Oh, and since I’m probably a century or so older than you, I have to say the image that came to my mind was not of drinking fountains, but of White and Colored waiting rooms in a train station in the Deep South. A very vivid memory of mine.

To be honest, I’d really like to see RWA resolve their issues. RWA, in educating and protecting their author members, has something of a duty to provide education about e-publishing. Whether the authors are pre-published (and will soon sign a contract) or published (in NY or indie), they are going to be dealing with e-rights issues and contracts that contain them. The ONLY way to protect the authors is to send them in knowing what the standard is and what the red flags are.

In the meantime, in order to get a feel for the pulse for what writers and aspiring writers really want from contracts, please consider filling out this survey. Completely anonymous, but I’d LOVE to get more RWA members (published or unpublished) answering it. So far, 2/3 or so of the respondents are not RWA members.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=clBnWWRUTlZRNmVoaG92eER2RjFrbFE6MA

Brenna

You could join EPIC – http://www.epicauthors.com/ – a place that encourages all epub authors and genres.

I’ve been a member for a year, and while things can get heated, it’s been worth the $30/yr fee.

One of the things which struck me about Pershing’s post on the ESPAN blog was the bit about there can’t be many epubbed authors qualifying for PAN, because hardly any of them are applying”. Well, that might just be because I’m not the only epubbed author who qualifies for PAN (with multiple books) but can’t see any reason to join RWA’s National organisation. Every June since I’ve had any reason to be interested in joining RWA, there’s been another kerfuffle in which some of the board show their disdain for epublishing and/or the romance sub-genres that do well in epub. You can practically set your watch by it. I’ve a lot less reason to join now that I’m back in the UK, but when I was living in the US I would have joined my local chapter like a shot if I could have done so without having to join National first.

Like… I dunno… Silhouette?

I swear to gawd I’m torn between KNOWING the people willing to stay and slug it out are heroes… like the Catholics who stood up to molesting priests and held fast to their faith… and thinking “you’ll only get through if you hit them in the pocket book and keep your fees.”

Thanks Teddy, for kicking them.

OMG. *curled up laughing* I had read the warnings, and it still just about made my head explode. Okay, it really was a pure genre romance, and it certainly made a deep impression on me. I liked the characters and **mild spoiler** Patrick’s thing for chocolate was just too funny. I’m just picturing trying to explain what it’s about to a writer or reader of more, er, traditional romances. But good for you. Oh, and I really liked the Spindrift books and Buildup: Mindscan.

I didn’t do it on purpose — it was pure coincidence that this was the first book of mine that came out after they changed the PAN rules to go by the book’s earnings. But I was sufficiently annoyed by the goalpost moving of the previous years to take a certain amount of malicious pleasure in qualifying with a book that was both pure character-driven genre romance, and liable to make heads explode in RWA on several grounds. Unfortunately I couldn’t enter it for the RITAs, as it was ebook only.

I know those board people too. :D