Missing those very special words

A conversation with a friend this morning got me to thinking about why it is that so many authors who enjoy the benefits of digital self-publishing are so seemingly unable to accept criticism.  The accounts of major author meltdowns are too numerous to list here and are easily found with your favorite search engine.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized these reactions aren't a new phenomenon.  One of my very first writing pen-pals, back in the early 1980s, was so furious over a rejection letter from a publisher who had held her manuscript for  several months, that she threatened to throw her typewriter out a second floor window and never write again.  How dare they!

About ten years later, another acquaintance of mine was so furious about requested revisions to her contracted manuscript that she threw temper tantrums on the phone to her editor.  Her refusal to change a single word resulted in the publisher taking virtually unheard of action:  Not only did the editor make all the changes herself, but the publisher cancelled the second book on the contract before the first had gone to press.

Neither of these writers was unfamiliar with the pain of rejection, the sting of criticism.  For some reason or other, however, they reacted excessively to any negative comments.

But their actions were not the norm; most of the writers I knew, whether published or unpublished, knew that their artistic vision sometimes had to be compromised.  They also knew that their prose might or might not be deathless; it might need the deft hand of an editor.  More important, we knew our work would be edited whether we wanted it to be or not.  Dealing with an editor was part of the process.

We also understood that once published, our words were cast in stone.  Or at least in wood pulp, which was almost as permanent.  If the back cover copy listed the heroine's name as Amber and the text had her as Allison, well, too bad.  If the hero was clean-shaven on the cover painting but he is noted for his luxurious mustache throughout the story, oh well, them's the breaks.  When we got our page proofs for final corrections, we may have pointed out the typesetting error on page 220 where Queen Victoria's husband is identified as Prince Alfred, but if no one actually made the correction, it's going to be on page 220 in every single copy printed.  Tough luck.

All of that has changed.  The whole process of writing, for many people, has changed.  Instead of write, rewrite, revise, polish, share with critique partners, enter contests, revise, rewrite, polish, send to agents, send to editors, lather, rinse, repeat; it's now just write and upload.  Oh, maybe some authors hint that if they get enough complaints about the bad grammar and dozens of typos per page, they might go back and revise.  Many, however, just don't care.  Some might decide to pay a professional editor AFTER they've sold enough copies to justify it.  And the real-time nature of digital publishing allows them to do that.  Nothing is carved in stone any more.  So the first digital "edition" is full of typos and grammatical mistakes; the second has been professionally proofread and most of the errors are cleaned up.

But another thing that has changed is that digital self-publishing offers no visible mark of quality assurance.  The reader who goes to a bookstore and sees shelf after shelf after shelf of paper and ink books knows that most of them have been through sufficient selection and editing to be halfway decent.  Oh, the occasional clinker slips through, and virtually no book is without at least a couple of typos, but if the story was good enough to be accepted by a publisher, then it was good enough for the publisher to make sure the final product was clean.  In many cases, the manuscript had to be reasonably clean just to get the editor to read it, but in all cases, the expectation of a clean final product was the norm.

Another thing that has changed is that the author can't carry around a copy of the book -- or even the contract or letter of acceptance -- as evidence of quality.  I'm a romance novelist, and throughout my tenure in RWA, there was a strict division between the published and the unpublished, even though RWA admitted the unpublished writer -- even the person who thought maybe she might someday want to write a romance novel but hadn't yet actually done so! -- to full membership.  That began to change in 1989 with the formation of PAN (Published Authors' Network) and in 1994 when I started PASIC (Published Authors' Special Interest Chapter).  And believe me, there were a whole lot of unpublished members of RWA who absolutely hated that the published members had something extra.  (Never mind, as I pointed out routinely, that a published author was FOREVER excluded from the Golden Heart contest.)

RWA still maintains strict requirements that an applicant must meet to claim that "published author" status, and the sad truth is that most of the current crop of write-it-and-upload-it self-published authors are not going to meet those requirements.  Digital self-publishing does not carry the same weight as the message from an established publisher, whether it comes as email, phone call, or letter, "We'd like to publish your book"

Old words, old pathways, old destinations

The search for the evidence that RWA had been apprised of Dorchester's shenanigans (a good word on this St. Patrick's Day) took me through some dark and shadowed avenues of my earlier writing career.  I may detail some of the other half-forgotten items I discovered, but not yet.  Some of the re-opened wounds are still too painful.

My intention, however, through all the things that happened and that I myself did, was always to honor my chosen genre and its writers as well as promote the welfare of ALL writers and defend them against the depredations of the publishers. ALL publishers.

I know now that I first notified RWA about Dorchester/Leisure/BMI almost 20 years ago.  What, if anything, was done in the five years between then and when I left RWA in 1998, I don't know.  I haven't been able to find anything.  I know that very little was done to bring Kensington/Zebra to heel when they were behind on royalty payments and had royalty rates below industry standard. 

(One of the items I found in my search was a royalty statement of my own from Kensington that shows a sale of rights to Russia, but I'm not sure yet I was ever paid for it; I need to find the time to look it over more closely.  I've also discovered that there was apparently another printing by Kensington of another of the three books I worte for them, but it doesn't show up on any of the royalty statements.  Again, I need more time to research it.)

But my point here is that from the very beginning, RWA was in a position simply due to the overwhelming size of its membership -- 8,000 or so in 1993; now over 10,000 -- to do something about Dorchester/Leisure, and it doesn't look like they did.  Too many unpublished RWA members saw Leisure, regardless its royalty rates, regardless its crappy contracts, regardless anything, as a viable avenue for publication, and publication was the brass ring that could not be moved any further away or made any harder to grasp.  And the unpublished majority ruled.

I went over to the RWA website the other day to verify whether certain subdivisions of the organization still existed.  PASIC is still there, the Published Authors' Special Interest Chapter, shown as founded in 1995.  No, my friends, PASIC was not founded in 1995.  It was founded on the evening of 13 October 1994, when the following was posted on the GEnie network's Romance Writer's Exchange Roundtable discussion board, where a number of authors had been discussing their desire to have an RWA conference for the published authors only, without the crush and bother of the unpublished:

Sent on 10/13/94 at 8:53p

All:

This may be a long post, and I really have difficult work I should be doing but . . . . . . . . .

I *think* there may be a way to have a PAN conference.  Now, I could be way out in left field and this idea just came to me and I haven't explored it very much, so I'm just throwing this out for discussion.

WHAT IF we formed an RWA chapter, just like any other chapter, only the bylaws of the chapter restricted membership in that chapter to published authors?  Then we could have a chapter conference just for published authors, couldn't we?  And we could have it anywhere we wanted, because if RWA is inc.'ed in TX but has a converence in NY or HI, why not a chapter in CA having a conference in IL or MT or wherever it damn well -- ooops, sorry -- darn well pleased?

As I understand it, there is at least one chatper that does have some kind of restrictions on membership, so hey, why not explore this angle?  A chapter can have conferences, put out a newsletter, charge dues, give awards, have meetings, etc., etc., and be under the RWA umbrella for taxes unless and until it wants to go out on its own.  Other chapters have done that, too.

Linda, scared to death and holding her breath, Hilton

Words in fading echoes

How will I ever find time for my day job?

The whole Dorchester thing sent me into my archives yesterday, but I didn't immediately find what I was looking for, so this morning I hauled out the big fat three-ring binder with all my PANdora's Box newsletters.

History, because I was there:  The Published Authors' Network of RWA was born at a Sunday morning meeting at the 1989 National Conference in Boston.  Because of the RWA bureaucracy, the actual development of PAN into a working "network" took some time, so Volume 1 Number 1 of the PAN newsletter, aka The Box, wasn't published until almost three years later, in April 1992.  As I read through it almost exactly 20 years later I am amazed and horrified at how many issues that were raised in those early editions are still on the table, still unresolved, still causing grief for writers TWO DECADES LATER.

I attended the 1992 National Conference in Chicago that summer, about which Margaret Brownley wrote in the PANdora's Extra post-conference edition, "I was absolutely overwhelmed by PAN's reception in Chicago.  Whenever I felt my body or spirit lag (from lack of sleep), someone choose[sic] that particular moment to say something wonderful about PANdora's Box or PAN.  I honestly felt I could have flown home without a plane (and given the delay of my flight, I would probably have made better time)."

PAN was so desperately needed and so enthusiastically welcomed and supported by (most of) the published authors in RWA, myself included.  Margaret should not have been surprised.

But in that same conference extra edition of The Box, on page 3, were some questions and answers from PAN workshops at the Chicago conference, and one of them caught my eye this morning as I began to stroll through the files, because at some time or other (probably around 2000 when I was writing my honors thesis on romance fiction) I had highlighted this particular question:

What clauses should a writer be especially wary of in a contract?

The agents on our panel advised writers to watch out for the option clause.  Make sure it is as unconfining as possible.  Also, pay strict attention to the amount of money held against reserves.  Make sure you understand how much money will be held and for how long.

Another potential trap is the clause that requires you to return your advance should the publisher reject the finished product.  Richard Curtis stated that should a publisher reject a finished manuscript, the advance should be considered a loss, not a loan to be repaid.

Nothing about royalties on "special sales" or book clubs, even though other issues related to subscription sales and the resultant low royalty rates were brought up in almost every edition of The Box.  Nothing about reversion of rights, even though that had been specifically discussed in a PAN meeting with Harlequin and reported on in that same conference extra edition.  Nothing about sales of subsidiary rights, especially electronic rights, even though by 1992 online communities were already developing and contracts had been written with hints of electronic rights as early as my 1984 contract with Dorchester.

And on the back page of The Box was this:

PAN Panel first of its kind

Five organizations were represented on the panel of professional writing groups.  Participants included Bill Fawcett, Science Fiction Writers of America; Virginia McCullough, National Writers Union; Carla Neggers, Novelists Inc.; Mark Zubro, Sisters in Crime; Linda Cajio, Romance Writers of America.

A lot of fascinating information was exchanged during this one hour panel.  Our only wish is that we had allowed more time.

Many of the problems facing RWA are of universal concern to all writers.  All agreed that royalty statments are a mess.  "Math errors are one of the biggest problems.  Bantam's bookkeeping is abysmal, Baen Books the most comprehensive."

The return/reserve policy is of major concern. Avon's policy of doubling the reserves against sell-throughs on the next book was mentioned.  "The better an author does, the higher the reserves."  (PAN is checking this out.)

Most writers' groups support random audits.  Four years ago, SFWA conducted a mass audit of Simon and Schuster for 200 authors.

SFWA sees audits as preventative medicine.  But it also has had great success in conducting campagns against unfair practices by naming names in their newsletter. (SFWA seemed by far, to be the most fearless and perhaps most successful of the groups in getting changes.  Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.)

All in all, a fascinating discussion. Be watching for more panels of this nature in the future.

By October 1992, the issue of book club royalties was addressed, again, and The Box reported pretty much what I wrote in yesterday's blog: 

The cut-rate royalty paid to Harlequin and Silhouette authors on book club sales was among issues RWA representatives discussed with the publishers at a special meeting during the Chicago conference. The publishers maintained that they paid a lower royalty on book club sales because they aren't making any money on such sales.

It's more expensive to sell a book through mail order than through retailers, publishers said.  They also said mail order customers who don't pay their bills eat into the money the publishers should be making on book club sales.

But they continue to sell books through the mail.  One reason is that the publishers believe many readers cancel their subscriptions to the book clubs and continue to buy the books in stores.

I can't easily research the past 14 years of RWA history and what, if anything, the romance writer's professional organization has done in the way of advocacy for the rights and benefits of the writer or how much RWA has protected the privileges of the publishers, the agents, and yes, the unpublished writers who still make up the vast majority of RWA membership.  But to judge by what's going on with romance writing, with royalties on digital editions and reversion of rights and all the rest, RWA has been an epic fail.