror the PAN changes. and waited…and waited… Oh and squawked about it to no avail as no one would even acknowledge me.

Let me explain.  Up until recently I was a short story writer.  The stories I published ranged between 8000 words to 25,000 words.  So if I made enough money I could qualify for PAN but to qualify for PRO you still had to write the full length books.  Wait?! I can hypothetically qualify for PAN but not PRO? WTF? What kind of career progression is that? And how is that helping me again?

That was hard enough to live with and now RWA is backpedaling even farther.  I don’t think I need to rehash the whole thing about how they think the no advance epublishing model is not valid but some of the arguments I have seen are questionable at best. I like epublishing and it’s model and have every intention of continuing my CAREER down that road. I don’t yet know what the future brings for me but I can tell you one thing. I am cautious and very much into research so any publishing decision I make is with a lot of thought and planning.  If RWA’s entire argument is that they are trying to protect it’s members then by God they need to be educating them not debunking a successful business model.  That is made of all kinds of what the f*ckery.

But i’m rambling again.  One of the arguments I keep seeing over and over is that RWA has to protect it’s members from poor sales and low pay and by example they keep talking about people who only make a few hundred dollars per book.  Uhm… Are we really comparing apples to apples? Did you even ask that question? I’m not convinced.

Let’s use me as an example again.  I recently wrote an 8000 word short story and published it with an epublisher that is NOT Ellora’s Cave or Samhain. Because it seems from all the arguments those are the only somewhat legitimate epublishers. Nothing against them but come on!

Based on early feedback from sales I will likely make between $400-$600 on that story in it’s first 6 months.  So for a story that took less than a week to write I will bring home a modest yet very decent wage.  In what world is $400-$600 for a week’s worth of work not at least a nice part-time income? It’s not as if I write 8 hours a day because I still work a full-time day job. What if I only made $200? Still not bad for the amount of time it took to write. Jeez.

And you know what? I am not the exception.

There are so many variables and possible outcomes that to pigeonhole an entire group of authors and publishers based on what you have “heard” is irresponsible.

I have since written a full length (by RWA PRO qualifying standards) and had it published by an epublisher and I am very happy with the money it has made so far.  Probably would have more than qualified for PAN if it had made it to full distribution before the decision to close the publisher came down.  (oops there are two more issues I keep hearing about)

Recent comments on a blog claimed that epublishing is less because we do not have distribution. Uhm…yes we do. Any epublisher worth it’s salt has learned that even in ebooks distribution has become key. (in fact I stopped publishing with one publisher because they stubbornly refuse to explore more distribution options) Just like NY distributes their books out to chains and independent bookstores, epublishers now do the same. Some have been doing this for a very long time.

We have places like All Romance eBooks, Amazon, Fictionwise, Books on Board, My Bookstore and More, Smashwords and the options continue to grow.

I guess my point after this way too long post is that stop looking at everything in black and white.  People have been playing in the grey areas for years.  I nor anyone else is trying to convince you that one business model is better than the other, only that their are options.  The same kind of thing RWA should be doing for their members.

Eliza