SFWA president, Robin Wayne Bailey, responds to questions from real letters.
Posted online 27 Aug 2006.
Q: What would I get for my dues? Give me some examples of tangible benefits.
A: Your $70 gets you a lot! Many members say our most important benefit is the Grievance Committee, the envy of a lot of other writers' organizations. When you run into a problem with an editor, a publisher or an agent that you can't solve on your own, GriefCom stands ready to do battle for you—with a history of successful results that only negotiating as a group can get. One way or another, SFWA has taken on:
Then there's the Contracts Committee, ready to help you decipher the terms of your contract and give you advice. If you find yourself involved in expensive legal action concerning your work, SFWA has a Legal Fund to help you out. And if you become ill and fall on hard times, there's our Emergency Medical Fund to loan you money to help towards those bills.
We offer a Circulating Book Plan—a kind of lending library—so you can keep up with what's new without paying a lot of money. We try to provide mountains of free books and magazines in SFWA suites at conventions and the Nebulas. Free books are also available for members from some publishers, just for the asking.
You'll get the Directory which provides contact information for over 1600 writers, editors and agents, the Forum which provides a variety of discussions and current information, and the Bulletin—a professional quarterly which contains numerous articles on the business of writing and selling, market reports and interviews. We also have a brand new SFWA Pressbook to help you get publicity for forthcoming books in the press, something that can seem impossible to do by yourself.
You'll have access to private areas of the SFWA.org website, and free access to sff.net, an invaluable tool for networking and information exchange. You'll receive the SFWA Online Update by email to bring you the latest time-sensitive information quickly. And you can use the SFWA Webring to promote your own website.
And if that's not enough, there's a Speakers' Bureau to help you find people and organizations willing to pay to hear you speak on topics of your choice.
Q: Aren't SFWA members mostly concerned with Nebula voting? Why should I want to get involved with all the politics?
A: Admittedly, some people who should get a life spend way too much time arguing over awards. Declaring anything "the best" in an artistic endeavor is a mug's game. But this is also true of any other award, including the Academy Awards. What the Nebulas can do for science fiction and fantasy writers is draw some attention once a year to our genre. Perhaps we get a little press for the awards; perhaps the Nebula Awards Showcase volumes will sell a few more stories and attract a little more attention on the bookstore shelves. If we didn't have the Nebula Awards, someone would invent them all over again. People like awards; they're pretty gewgaws. But anyone who attaches more importance than that to them should go home and rethink.
Q: I've heard there's some tension in SFWA between the old crowd of established writers and the "newbies" like me. Will I feel uncomfortable?
A: A good rule to follow is: Never give too much weight to a few strident voices. For as long as the organization has existed, a few loud voices have always declared that the Old Farts should dry up and blow away and make room for the Young Writers Who Really Have Something To Say. Most new members' experience is of how open to questions and how generous in giving advice the more established members are.
Q: I'm a new writer, at the beginning of my career. Why should I care about issues like copyright that SFWA seems obsessed with? Self-promotion means a lot more to me right now than copyright.
A: Most of us who've been in this business for many years still endeavor to promote our own work. This isn't antithetical to protecting our copyrights—and other publishing rights—too. Copyright allows you to be as restrictive or as permissive about the distribution of your work as you like for the duration of copyright. If someone infringes on your copyrighted work, we can help you detect it, and if you want to pursue the issue, we can help.
But there are other issues you'll face as a writer. What will you do when your publisher declares your work out-of-print then turns around and transfers it automatically into a print-on-demand program so that in effect you can never get the rights back? And how will you deal with your publisher who insists on a look-back clause in your contract that prevents you from auditing your books after a scant two years? When publishers are holding massive reserves-against-returns on your book, thus denying you your just royalties for an indefinite period of time, how will you feel about that? These aren't hypothetical situations. SFWA is dealing with them right now. In any endeavor, you have to be prepared to stand up for yourself, and when you need help, SFWA will stand up with you. SFWA has a track record of defending its members. We've gone toe-to-toe with publishers. We've sent representatives to testify before the Federal Office of Copyrights, so that our collective voice can be heard. Even if you don't feel this applies to you right now, at least you can be informed and know what's going on, and knowledge is power.
Q: So how much use is it to put "SFWA Member" on a submission?
A: Not a lot. Why should it be? If you haven't established a name—and your name doesn't attract an editor's attention—only the quality of the story matters. To be honest, all writers—SFWA members included—have "trunk stories" that just don't work, and all writers have bad days or the occasional bad idea. We can't expect professional editors to buy poor quality material just because it says "SFWA" on the manuscript.
Q: SFWA seems to be most interested in deciding what markets are "qualified" for membership and establishing "professional" rates of pay. What has that got to do with me? Doesn't that chase a lot of otherwise good markets out of business?
A: While we've seen a few markets kick and scream they can't afford to raise their rates for writers, we haven't seen a single market collapse for that reason. And printers raise their rates, paper prices go up, office supplies and utilities go up, even editors and staff members get raises. Why should writers eat off the bottom of the tank? It's SFWA's purpose to fight for the rights of writers, to fight for fair treatment for writers, and in other words improve conditions for writers. Those conditions include the highest rates of pay we can get. In most cases, major magazines have followed our lead. If we hadn't pursued this, we might all be still getting two cents a word for our work.
Keep in mind that nothing prevents our members from selling to low-paying markets if they so choose, or even giving their work away for free. We're not in the business of telling you where to sell your fiction. We do, however, define for the purpose of membership what a qualifying "professional" rate of pay is.
Q: Networking is important to me, but surely I can get that elsewhere?
A: Granted; there are many ways to network. SFWA provides as many opportunities as it can for those who wish to take advantage of them. Through SFWA suites at major conventions, Nebula Conference weekends, and the New York Publishers Receptions, we try to bring all players into contact with each other. And through newer events like the Authors and Booksellers events, we try to provide our members with the chance to meet another important side of the business—those who actually sell our work. And don't overlook free access to SFWA newsgroups on sff.net.
Q: Can I get health care coverage through SFWA?
A: SFWA on its own is too small to get decent group benefits. We've tried—many times. For a while we were able to offer coverage under membership in an umbrella organization, but the premiums were exorbitant and the program soon collapsed. At this time, all we can promise is we'll keep on looking for a solution.
Q: Well, okay, I'm almost convinced, but if the organization is doing such great things for writers without me, why do I need to join?
A: Sure, you can sit on the sidelines and enjoy the benefits others fight for you to receive. But we hope you'll think the battle's worth joining and see how much better we can do in the future with your help. We're not perfect, but inside SFWA there's a small army of volunteers working to improve the professional life of new writers just like you. We'd like to welcome you as a member.
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