Jules Jones

Guess what. The hoop's just been raised again. RWA has just put out new definitions for vanity publishing and professional publishing in which epublishers are labelled vanity presses by definition. Here's part of the paragraph listing the criteria which will immediately class a publisher as vanity:

"publishers whose primary means of offering books for sale is through a publisher-generated Web site;"

In other words, any epublisher is a vanity press in RWA's eyes, even if it isn't a vanity press by any sane definition involving "money flows towards the author". Because this is how epublishing works -- the primary means of offering ebooks for sale is through a publisher-generated website, even where the publisher also uses distributors such as Fictionwise.

Obviously there were far too many of us "vanity"-published authors who were managing to make $2000 in royalties from a single title.

I do not have an issue with RWA deciding to demand that a publisher offer a significant advance to every author as one of the qualifications for being considered a pro publisher. It's what SFWA does, after all, and there's a sound rationale behind that (though I really, really doubt that said rationale is the reason for RWA doing it). I wouldn't have a problem with RWA saying that my publisher is a small press -- there are many highly respected small presses in science fiction.

However, I have a serious problem with RWA declaring my publisher to be a vanity press purely on the grounds that it uses the distribution method that is most appropriate to the format the books are published in.

This is a very clear message to epublished authors, no matter how successful they may be -- the RWA not only doesn't want us, it's prepared to tar us as vanity-published to make sure we get the message that we're riff-raff and not welcome.

And in order to deliver that deliberate insult, RWA has quite thoroughly muddied the definition of vanity press. How on earth is that supposed to protect writers who are trying to understand the warning signs to watch out for? When RWA has such a blatantly stupid criterion that labels legitimate small presses as vanity presses, then authors may start wondering if the other "vanity press" criteria they list are really so bad. And some of us already have enough work trying to explain the difference between legitimate small press and vanity press to new people on the writer forums.

Dear Author has put up a copy of RWA's legal advice to the authors caught up in the Triskelion bankruptcy.

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/06/23/triskelion-update-rwa-responds-to-triskelion-closing/