One of the few times I will link there

[james_davis_nicoll]

Theodore "Vox Day" Beale's SFWA Platform: the first five points

Of note is how he wants to inflate SWFA's annual expenses by ten thousand American dollars.

Comments

[elf]

"EXPAND THE MEMBERSHIP: The right to SFWA membership will be granted to all self-published and small press-published authors who have sold more than a specified number of ebooks to be determined, eligibility number to be confirmed via official Amazon report."

It's a nice idea, but the logistics are a nightmare. Off the top of my head:

1) Why should ebooks sold only at one particular store count towards eligibility? What happens when Amazon is no longer the industry leader--or when an author's sold thousands of books at B&N but doesn't sell at Amazon? AllRomanceEbooks has a category for F&SF ebooks; shouldn't those numbers count?

2) How will the accuracy of the reports be verified? Of course, no self-published/small-press author knows how to fudge an Amazon report, and if they did, Amazon will happily hand over sales data to the SFWA for verification, right? If the reports are to be faxed in to the SFWA, rather than emailed as attachments where the document metadata could, hypothetically, be checked (by whom and for what, I have no idea), it becomes ridiculously easy to make a fake report.

3) What kind of sales threshold is imagined for short stories? Are all self-pub works held to the same threshold, and is that "per work" or "per author?"

4) How will genre be confirmed? This is *important* unless the SFWA wants to open membership to every self-published author of paranormal erotica. Many of those authors would have no problems making the sales thresholds. The current erotica bestseller at Smashwords is about a female werewolf and three were-hyena brothers; that fits within the definition of "fantasy." It's harder to to ID self-pub at Amazon, but several paranormal/fantasy ebooks in the top 10 and 20 of romance & erotica look likely to be self-published.

Setting aside all of those... assuming that accuracy could be confirmed, that a fair method of counting ebook sales could be arranged, that standards of genre could be established for self-published works, that the SFWA would not mind a huge influx of romance and erotica authors...

How long before the outcry to demand that *all* memberships be based on sales levels, not the raw fact of publication?

Sidenote: how much would it cost to buy a membership, where an aspiring author advertises on his/her blog, "buy my ebook at 99 cents and I'll reimburse you?"

----

I love ebooks. I no longer read print for fun. (I still read technical and research books in print; most ereaders are awful for nonfic reading.) I would love to see SFWA and other writers' organizations open up to authors who've chosen alternative publishing routes.

Establishing a system for doing so would require understanding a swarm of details about the ebook publishing industries--and it is "industries," plural, just like the print publishing industries--and coping with a great many technicalities and weird ethics/intentions issues.

[al_zorra]

Evidently this clown doesn't understand that being pres of SFFWA doesn't come with the divine right of rulership. The president doesn't make a decree and wave his hand, and voila, So It Is Written, So Shall It Be Done follow.

There is a SFFWA membership that decides these things. And isn't that membership really tired of Neb and membership wars?

[kithrup]

A friend just pinged me with a quote from him, apparently after reading about his deciding to run for SFWA President.

I won't quote or link to it; it was about Sandy Hook.

I wish I had writing-motivation again; as an associate member, I can't vote against him.

[wordweaverlynn]

More prestigious than the Man Booker?