Do I believe results with self-publishing should qualify someone for SFWA? Yes, absolutely. To me the only question is how to define those results in a way that makes them comparable with the existing criteria.
The Economics of Being an Author
I believe that increasingly a 100% traditional publishing model is not as economically rewarding for most authors as one which combines it with (or may even be restricted to) self-publishing. Some authors will be able to make that approach pay, but the jury’s still out as to which way that trend will go in the future. However, I believe that SFWA members who follow a path restricted to traditional means will at some point be the minority — if they’re not already. Certainly the results of the poll we took show a lot of SFWA members (43% of responding Active members, 38% of Associates) are pursuing one form or another of self-publishing.
Sometimes people mention the self-publishing “bubble,” with the implication that all this newfangled stuff like e-readers is just a fad. I don’t agree. The experience of reading is undergoing a sea change. While physical books aren’t going away anytime soon, e-books are here to stay.
Are the Traditional Gatekeepers That Crucial?
Some of the arguments I’ve seen focus on the importance of the traditional gatekeepers (editors, publishers, and (to a lesser degree) agents) to the qualifying process. The argument falls along the lines that those gatekeepers are necessary because their economic investment in the text is the most acceptable way to certify quality. This argument also tends to be made primarily by editors and publishers.
While it’s true that self-publishing makes the author the sole and obviously biased person to answer the question whether something’s worthy of publication, luckily there are other ways to determine whether or not something is “professional-level” or not: an economic-based criteria that is already in the qualification rules.
To rely entirely on economic criteria is a more than adequate answer. SFWA already has them in place with the definition of minimum advance and per-word dollar amounts. Beyond that, what a publisher deems “good enough to be published” boils down to economic concerns as well: it means that the publisher believes it will make them enough money that an initial financial investment is worthwhile.
I should point out that, beyond the initial investment of time and creative energy, the self-published writer often — usually, in fact — invests financially in their books, in the form of hiring editing and proofing services, cover art, book design, audio production, advertising, etc. This should not be overlooked when considering the “average” self-published writer, who is very much a professional.
But in any case, it’s really the sales that matter. Whether or not readers want to spend money on the words. Asking self-published writers to prove sales comparable to the existing figures is reasonable as well as a simple and intuitive algorithm: the amount of money a traditional sale must make in order to qualify should equal the amount a self-published piece must make.
How we get people to prove sales is an important question. That and the actual criteria are the two most important decisions SFWA will be making.
Answering Objections:
In answer to some of the various objections I’ve seen.
SFWA shouldn’t do this because it will result in public feuds between traditionalists and the self-published.
Well, yes and no. A few diehards and zealots on either side will lock horns. As happens, and has happened on a regular basis since SFWA’s earliest days, there will come Heated Discussions. I believe this is par for this particular course, which is a lumpy, untended one full of straw men trying to play through.
But that group will be fairly small although loudly vocal. Most of us (and I say us because this is the camp I fall into) realize a number of things:
- As professional writers who want to make a living at writing, we need to know what options we have with self-publishing.
- There is a growing interest in self-publishing among us, as well as a rising number already trying it.
- It is an economically viable way of generating income.
I have a stake in this race — right now I’ve been finding my experiment in what is a essentially a form of self-publishing, a Patreon campaign, a reasonable way to self-publish short stories.
SFWA knows it can’t — and shouldn’t try to — please everyone. This step will be controversial no matter what. The best thing SFWA can do is make sure that reasoning behind the decision is sound, that the membership feels it’s gotten enough chance to weigh in, and that the Board is willing to listen to and acknowledge feedback on an ongoing basis.
A mass of unworthy bozos and hobbyist writers will descend on SFWA, tainting its ranks.
SFWA has plenty already. A few more aren’t going to destroy us. Beyond which, this is why there are qualification criteria.
Bozos and hobbyists both seem boogeymen for the most part to me. No matter what the group, there will always be the brash, the socially-inept, the deficient in empathy or manners, the chip-shouldered, the self-appointed prophets and others lacking in basic social graces. They are an unfortunate fact of life in any population, no matter how refined or well-educated. I have no reason to believe the self-published have them in any greater (or lesser) degree than the current membership, or even the general populace of professional speculative fiction writers.
To worry about the somehow unworthy and unprofessional is to ignore the fact that there’s already a few people in the ranks who are there on scant sales or the kindness of a friend who happens to be an editor. Again, I have no reason to believe that for some reason the ranks of self-published have a disproportionate amount of these. There are some very talented and hardworking writers out there depending on self-publishing.
In Conclusion:
I’ve been re-reading Dale Spender’s excellent nonfiction work, Mothers of the Novel, and working on a lengthy essay drawing parallels between it and some of the recent treatment of women in F&SF: BS like “pink” versus “blue” SF (poor women don’t even get a primary color!), reviews scoffing at Ancillary Justice’s gender “gimmick”, and the Truesdale review of Women Destroying Science Fiction (so many of his essays, really) all come readily to mind.
And there’s some overlap there with self-publishing as well, and the way it dismantles one of the structures that’s often worked to reinforce the status quo, which is traditional publishing. Arguments against the horde of unwashed yahoos that will descend upon SFWA often seem to say as much about the speaker’s attitudes towards class as anything else.
So yes. SFWA already has plenty of members working with self-publishing. Allowing professional writers to qualify via self-published sales is a step that’s both overdue and not dangerous to SFWA. The only real danger would lie in a decision to ignore the importance of self-publishing and its impact on professional writers of today.
Addendum on 9/17/2014 – Because I seem to have created some confusion, let me clarify something. I talked about self-publishing because that’s the thing on my mind the most at the moment, and did not mean to imply that small press stuff is unimportant or not under consideration. The effort to revamp the overall criteria includes looking at how qualifying through small press publications “” including crowdfundingstuff like Kickstarter, which is another can of worms “” should work as well as whether existing criteria should be revised.
My last day is June 30, 2019, wheeeeeee, after which I will have been Vice President of the 
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.
13 Responses
I would like to see the qualifications for small presses be reexamined. I understand where the advance criteria came from – but if SFWA can quantify self-publishing without a traditional advance, it could also apply to established small presses as well.
Hi Rhonda – Good point! That is indeed part of the overall project and we’ll be looking at small press criteria as well. Kickstarted and other crowdfunded projects are also something we need to take into consideration.
Well said, I completely agree.
I also agree with Rhonda that criteria should be reconsidered to allow small presses in novels to be included.
As far as I know, the very concept of an “advance” is very much based in traditional publishing practices, in particular because those practices are so slow and so the advance is meant to give the writer some initial income to help them along until royalties start rolling in. But using the advance as the SOLE definition of whether a novel is a professional sale makes little sense in today’s publishing environment because:
1. It does not take into account overall sales. A book can get a $2000 advance and sell no copies, and it is a pro sale–despite that advance applied to a word count making actually less per-word rate than short stories are required to meet. Conversely, a book can get no advance and sell a million copies and is not a pro sale.
2. Modern publishing technology lets the schedule for publication be greatly reduced so the advance is less meaningful than it used to be.
3. Advances don’t take into account the royalty percentage–A book sold via Amazon gives more money to the author than a book sold in a trad pub, so it takes significantly less sales to reach some chosen amount of money like $2000. If magazines are required to pay a certain per-word rate then it seems to follow that book publishers should be required to pay a certain level of royalty.
Yup, sales definitely need to play a factor. Good point about the publication schedule being shortened.
I think you’ve got a real handle on how to do this. I’ve thought it was a good idea for years, but hadn’t given much thought to how to make it work.
I also agree with Rhonda about including the small presses in this approach, or perhaps finding other criteria for approving small presses, especially the ones that have developed a good reputation even though they aren’t generating a lot of income for either the publisher or the author.
Thanks Nancy! It should be interesting to see what we end up with.
So here’s part of the issue with self-pubbing: There are more people writing books and wanting to get them out there than traditional publishers are willing to take a risk on. The vast majority of these books sell less than 100 copies, regardless of the amount of effort and expense the authors have gone to. Lack of sales may not be merely the result of poor quality writing. It could be based on the fact that the author has a very small personal network, and can’t afford to do much marketing. Or it could be that the subject matter of their work is extremely obscure or niche. Or they blend genres in ways that people have yet to get interested in.
How will SFWA’s new strategy work for self-pubbed authors whose work is as good as much of the traditionally published commercial fiction out there, but just hasn’t found an audience?
I’d like to suggest a different approach, not based on royalties earned or copies sold. If done properly, this could pay for itself or even become a profit center for SFWA: Charge reading fees, and pay people to decide whether the self-pubbed work meets basic quality standards.
Some newer journals (like Tahoma Literary Review) are doing this. IIRC, even Kirkus Reviews lets you pay for the chance to have your book reviewed by them.
The actual figures would be up for discussion, but you could do something like the following:
1) Charge a nonrefundable “reading fee” to self-pubbed authors (up to $100),
2) Pay current SFWA members (or respected freelancers) to read novels from applicants, and…
3) …determine whether the novel in question passes basic quality standards (not marketability or even likability standards).
If rejected, the writer would be told the reason why: E.g. “Your work ignores basic rules of spelling and grammar,” “Nothing happens in this story,” or “This isn’t science fiction or fantasy.” If accepted, the author would be listed with all the other SFWA authors (not in a special category). They could treat membership as a seal of approval for their work, and be eligible for award nomination, etc.
Will this open Pandora’s Box of griping from those whose work is rejected? Sure. But it’s not like self-pubbers are being quiet about how the system is out to exclude them already.
Unlike some genres, SFF is lucky to have more readers than writers for the time being. I’m glad that SFWA is considering a way to let self-pubbers in on the fun, but I think they could build their funding base and raise their reputation as curators of the genre by following the approach described above.
So here’s part of the issue with self-pubbing: There are more people writing books and wanting to get them out there than traditional publishers are willing to take a risk on. The vast majority of these books sell less than 100 copies, regardless of the amount of effort and expense the authors have gone to. Lack of sales may not be merely the result of poor quality writing. It could be based on the fact that the author has a very small personal network, and can’t afford to do much marketing. Or it could be that the subject matter of their work is extremely obscure or niche. Or they blend genres in ways that people have yet to get interested in.
How will SFWA’s new strategy work for self-pubbed authors whose work is as good as much of the traditionally published commercial fiction out there, but just hasn’t found an audience?
I’d like to suggest a different approach, not based on royalties earned or copies sold. If done properly, this could pay for itself or even become a profit center for SFWA: Charge reading fees, and pay people to decide whether the self-pubbed work meets basic quality standards.
Some newer journals (like Tahoma Literary Review) are doing this. IIRC, even Kirkus Reviews lets you pay for the chance to have your book reviewed by them.
The actual figures would be up for discussion, but you could do something like the following:
1) Charge a nonrefundable “reading fee” to self-pubbed authors (up to $100),
2) Pay current SFWA members (or respected freelancers) to read novels from applicants, and…
3) …determine whether the novel in question passes basic quality standards (not marketability or even likability standards).
If rejected, the writer would be told the reason why: E.g. “Your work ignores basic rules of spelling and grammar,” “Nothing happens in this story,” or “This isn’t science fiction or fantasy.” If accepted, the author would be listed with all the other SFWA authors (not in a special category). They could treat membership as a seal of approval for their work, and be eligible for award nomination, etc.
Will this open Pandora’s Box of griping from those whose work is rejected? Sure. But it’s not like self-pubbers are being quiet about how the system is out to exclude them already.
Unlike some genres, SFF is lucky to have more readers than writers for the time being. I’m glad that SFWA is considering a way to let self-pubbers in on the fun, but I think they could build their funding base and raise their reputation as curators of the genre by following the approach described above.
“How will SFWA’s new strategy work for self-pubbed authors whose work is as good as much of the traditionally published commercial fiction out there, but just hasn’t found an audience?”
I’m uncomfortable with the thought of standards that measure something that’s hard to define like “as good as much of the traditionally published commercial fiction.” On Twitter one person suggested that getting an award nomination might serve as an auto-qualification. That might be one way to address the concern you’re raising.
Reading fees would be an enormous hassle to administrate. As it is I have trouble finding volunteers for existing roles. Adding on a slew of readers with such a program is not feasible, in my opinion.
“How will SFWA’s new strategy work for self-pubbed authors whose work is as good as much of the traditionally published commercial fiction out there, but just hasn’t found an audience?”
I’m uncomfortable with the thought of standards that measure something that’s hard to define like “as good as much of the traditionally published commercial fiction.” On Twitter one person suggested that getting an award nomination might serve as an auto-qualification. That might be one way to address the concern you’re raising.
Reading fees would be an enormous hassle to administrate. As it is I have trouble finding volunteers for existing roles. Adding on a slew of readers with such a program is not feasible, in my opinion.
I was wondering if a time frame of say 6 mos-1 year where the author could prove making $0.06 per word on their book.