Things I Have Noticed

This isn't related to SFF, but is nonetheless quite an interesting development from a publishing standpoint. Harlequin started up a new division that was wholly for self-publishing, and Romance Writers of America promptly dropped the entire company as no longer being a qualified, eligible publisher. Clash of the titans, indeed.

I got the info from PubRants, the agent blog I like to read. It will be interesting to watch the fall out from this one.

(You know KatG has things to say on this, don't you? Wait for it...)
 
I always check though new posts, but I'm definitely waiting to see the opinions line up on this.
 
Was going through my google reader after cruising around here and found THIS from Tia Nevitt. It's going to get real interested watching all of this start to unfold.
 
Seems as if Bob Dylan applies:

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Makes no sense to me for the RWA or any of the other writers association to draw lines in the sand. Would make much more sense to begin working on ways to make the new environment profitable. Those working sessions at the conventions ought to be addressed at how to handle the brave new world that's still growing around us. Bet Amazon would be happy to form a Romance department and only provide writers who are in their stable on their Kindle. They do that; Sony will follow and not far behind will be Microsoft and Google and whoever can beat them to the market. Probably a gazillion reasons why this notion won't work but that's not the problem. The problem is what will work because the time's, they are a- changin'. Probably have about a score of years before things change for good. After that, those of us who cherish books in our library will have moved on and the next generation may well think my library or your infinite bookshelf is just clutter.
 
Hi, Peter! *waves*

I agree with HE, in that I think the knee-jerk reaction isn't necessarily a productive response, given the challenges the industry is facing. Not to defend Harlequin, mind you; they're a corporation first (meaning maximize profit above all else). But while the publishing landscape has endured through lots of upheaval over the decades and managed to keep much of its silliness intact, I'm not sure it can do so indefinitely when facing the digital world that's permeating all facets of our lives.

Yes, there are already too many books being published even by traditional means to be supported by the not-growing-in-size novel reading public. So more self-pub stuff doesn't help that situation. But RWA, like SFWA, in this instance at least seems more focused on maintaining the status of the have's (the authors who have made it into the club) than being a force to encourage writers of all stripes to help move up the ranks and join the club. That's certainly their prerogative as an organization, but given Harlequin's status as a romance publisher I can't help feeling that this is a move without a positive ending except to lessen RWA's influence. I rather doubt Harlequin is going to say, "Oops, sorry, okay we'll shut it down," unless it makes no money for them. If it does make money, then RWA can complain all they want and it won't make a hill o' beans worth of difference.

Personally I think RWA and SFWA should step beyond their self-imposed borders, and find a way to deal with self publishing instead of hoping it will go away. With this digital environment, it's not going away. And yes, much if not most of what comes out of it may not be very good. But if it's part of the new landscape, perhaps these organizations should recognize it for what it is, and offer a stepping-stone path that includes it. Perhaps keep it separate from the mainstream, regular publishing stuff, but offer a hand out to those self-pub authors who are serious enough about what they're doing to want to be a part of the organization, and offer knowledge and assistance from the "have" authors so that those in this new lower tier can have a path to move up and aspire to. If they continue to treat self pub authors like dirt and worrying that it will impact their own traditional status, it may just end up isolating them.
 
I think that the RWA is out of their tiny little minds. Harlequin still makes up more than 50 percent of the romance category publishing market, having bought up rival Silhouette and Kensington Books. Harlequin has had to deal with a shrinking romance category market, but a slightly growing e-publishing one. They've branched out with things like Luna to compensate, and this self-publishing venture is another attempt to make some cash by acting as a printing service, like Amazon does. Since the general fiction market is unlikely to expand its specific romance titles (not to be confused with women's fiction,) right now, throwing a fit about this does not make any sense. I guess they may be worried about bookstores, but a lot of Harlequin's sales aren't from bookstores but from the wholesale market which could care less about self-publishing status issues. And the bookstores are not going to be turning Harlequin titles away over a self-publishing venture when dozens of other companies are doing the same, as are some of the booksellers themselves.

So it makes utterly no sense to me, and probably there will be smoothed feathers in the next few weeks.
 
Perhaps RWA is misnamed. It might be more accurate if they were named "RWAPBLNYHOWWHTA", standing for "Romance Writers of America Published By Large New York Houses Of Whom We Happen To Approve."
 
I hadn't actually bothered to click on the link, but now I have, and this just gets funnier. RWA didn't ban Harlequin as a market, just told Harlequin that they can't financially sponsor stuff for RWA at romance conferences (of which there are not that many and they aren't like SFF conventions.) That's kind of like telling Microsoft that you aren't going to be billing them for your software app booth at a trade show, even though your software app mostly runs just on Microsoft.

Harlequin is also doing a ms. critique service, which is a bad idea, and seems to have drawn a lot of the ire. My guess is that they will drop the critique service pretty soon, as it's not going to be a money-maker for them. Harlequin has soothed feathers by saying the new self-pub venture won't have the Harlequin name on it anywhere. So now the RWA can say that they won, sort of.
 
Hey, looks like they're going to get that big super collider finally up and running this weekend, and then we can finally have our self-induced black hole. So - go ahead and eat that dessert, you've only got a day or so left to live it up!

(Posted just so I could stir up my little crowd here...) :D
 
Well, I said earlier that the RWA's action -- joined by the SFWA and MWA -- didn't make a great deal of sense to me, but that was before I had all the details. Apparently, Harlequin's parent company, which is losing money except for Harlequin's operations, may be imposing this self-publishing operation on them, and the pitch for the operation is that if you self-publish with them and your books sell, then you might get to go to their regular lines. Additionally, Harlequin's rejection letters for submissions to their regular lines that they didn't want would contain the suggestion that the rejected writer should self-publish with Harlequin Horizon as a means to maybe later getting published with Harlequin.

This is clearly unethical and is equivalent to the free-lance editor scam, where a scam agent or publisher would reject an author, suggest in the rejection letter that the author work with a particular free-lance editor to improve their novel, implying that if they did so, the agent or publisher might then change their minds about the project. The scam free-lance editor would then give a cut of the editing fees to the scam agent or publisher.

I've never really understood why con-artists bothered with such elaborate scams because you really wouldn't make that much money off of them. Running the Nigerian prince scam makes you more money. But a big, established operation like Harlequin running such an operation stands to make a good bit more off of it, so this is really not kosher.

Nonetheless, it's not clear what happens to authors who have published with Harlequin, are still publishing with Harlequin or want to get their shot publishing with Harlequin in the wake of the RWA, SFWA and MWA decisions. (The RWA allows unpublished members, but has qualifications for being a published member.) I'm trying to find this out.

Harlequin has already offered an olive branch (flippantly,) by agreeing to remove the Harlequin name from the self-publishing operation, to deal with fears by writers of brand dilution. But the unethical business practices where they'd be preying on people with a bait and switch are also a big factor that hasn't been addressed. I would suspect that Harlequin will back down on some of these unethical practices to further settle the issue, but they might not.

*Of course, with the super-collider, it's all moot anyway.
 
Okay, you've hooked me, Your Greatness. How is the super-collider moot?
Is it of no legal significance? I can buy that as nothing about the s-c affects me or anyone else living on the North American continent in any legal way.
Is it open to argument or debate? Well, yes, certainly. We can argue over whether there should be an s-c, whether it's doing any good, whether it is over-hyped, whether it reallly exists or is a figment of some writer's imagination, is it a cover identity for SG-1, or is it really a bunch of guys who got together to buld a super cool race track for those tiny little cars?
Or is it moot because the black hole already exists and there is nothing we can do about it except wait for 2012?
 
Have you considered that the black hole may already have been created and that we're already living in it? Think of the empirical evidence: Sarah Palin keeps coming back around. Logically this would only happen if she were not allowed to escape the gravity well, since by any normal measure of things she should have spun out into space long ago...
 
Politics?
Why next you are going to declare that your novels are allegories on how poor, downtrodden nobles rise up to thwart the evils of big government and the threat of socialism. How religion always interferes with the smooth functioning of government, and outside threats in the desert are gonna take care of themselves.
There's something a bit tawdry blaming Palin on a black hole. But she is a super collider, isn't she?
 
KatG said:
...I would suspect that Harlequin will back down on some of these unethical practices to further settle the issue, but they might not.
Click to expand...

I think it unlikely that they'll back down except in the case of two potential outcomes: 1) The new operation does not meet whatever their profit goals for it are; or 2) There is a sufficient media circus event about it that they want to avoid a publicity black eye. By this latter I don't mean the statements from RWA, etc. since so far that hasn't penetrated beyond those in the industry who care about such things; I mean something that gets to the level of the general media that portrays Harlequin as a big baddy (I could see creative ways to do this, using the Romance angle background). But that sort of negative campaign is difficult to create with any kind of certainty unless you have a coordinated message and money to get it started. If it remains simply RWA and SFWA and so forth complaining about it, I don't see Harlequin caring much (particularly if the policy is being directed by a parent company without particular ties to the industry). The company's dominant position in the genre certainly helps them do this.

As a side note on these kinds of subjects, it often seems to me that people who are "more engaged" in a field, in the sense that they belong to organizations like RWA or participate on forums like these, do not realize that they don't necessarily represent the majority of the audience. I don't know this for a fact, but I don't think the romance readership is anywhere as organized (in terms of things like conventions and online forums and the like) as the SFF community (although their authors are a pretty savvy bunch, on the whole). And thus a majority of Harlequin readers may not even be aware of this new venture, nor care.

But it is the readership (i.e. customers) that matters more to an entity like Harlequin, rather than their suppliers (the authors). The perception is that there is always greater supply than demand, and thus author relations (as evidenced by things like screwy royalty statements and contract terms) always end up being a struggle. I don't see that this new venture is much different in that regard. The concerns of the professional author corp over what it means, both ethically and financially, are certainly a factor in Harlequin's thinking, but not, to my mind, an overly significant one.
 
Hereford Eye said:
Okay, you've hooked me, Your Greatness. How is the super-collider moot?
Is it of no legal significance? I can buy that as nothing about the s-c affects me or anyone else living on the North American continent in any legal way.
Is it open to argument or debate? Well, yes, certainly. We can argue over whether there should be an s-c, whether it's doing any good, whether it is over-hyped, whether it reallly exists or is a figment of some writer's imagination, is it a cover identity for SG-1, or is it really a bunch of guys who got together to buld a super cool race track for those tiny little cars?
Or is it moot because the black hole already exists and there is nothing we can do about it except wait for 2012?
Click to expand...

No, I was saying that the Harlequin matter is irrelevant because we're all going to die in the black hole the super-collider is going to make when they get it up to speed. :)

2) There is a sufficient media circus event about it that they want to avoid a publicity black eye.
Click to expand...

That's the ticket right there, because Harlequin really is committing fraud here and they certainly don't need bad publicity. That's why I want the author groups to team up with the big legal authors groups and the agent groups, because they've had success in these areas and have more money. So we'll see what happens.

I got myself in a bit of trouble on Scalzi's blog bringing up the new writers who want to publish legitimately with Harlequin's regular lines, but then aren't able to join some of the groups or have the same status in the RWA and have access to awards. It turns out RWA's by-laws pretty much force them to do what they did, so nobody's got any choice. But if they can at least pressure Harlequin successfully to drop the predatory practices, that would be something.

I sincerely hope there's not a domino effect here, but apparently Thomas Nelson also has a publishing for a fee arm, but they didn't put their name on it, so no hoopla.
 
The more I read about this on other sites, blogs and such, the uglier it looks. Harlequin (overtly) and Thomas Nelson (covertly) so far - who's next?
 
I agree, Peter; the more we learn, the worse it sounds. KatG is correct that what they're really doing, if not illegal, is certainly immoral. I do think RWA and SFWA should figure out a way to deal with POD better than simply throwing it away, but this approach by Harlequin is not it.
 
Well the RWA takes anyone interested in writing romance and they don't have a problem with POD. It's the vanity stuff that seems to be the issue.
 
I haven't taken a look at RWA's poilcy, but I know SFWA is more restrictive and certainly does not take anyone writing (by which I think you mean being published in) SFF. They're only interested in large-publisher authors, or small presses that pay significant advances. It seems they change the rules from time to time, but at one time they required you to not only be published with a house that paid a minimum $2000 advance, but you had to supply a copy of the check to prove it! Now they have simply replaced that policy with a list of "approved" publishers, which they define internally. Some of their "unapproved" publishers, like Fairwood Press, feature authors of very high quality (Jay Lake, Ken Scholes), but quality does not seem to be the issue, only whether advances are paid. I find this to be a short-sighted attitude and not supportive of the small press tier of the industry from which we get some pretty innovative fiction. To me that doesn't make it an advocacy group for writers, but only for a certain class of published author. (And given their stance on small press, they're certainly not going to contemplate any other sort of accommodation for POD...)

Not to diss any of the good work the SFWA does for author rights; and again, it's certainly their choice as an organization to make up whatever rules they want, and include or exclude whomever they want. But I just think one should be clear about who they actually represent when it comes to matters related to SFF writers.
 
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