Angela James On RWA & ePublishing

Angela James further reveals what a really smart type person she is this Monday morning with her response on ESPAN to Diane (Spank me Lauren!) Pershing’s ill conceived challenge to ePublishers.

I’ve realized that I’m not the right person to do so because there is no one person who can speak for an entire industry or organization. In looking around the internet, at various blogs, forums, Twitter, and groups, hundreds of you have already spoken out and many have done so eloquently and passionately, with facts about your business and careers for anyone who cares to listen.

Not only do I believe I’m not the right person because I’m only one person, but also because RWA is not an organization for publishers but is an organization for authors. Despite the fact that I’ve done much to educate authors over the years, not solely about my publisher but about epublishing in general in a fair, pragmatic, cautionary, balanced and non-cheerleading type of way, the fact remains that I work from a publisher point of view and am not unbiased. Inside the community of writers and authors, however, epublished authors and publishers hope that RWA will step in and provide further education. I respect the work RWA has done at both a national and local level in the past and hope they will recognize the evolving publishing climate and move to work with a growing segment of authors within a new publishing model.

Because, however much I believe in RWA as an organization for authors, and appreciate the spirit of author advocacy in which they operate and have set its current standards we—by which I mean epublishers like the one I currently work for—are operating as legitimate businesses with a committed business model and we have no intention of changing that business model to suit the demands of some who wish to will it away.

Now if she were president of some organization I would join immediately.