In a referendum with a third of voting members participating and over 6 to 1 in favor, the membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has approved bylaw changes that enable SFWA to accept self-publication and small-press credits for Active and Associate memberships in the organization.
Somewhere during the summer, when I got the latest “I can’t sell this” from an agent, I realized, “You can’t, but I can.” I have not looked back since.
The times they are a-changing, the question of when will probably be answered after the next Christmas season as ebooks emerge at minimum as a major market force, over 20% of book sales is a conservative guess, so the answer to that one is soon.
Of the many issues highlighted by the recent launch of pay-to-publish divisions by two major commercial publishers (Harlequin Enterprises’ DellArte Press–nee Harlequin Horizons–and Thomas Nelson’s West Bow Press), one of the most interesting, to me, is how blurred the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing has become.
Last week, RWA, MWA, and SFWA all issued official statements condemning Harlequin Enterprises’ new self-publishing division, Harlequin Horizons. Now Novelists Inc. has weighed in, with a position statement on vanity publishing and the risks that arise when brand name publishers add vanity publishing divisions.
Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA.
Unlike commercial or trade publishers, whose business model is based on book volume (selling as many books as possible from a limited number of authors), author mills’ business model is based on author volume (selling a limited number of books from as many authors as possible). The most famous example of an author mill is PublishAmerica, but there are others, such as VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller, an academic author mill.
This is a followup to my post on Thomas Nelson’s new self-publishing division, West Bow Press–specifically, on Nelson’s plans to pay referral fees to agents and others who refer writers to West Bow.
As reported today in the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Nelson, a major independent Christian publisher, is adding a self-publishing line to its business.
An anti-scam handout by A. C. Crispin
The starstream is beautiful. But beauty turns deadly when an ancient AI bent on destruction uses it to travel uptime to humanity’s future. Part 1 of a long-awaited new chapter in The Chaos Chronicles. Concludes with Crucible of Time, in September.
David D. Levine is the author of novel Arabella of Mars (Tor 2016) and over fifty science fiction and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo Award, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon.
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