Not really. But it kinda has felt like that from the outside. Let’s get my view of the facts out of the way first before I go into my conflicted feelings about this whole SFWA v. self-published authors thing.
Starting March 1, self-published and small press authors who meet a certain earning threshold (I believe it’s $3,000 over a twelve-month period for one novel-length work, or some amount of cents per word equaling some dollar amount for short stories – I didn’t really pay attention to the short story criteria) will be eligible to join Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the professional organization for people who do what I do.
Full disclosure, the Horror Writers Association is also the professional organization for people who do what I do, because nobody can really decide if I write horror or fantasy. But I don’t write romance, which is why I don’t need to worry about joining RWA, which I might anyway, because RWA is a solid organization with a bunch of shrewd businesspeople involved. But I digress.
This is kinda a huge deal. It feels like a much bigger deal than last September, when HWA changed their rules to a very similar structure to allow self-pub and small press authors into the fold. I jumped onto that opportunity, but I’m hesitant about joining SFWA, and I figured I’d use this little corner of the inter webs to explore why as much for me as for anyone.
Let’s start at the beginning, back in 2010 when I published The Chosen (now available on audiobook on iTunes, Audible or Amazon). I didn’t have any real idea what I was doing, I was just trying to get my words out there any way I could. So I researched SFWA, because I was writing fantasy, so I wanted to be able to draw on the knowledge of other people writing fantasy. I read the “Join SFWA” page and quickly realized that there was no method for me to do just that. Self-published authors were not allowed a seat at the table.
That stung. I was new to writing, and new to publishing (still relatively new to both, this being year 5 of my journey), and to be told that I wasn’t good enough to sit at the cool kids’ table (again) because I was following a different path to my readers didn’t feel good. And it has continued to not feel good for five years, through friendships with people on SFWA’s board, through conversations about how stupid the rule is with SFWA members and other excluded parties, and I’ll own my pettiness – this as created in me a sense of bitterness about SFWA.
See, the thing is I’m a joiner. I feel like being a part of the professional organization for your field is just what you do. I got a job designing theatrical lighting systems, I joined IES, the Illuminating Engineering Society. I started working with high schools on their lighting systems, I joined the North Carolina Theatre Conference, then the Southeastern Theatre Conference. I’ve sat on the board of directors of many regional professional societies because I’ve always felt like networking, camaraderie and having the back of your fellows in the field is what you do.
But now I was in a place where I was told that I wasn’t a professional enough writer to join the professional organization for writers in my genre. All because of the way I was publishing my work. That didn’t sit well with me. It certainly didn’t sit well with me once I started earning money as a writer, because I very quickly eclipsed the earnings requirements for membership, and then the ONLY thing keeping me out was a label. And that just felt wrong. I wasn’t excluded at conventions from drinking with writers because I didn’t have a SFWA card. I wasn’t excluded from guest status at a con because I wasn’t a SFWA member. I wasn’t excluded from anything, except membership and that label of “professional.”
So I became bitter. And fairly vocal about it. I may have mentioned more than once that $250 worth of short story sales to magazines could get you into SFWA, but ten grand worth of short story sales to readers wouldn’t get you in.
And I understand that organizational change often comes slowly. God knows I’ve spent enough years in non-profit management to know that. I’ve sat through more board retreats and long-range planning sessions than I care to count, so I know that it takes time to affect change. I also know it doesn’t take five years. And self-publishing had already shifted from being a fringe vanity press swindle to a viable career option before I started with this mess in 2010, so the whole “organizations change slowly” thing lost weight with me about two years ago.
So what do I do now? On the one hand, I want to stand outside the window holding up my sign saying “Screw you, I don’t need you now!” Because I don’t know that I do. I network pretty well on my own. I have con appearances, book deals, friends to blurb my stuff and pretty much everything I need to continue making my career.
On the other hand, I want to be part of the professional organization for my chosen career path. And I do, like a lot of authors, want the affirmation of being labeled a professional by my peers. Because a lot of times I hang with my friends and still feel like a fraud, like no matter what I’ve done, it’s not enough. That’s my issue, not theirs, and certainly no one has ever made me feel that way. But it’s there.
Will a SFWA card make that feeling go away? Do they even give out membership cards? Does HWA? If so, did I lose mine already? I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.
And why did I get my panties in a bunch about SFWA and not HWA? Why did I tweet out congratulatory messages to HWA when they finally pried their collective head out of their collective ass last year and let self-pub and small press authors in? Probably because I didn’t know I wasn’t eligible for HWA membership until I was already eligible. Because I thought I was a fantasy writer, not a horror writer, so I had been focusing on SFWA until somebody nominated me for a horror award, then I started thinking of myself as a horror and fantasy writer.
So I don’t know. Are there benefits to joining SFWA? Certainly. Are any of them useful to me? Probably. Should I just get my head out of my ass and fill out an application? Probably. Would I feel better about this whole issue if any of my emails to a SFWA president a few years ago asking about this issue had ever been answered? Yeah.
What do I want out of this mess? At this point, I think I want to be asked to join. I would like someone affiliated with SFWA to say “Hey, I think you should join SFWA. We’d like to have you, and think it could be good for you and for the organization.”
I don’t expect that to happen, but to be frank, even if I heard about SFWA reaching out to other major self-pub and small press authors to open up membership with open arms instead of begrudgingly, it would probably get the bug out of my butt.
So there are my thoughts on the SFWA self-pub thing, not that anybody asked me. I don’t know if I’ll join. Maybe. At this point it’s not even about the benefits of membership, it’s about whether or not the organization really wants me.
So that’s plenty of word-puking for the morning. I’mma go get a Pop-Tart and get some shit done. Y’all do the same. But stay away from my Pop-Tarts.
