SFWA endorses Douglas Preston’s open letter without consulting its membership
From Chris Meadows at TeleRead:
Two “open letters” came out yesterday, one berating Amazon and another praising it. Now it turns out that SFWA has emailed its membership endorsing one of those letters, and it should be pretty easy to guess which one.
Author Don Sakers has posted an essay to his blog complaining that the SFWA has endorsed Douglas Preston’s letter. Sakers, an independent author who makes most of his sales through Amazon, is annoyed that SFWA’s leadership did not make any attempt to consult or discuss the matter with its members before acting, and points out that this comes only a week after SFWA asked its members to comment on a proposal for allowing self-published authors to join.
. . . .
For all that SFWA is being overrun by John Scalzi’s “insect army,” it remains at heart an old-school organization full of hidebound traditionally-published authors who see things in very clear shades of black and white.
Link to the rest at TeleRead
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Can we fast forward a few months to when all of this nonsense is over and we can all get on with writing our books and making money instead of wasting time debating someone’s PR strategy over what is essentially a fairly boring business negotiation?
After going a few rounds with people suffering from severe cognitive dissonance, I’m frankly exhausted….
I know. That’s about all you can do: focus on your work. Ultimately whichever method is cheapest and most efficient will win out. It’s unlikely that that method will be trad pub in its current form. And since their current form is what they’ve decided to stick with, why should it really matter to us? Some writers will accept it and do well, others will really regret the decision.
I’m just happy I have cheaper books to read. I will not be paying to keep an inefficient publishing system that barely pays its writers going.
“Can we fast forward a few months to when all of this nonsense is over”
I don’t think so because under the terms of the DOJ settlement all the big 5 publishers are due to renegotiate their contracts with amazon staggered at six month intervals. So whatever Hachette does or doesn’t get in this round will be up for discussion again when the next big 5 publisher has to renegotiate. And so on for the next couple of years.
Well, there’s always the possibility that Hachette gets nothing and the rest accept that and fold.
Yeah. I snorted, too.
I hadn’t thought of this. This explains a lot.
It’s the same situation with negotiations between the UAW and American automakers. I think the first round is between the UAW and Ford, and whatever they agree on becomes the template for talks with the other automakers.
No wonder Amazon’s digging its heels in. Whatever they give up to Hatchette will be multiplied by four.
Hey now, that’s hardly a fair comparison. After all, Unions are bloated and thoroughly corrupt holdovers from 19th century economics that add questionable value compared to the political rents they extract, whereas publishers…
Erm…
Uh….
Ok, never mind.
Well, there goes my last shred of desire to ever join the SFWA country club.
^^^ This
They got a freakin’ country club? How’s the golf course?
Dan
Sparse. Very sparse.
A large percentage of the SFWA membership are wannabes who either had three short stories or a single novel publication. They don’t write much anymore, they are just there to be involved in the organizational politics and/or to otherwise feel important for being part of the ‘exclusive’ club.
If they aren’t looking out for writers, why on Earth should anyone waste their time or money by joining?
How much do you want to bet that there are more science fiction writers making a living as science fiction writers who do not qualify for SFWA membership than full-time writers who do?
Heh.
I’d been thinking that m-a-y-b-e I’d consider joining SFWA, if they ever do decide to include indie-pubbing authors. M.C.A. Hogarth is a powerful spokesperson!
Following this endorsement, however…not so much.
Same here. After seeing this, I’m thinking that’s not going to happen until hell freezes over.
Or until the old guard dies off–literally.
It wouldn’t be totally untrue to say change will come to publishing–as it does to many other things–one gravestone at a time.
It’s my understanding that indie is just about the only place science fiction writers can get published anymore. Like Westerns. A dead or dying genre to the New York crowd.
Unless Justin Beiber writes one. Then they’ll be interested again.
I’m one of those losers who qualify for SFWA but want nothing to do with them. Kinda sucks, like when you found out Barry Bonds and all the best hitters in baseball were nothing but roid monsters =/
Hey now, be fair. ‘Roids can make you strong (if you work out hard enough) but they can’t make you a good hitter.
No, but for guys already hitting .250+, it made their extra base hits numbers quite inflated. I’ve always believed Bonds was a great hitter with a great eye. It wasn’t until his head swelled up to double its original size (along with arms, legs, chest, etc) that he started setting HR records.
Made that summer of watching Sosa and McGuire chasing the record really, really sour. Sort of like when I found out that the SFWA was no longer an organization that I’d spent years dreaming of the day I’d get to slam my membership card down at a convention and demand cosplayers act out scenes from my book.
I just told my husband that I do not want to monetarily support traditional publishing and its authors anymore. I’m so sick of all these authors who only see their own bottom line and enthusiastically buy into all of the lies. I’m so sick of everyone ignoring how much better for readers Amazon is. Trad pub’s artificially high prices exploit readers, Amazon’s low prices are good for readers. It’s that simple. These authors have no excuse. All of the information is out there. I won’t be buying anymore books published by New York. If I want to read a trad published book I’ll either get it from the library or used through Amazon. I’m sorry for the authors who don’t support Hachette’s agenda but are stuck in the system, but I won’t support the publishers. If those authors want my money they will need to self publish.
Each camp is going to do what it wants. Let’s just be happy that at least our position is being heard and the writers who actually DO want change are now able to find it.
I buy my books almost exclusively online (Smashwords, Amazon, etc). I’ve bought one or two trad pubbed books, but I mostly stopped buying them long before I even came to understand the nuances of the current war in the industry. And that’s because of price and selection. Ultimately trad pub is fighting for and really believes that prices should be much higher. I don’t think they’re going to be convinced otherwise and as we know from the way things go in the U.S., that camp usually loses because Americans like lower prices. Trad pub is going to eventually bury themselves. It won’t be today or tomorrow, but they are staking out their position. They’ve picked out their plot and they’re happy with it. So be it. Time to sit back and observe what happens.
This is a culture war.
It’s not only in publishing, it’s in Hollywood.
The old guard, and those who support it, will fight with as much force as it will take, like the Krell machine, to maintain their superior positions and keep us an underclass.
http://nikkifinke.com/advisory-commentary-guild-amptp-deals-coming/
Nikki Finke was brave enough to tell the truth about the Hollywood system. Are the multinational conglomerates of publishing any different, really?
It definitely is a culture war.
Douglas Preston says, “we feel strongly that no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want.” Should I assume this means he is terribly upset that most brick & mortar bookstores refuse to carry my Amazon-published titles? Because, it’s funny. I don’t hear too many people screaming about that.
And you won’t, Catherine, as I don’t have to tell you. In another context (say, yours, Preston and his signatories would be lining up to defend a retailer’s sacred right to carry only the books they want to carry. In his own, it’s a crime against humanity.
He must had been terrible upset when Kobo pulled down all self-published titles.
Don’t be silly. Those aren’t real books.
They didn’t pull down ALL self-published books.
My question is this: isn’t it generally accepted that as technology advances a product, the price of that product gets lower? And don’t companies who make these products take that into account and plan accordingly? And isn’t part of that plan to look for ways to innovate in order to create an even more attractive next-generation product?
Have publishers been asleep all these years?
No, they are just napping.
The big publishers have been very successfully raising prices for the last thirty years, even as printing and distribution costs went down. They did this by buying all the smaller publishers and colluding with each other to keep prices high and keep new players out of the market.
They would rather make more money selling expensive copies of a fewer number of book titles. And they are more than willing to lose lots of readers in the process.
If it wasn’t for the internet, Amazon, and those damn self-publishing kids, they would have kept doing it until reading novels went the way of watching Grand Opera.
Why is it not collusion that there is an “industry standard” e-book royalty paid to authors? It’s ridiculous to complain about Hachette/Zon when none of these trad-pubbed authors are letting out a peep about these income limiting tactics.
No, they have not been asleep. Their business model and competitive advantage don’t work for fiction with the new technology. I can’t criticize them for their business moves. It is rational given their position.
When we look back on all this, we will say the publishing industry changed. Nobody will care what players left the market. We will simply look at those who remain.
Anyone care that they no longer put film in their cameras? The industry has changed, and people don’t care what Kodak and Fuji once did.
They are just pining.
Is anyone else with me on this? Because I’m at the point where I hear this stuff and yawn. SFWA? Who cares? The only reason I’d consider joining is if they had a group insurance rate that would save me money. Do they? I can’t remember.
Tradpub satellite organizations are cliques, and will become much worse in the coming years.
The last trad book I didn’t buy: It was an author that I read through a dozen or so books in the series, some I’d bought depending on my budget, one I read from the library, thank goodness because it wasn’t up to my par, but I picked up the new one in paper version, the price was higher than I really wanted to go for but the discount knocked off a little bit. The book was a little thinner, but everything is diet conscious today, then I opened it. It looked double spaced.
I wasn’t going to pay that much money for a book about two-thirds the thickness it should be with a solid blank line between every row of print. I wasn’t even sad that I put it back. I haven’t cracked open the last book or two by that author, or put my name on the reserve list at the library.
See? That kind of publishing nonsense just makes the writer look bad- and lose sales.
You too! I can’t figure out what the hell is going on. I tend to go paper for my non-fiction (so I can make annotations, then pass it along to hubby) and I can’t BELIEVE how padded recently-published books are. To take one example, “The Great Degeneration” by Niall Ferguson (subtitle: “How Institutions Decay and Economies Die”) looks like it was designed by a 6yo graduating from Dr. Seuss! “Boomerang” by Michael Lewis is another example. The book could have easily been half its thickness.
I’m sick of getting suckered like this but, unfortunately, living in the tropics, I don’t have much access to a wide variety of English-language books and have to order many on-line.
You know, it was once a long-time goal to join SWFA. Now I’m glad I never did. Between the politics and their backward stances on a variety of issues, I’m thoroughly cured of the desire.
You and me both.
Ditto.
A friend of mine who once was president of SFWA often expresses his displeasure with the actions of SFWA’s officers. He has said he may leave SFWA because it no longer serves him since he’s become a mere member.
On the plus side, we’ve reached stage 3 of Klein’s list.
“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” – Nicholas Klein, Baltimore, 1918, Documentary History of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
I want my monument to be made out of solid, old, used pizza boxes. And elbow macaroni & Elmer’s Glue. And I want craft beer taps at the base of it. And I want some of those brightly colored foil pinwheels sticking out at odd angles from it. And I want it all painted orange with black racing stripes.
(I just described my current vehicle, by the way, minus the orange paint with black racing stripes)
There are other writers’ organizations, such as SASS:
http://www.sasswritersgroup.blogspot.com/
I…wasn’t consulted about this, nor was the self-publishing committee, and none of us knew it was coming. We weren’t involved in it at all.
I am, in fact, very embarrassed that I am writing this.
I got nothing, folks. I’m just going to go do something productive with my time. :/
I am so very sorry this happened to you while you were trying to make something positive happen,
I second that. I’m on the committee,too, and I got nothing.
I have no idea what SFWA is thinking, but I’m not sure I want to be a part of it anymore.