Night Shade Books: Clusterfuck and a Half

As part of a Twitter conversation, one of my favorite gamewriters, Ken St. Andre, suggested I write up something about SFWA and independent writers that goes into enough detail that people can understand why — or why not — they might want to join. This is part one of a multi-part series that will talk about some of the history behind the decision, and in this first part I want to talk about the organization prior to admitting independent writers. Part two will discuss how SFWA came to change membership criteria in order to make it possible for people to qualify for membership with indie sales in 2016, and some of the changes made as part of planning for that expansion. Part three will focus on how SFWA has changed in the intervening time, while part four will look at what I see as the changes that will continue as we move forward over the next decade. In all of this, I’m trying to provide something of an insider’s look that may or may not be useful, but certainly will be full of many words.

So what is/was SFWA, before the change? I’m going to paint in broad strokes here based on my understanding and research. (I’d love to see a book devoted to the history of SFWA at some point and one of our current projects is trying to collect that, under Vice President Erin M. Hartshorn’s direction.) The organization started in 1965 with Damon Knight organizing a number of professional genre writers in order to force publishers to treat writers better, namely pay them decent rates in a timely fashion while not taking excessive rights.

One of the first writers they helped was J.R.R. Tolkien, whose work has been pirated in the United States, Bob Silverberg said to me in email that there’s very few of those founding members left, but they included himself, Brian Aldiss, Harrison, Robert Heinlein, Kate Wilhelm and a host of distinguished others. Silverberg says Ellison as well, though the document he sent me seems to contradict that. At that time it was the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Initially SFWA was exactly what you would expect of a volunteer organization run by the most chaotic, capricious, and disorganized creatures possible: science fiction writers. Stories abound, including records getting lost because someone’s cat peed on them, Jerry Pournelle inviting Newt Gingrich to be the Nebulas toastmaster and a subsequent heated brouhaha that included some people walking out of the ceremony and Philip K. Dick agitating to get Stanislaw Lem expelled. My favorite remains Joe Haldeman’s account of the SFWA finances being somewhere in the realm of $2.67 when he became SFWA treasurer; he bought the notebook to keep track of them out of his own pocket.

The membership requirements were proof of a professional sale. Over time the memberships would expand, allowing associate members to join with a story sale, bringing in publishing professionals as associate members, and introducing estate and family memberships. The question of requalification – making members prove at intervals that they were still producing — was raised more than once, usually with plenty of heated discussion — but never implemented.

Along the way, SFWA grew and became an organization that did what its founders had envisioned, and more. Under Jerry Pournelle’s leadership, the Emergency Medical Fund, which helps writers with medical emergencies affecting their ability to to write, was implemented. A similar fund for legal situations followed. Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss launched Writer Beware under SFWA’s auspices and began the fight to keep new writers aware of unscrupulous editors, publishers, and agents.

The fight to keep writers from being preyed upon remained a focus for SFWA. In 2004, a group of SFWAns, under the direction of James D. Macdonald, wrote Atlanta Nights in order to expose the unscrupulous practices of PublishAmerica. The book, deliberately constructed to be unpublishable, featured two identical chapters, a chapter of computer-generated gibberish, missing chapters, and a list of characters whose names spelled out the phrase “PublishAmerica is a vanity press”. It was accepted for publication by the company, which withdrew the acceptance after the hoax was revealed.

Another focus would be an effort unsurprising for a group of writers: establishing a set of awards, the Nebulas. While that may seem a bit cynical on my part, I’ll point much less cynically to the effect of the awards: the recognition of some of the best and most interesting F&SF over the years via a prestigious award group that has grown to include screenplays and Middle Grade/Young Adult Fiction as well as recognizing achievements in the field via the Kate Wilhelm Solstice award and the SFWA Grand Mastership.

Other good stuff that SFWA took on or did over the decades included a publisher audit that helped draw attention to auditing practices, started the SFWA Bulletin, a public-facing magazine aimed at educating and informing professional F&SF writers, and many efforts that started, worked for a while, and then died a graceful (sometimes less so) death when the volunteer driving them lost interest, died, or got fed up with SFWA.

Those membership requirements continued to change over the years, usually to reflect inflation. (To a degree. I’ve calculated that if we matched the buying power of the original rate, we’d be looking at closer to 20, 25 cents per word than the current 6.) The Science Fiction part was expanded to include Fantasy.

Over the decades, SFWA communications took multiple forms. The paper Forum was intended only for members and featured a letter column that was often lively in pre-Internet days. As the Internet grew in popularity, that shifted. The message boards were originally hosted on Compuserve and later moved to SFF.net, where they gained a name for being acerbic, nasty, and often contentious to the point where, when I joined, I was warned not to visit them. When I did, I found them considerably less heated than had been described, and not actually full of epic levels of bon mots, clever insults, and sundry literary feuds, somewhat to my disappointment. The SFWA Handbook appeared in multiple forms, compiling articles of interest to working F&SF writers. The SFWA Bulletin became SFWA’s outward facing publication, publishing not just what SFWA was doing, but articles of interest to all genre writers.

During Russell Davis’s term as SFWA President, Davis did something that would radically affect the direction of the organization: began the move towards reincorporation as a 501c nonprofit in California. The organization had originally been incorporated in Massachusetts, which meant there were restrictions that included having to use paper ballots for elections rather than being able to use electronic means. I will confess here that when the advantages of it all have been explained to me in the past, my eyes glaze over a bit, so I may not be the best person to speak to all of the motivations.

I joined SFWA in early 2006 but did not do much with the organization, as an associate member with a short story sale to Chizine. I found the message board system unwelcoming and generally once I’d joined, I figured I’d checked that box off my writerly bingo card and could now move onto something else.

However, I got asked to volunteer for a group assembled after an incident where a bunch of files got pulled from Scribd, including a number whose rights-holders did not want them pulled. That was an interesting group and I learned a lot about copyright as a result. I also served on a jury for the Nebula award for short story; our job was to put one thing on the ballot that we thought would otherwise get overlooked. My impression of SFWA was, I think, like most members: I didn’t think much about what the board was doing and I took advantage of some of the SFWA offerings, like the SFWA suite at conventions, the local reading series, and reading the Bulletin.

In 2012, I was asked if I’d take over as head moderator of the SFWA discussion boards, which had moved away from SFF.net onto the SFWA website. I had been the moderator of an often contentious discussion board for a game community as well as a BBS, and so I felt reasonably comfortable taking on the role. What I didn’t foresee was how that role would change my relationship to the organization, making me much more aware of its internal workings. And then, Steven Gould spoke with me in 2014 and asked if I’d consider running for Vice President. It was an interesting time in SFWA’s history, I liked the people, and so I said yes.

In Part Two, I’ll talk about the discussion and process by which SFWA came to admit independent writers. #sfwapro

My last day is June 30, 2019, wheeeeeee, after which I will have been Vice President of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for one year, and President for two two-year terms, adding up to the sum of five consecutive years on the SFWA Board. Thank goodness for term limits.

The Elections Committee asked me to do a write-up of what the role involves, which was an interesting exercise in reflection about what all I’ve done over the past time on the Board, and I thought that might be of general interest to the F&SF community at large as well, particularly because SFWA has evolved so rapidly in the past decade, including the admission of indie, small press, and game writers, the implementation of dozens of new initiatives, and the explosive growth of the Nebula Conference Weekend. So here’s an expansion of what I sent our Elections Commissioner Fran Wilde.

The President is one of the major faces of the organization, and should be willing to attend events such as the Nebulas and conventions as well as representing SFWA at the other events they’re present at. (When signing up for conventions, I usually pitch a SFWA meeting and/or “What Can SFWA Do For You?” panel, for example.) As such, they do need to bear in mind that anything they say on social media or in interviews may be taken as having “of SFWA” appended to it, whether or not they want it to. The President carries this more than board members, and needs to remember that the membership may interpret something they say jokingly on Twitter as indicating the overall board’s opinion. Having a disclaimer that your opinions are personal and do not represent the organization on places like social media profiles is vital.

A good President will be familiar with the bylaws and OPPM and work to bulletproof the organization against anyone wishing to do it harm. They must work side-by-side with the board, the Executive Director, the Deputy Executive Director, the financial team, and a slew of volunteers and contractors to make sure that SFWA remains true to its mission while growing and adapting to the evolving and ever-changing publishing landscape.

In order to do that, the President needs to keep an eye on what’s going on–which can be difficult at times, given the volunteer nature of the position and the stressors of life. They need to be available to people who need them or arrange someone to cover them when on vacation. But it’s also usually easy to keep up with things and often just a matter of checking in on the discussion boards and e-mail once or twice a day. I do want to note (from experience) that many e-mails are time sensitive and not paying attention can result in holding things up in a frustrating way for other people.

The President also needs to make sure the other Board members also stay on top of things and they work in tandem with the VP to ensure things remain on task. One tradition that’s been implemented are regular weekly video calls with the Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director and SFWA Board. These last 15 minutes to an hour and are pretty low-key. I’m going to miss seeing those friendly faces and getting to compare notes.

There is also a monthly call with the Volunteer Wrangler, frequent calls and texts with Griefcom, and sometimes the need to sit in on calls about legal matters when, for example, a scam publisher decides to try to intimidate Writer Beware into removing an advisory about them, which happens every few months. (My policy has been to be very assertive legally in replying to these; SFWA has the funds to defend itself and I want to make it clear to these folks that Writer Beware won’t play their reindeer games.) It should be noted — although it may be obvious by now — that there is a requirement to have Internet access should you decide to run.

The President needs to review the financials in a timely fashion when they are presented to them by the financial team along with the rest of the SFWA Board. Sometimes they will need be able to sign off on decisions with some authority as well as make informed decisions on their own. They have a small discretionary fund; I have used mine on outreach and learning and funding some minor low-cost projects, usually some form of volunteer recognition. I did use a chunk one year to attend a conference on non-profit fundraising, which was fascinating.

The President needs to provide the membership with regular and thorough information about what’s going on, in the form of reports for the Singularity and Binary, the President’s letter in the Bulletin, and posts on the discussion forums. (I’ve tried to do this for the public as well, with things like my blog series on SFWA and independent writers, a piece I’m working on right now about game writers for a magazine, and even this blog piece.)

The President must know the organization, its resources, and the frameworks around those resources. There is a constant flurry of people asking for assistance or guidance with communications coming in through a multitude of channels, including telephone, e-mail, and social media, and 90% of the time it’s a matter of steering them to the right place, whether it’s the office, the Emergency Medical Fund, the ombudsman, Griefcom, or something else.

The President needs to not give into the temptation to Do All the Things, because there will be a constant stream of people bearing all manner of projects, many of them things that really do need to be done. Therefore the President needs to be someone good at working with or steering people to the Volunteer Coordinator to find roles for volunteers that will be rewarding for both sides as well as working with the Volunteer Coordinator to make sure volunteers are getting recognized.

As noted earlier, the President should be willing to attend events such as the Nebulas and conventions as well as representing SFWA at other conventions and conferences. They must attend the various receptions and functions–including the Volunteer Breakfast and Spouse/Partner party at the Nebulas. At conventions and particularly the Nebulas, the President should pretty much figure 90-100% of their waking time will be devoted to SFWA-related stuff and spent networking and engaging the membership, along with leading Board and business meetings, spending time in the SFWA suite or table if there is one, and participating in SFWA-focused programming.

The President needs to be a good leader, mindful of the varied needs of the membership, and willing to put energy into learning in order to fulfill the organization’s needs as well as occasionally set the organization above their own interests and/or ego. Patience is important; kindness is vital. It is one of the most rewarding — and occasionally the most frustrating — roles I have filled in my life and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have done it.

Will I come back? Not anytime in the next few years, but I will continue to do volunteer work with the organization. =) However, I’ve been putting my own writing on the backburner a bit while doing this, so I’m looking forward to putting that back into my work. Look for lots of new words in 2019, including a new Tabat book, at least one collection, more on the space opera series, and the launch of a self-pub effort I’m excited about!

sfwapro #sfwapro