My Two Cents
Today’s guest blogger is Knight Agency agent and YA author, Lucienne Diver. Thanks for joining us, Lucienne!
I admit that I’ve been so busy lately that I’m behind the times responding on the furor over RWA’s policy toward e-publishing. Here, though, are my two cents, for what they’re worth.
Advances serve a very important purpose – providing something for authors to live on while they research, write and wait for publication and then for the resultant royalties to accumulate. I can understand an organization meant to protect and educate writers advocating this system. However, I also agree that times are changing and ventures like profit sharing arrangements and agreements by which advances are deferred or minimized in exchange for putting what would otherwise be advance money toward advertizing and promotion are equally valid. My problem comes from both the failure to set new standards and the fact that the standards that currently exist are inconsistently applied. E-book authors are held in a sort of limbo, where for some RWA contests they’re considered published (and therefore unable to enter in the unpublished categories) and for others they’re not (like the RITAs, I believe). It’s an inconsistency that is very vexing. Either the e-published writers are considered published (perhaps by some standard like a monetary minimum on royalties or recognition of their e-publisher) and granted the same considerations or they’re not and therefore don’t have their interests represented by the organization. Like Deidre, I believe that standards should be set and that we should recognize the contribution of non-traditional publishing options. Look at how many wonderful authors began with e-publishers—not to mention that entire genres like erotica that might not have picked up by the major houses in quite the same way if their Internet success (and thus clear cut audience) hadn’t been so apparent. Am I, as an agent, going to advocate for the advance against royalties model for my authors? Absolutely. Do I recognize that there are other valid paradigms to consider which are producing professional works? Absolutely.
I think, however, that the issue goes far beyond one writers organization’s policy. We’re at the stage, not just in our industry but in all of them, that science fiction has long predicted—where the pace of technological advances is quickly outstripping the laws and policies to deal with them. (Note the problems inherent in the text-to-voice function of the Kindle 2 and other devices and advertising allowed on sites where narrative or excerpts are published with no profit-sharing for the writers.) We need to anticipate and stay ahead of the lightning-speed changes in technology and our approach to it if we’re not to be left behind.
-Lucienne Diver
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