Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Not Much Gossip

Home again, home again, from my back-to-back trips. Good times. I didn't spend much time at the RWA hotel, but I did talk to a few people here and there. I didn't pick up a lot of gossip, but there were a few things.

Some authors are angry over RWA's decision to drop the First Sale ribbon in favor of a New PAN Member ribbon. They see it as RWA's continued effort to ghetto-ize a large section of its membership. I heard a lot of talk about how to force RWA to change. It's never gonna happen, kids. RWA's power has always been in its inclusiveness, and its weakness has always been in the constant internal warring that this inclusiveness causes. Any organization that ostensibly welcomes all -- but only to a certain point -- is going to have loads of problems over the places it draws its internal lines. Nature of the beast and all that.

Speaking of inclusiveness, I was party to a discussion with some GLBTQ writers about what it might take to get their own Rita category. Smart thinking in that group. I wish them much success, and then I wish that they would share their successful methods with the erotic romance authors, who are still beating their collective foreheads against that brick wall.

I heard rave reviews of the Michael Hauge workshops. (Is that how we spell his name? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) Based on the little I heard about workshops, I would hesitantly conclude that this one was the best of them.

Not a lot of chatter about the houses. Some rumors floating around, but nothing confirmed, so I won't repeat them here.

For my money, this year I chose to attend the IASPR conference instead of RWA. IASPR was fantastic. The quality of analysis in this group is very high. I took mad notes during the panels, and one particular paper on wild characters made me think for a long, long time afterward. Still kind of mulling over some of the points.

So, for those of you who were there, what did you hear? What's the news?

Theresa

6 comments:

Julie Harrington said...

It's always fun to hear the latest coming out of Nationals. I'd heard whispers in the days before that Harlequin was revamping all its lines again and that news would come out at Nationals. Any truth to that?

JT

Annette said...

Dear Author had an interesting post on the subject.

http://dearauthor.com/features/industry-news/the-things-i-learned-from-rwa-2011/

Edittorrent said...

Julie, most of the gossip about the big H can be summed up as:

1. YA is growing. Sales of paranormal YA remain strong.

2. Carina sales are small but growth prospects are good. People are very positive about Carina.

3. People are waiting to see actual contract language before they vote yea or nay on the new contract terms. Most seem frustrated and have low expectations. It's the net/cover thing making people nervous.

4. Lots of unfounded rumors which I won't repeat here. Imagine your favorite doom-and-gloom financial detail, and I probably heard it in the bar, but it's all speculation and I don't put much credit in these rumors. What I hear from reputable sources is that H as a corporate entity remains strong, but that there is some dilution of sales for individual authors, continuing a trend that started long ago and that is certainly not particular to any one house.

T

Julie Harrington said...

Thanks, Theresa! And Annette! :)

J.

Carly Carson said...

Oh I wish I had met you! I did attend the 2nd Michael Hauge workshop and it was excellent. The title was "From Identity to Essence: Love Stories and Transformation".

Summary: "The protag's identity is the false sense created to protect her from the fear that grows out of the belief created by the wound that happens before the story begins. The protag's essence is what the protag has the potential to become." The character arc is the transformation from identity to essence.

I know the first sentence is convoluted but it does cover the gist of his lecture. His pitch book had such good buzz at the conference that when I went to buy it, it was sold out. He had his workshops available on discs which one could probably order from his website.

Edittorrent said...

Carly, I didn't know you were there! I was in the conference hotel bar a couple of times and would have LOVED to meet you in person!

That's a good tip about getting the Michael Hauge workshops on disc. I might check that out. Sounds interesting, and the buzz on that guy was amazing.

Theresa