Harlequin vanity bodice-ripping wank! (Even more awesome than it sounds)
Hang on to your hats, kids, this one's a doozy in several parts. To start off, you might want to catch up on agilebrit's clairvoyantwank writeup. Clairvoyant indeed! To sum up, romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises teamed up with a publisher called ASI solutions to form Harlequin Horizons, a vanity press. Romance Writers of America promptly revoked Harlequin's "recognized publisher" status.

And now for a wank in several parts, involving a goodly number of awesome people in addition to a wanking Cast of Thousands (tm):

As linked above, the news broke on the PubRants blog. Promptly, there was wank. To keep this report from getting too long, I think I can sum up the two sides at work with this comment and one further down. (editied b/c I linked and quoted the wrong comments...whupsie)

1: I'm so proud of RWA right now. I really hope they do not relent.

Self publishing is NOT considered published under the RWA guidelines. The money flows toward the author, not away.

Another thing is this: Harlequin wants a free ride. They want "slush" authors to pay for self-publishing and then Harlequin will monitor the more successful ventures and possibly publish them traditionally. Oh, they also say in their memo that they realize that authors sometimes want bound copies of their own books to show to potential agents!! Um, yeah, I'm sure Kristin would love that. They are completely trying to take advantage of the new, uneducated and desperate author.

2: Publishing insiders know the score. You can put it to music--The Times They Are A-Changin'.
It's a brave, brilliant move by Harlequin and will doubtlessly serve as a model for other publishers.

Solid, agented mss are getting rejected with those "glowing" passes you blogged about, Kristen. A year ago, these same mss would have been pre-empted. The old rules no longer apply: good, publishable books aren't getting picked up. And if some of these authors opt for Harlequin, they won't "tarnish" the brand, they'll inject new life into it.

GOOD TIMES! There is further wank in the comments of said post, but I think that's all we need to see for now.


For our next act:platedlizard dropped these two in the c_w post: Writers Beware and the Absolute Write forums. annathepiper brings us the Making Light entry on the topic, and ensuing commentary, and over here we have Dear Author.

...I'm not even going to bother quoting from these, really, there's plenty to go around on the topic of vanity vs. self-publishing and teh evils of Harlequin for duping their authors, but as neat as it is the really juicy stuff is what pops up next:


Part Three: Wherein SBTB explodes and Nora weighs in.

First off, in this we have a rep from Harlequin itself showing up an explaining their stance. Of course, these reassuring statements about "Oh we'll keep the vanity press stuff away from the real authors" don't work so well when you market like this:

Item three:

“Compete in the marketplace. It’s no secret that the book industry is crowded and competitive. What can you do to set yourself apart? Start by checking out our innovative marketing services such as e-books, online video book trailers, author Web sites and social networking services.”

(And speaking of marketing, how about a "Hollywood book trailer" for a mere 20 grand?)

But enough with this dumbassery, you want Nora, right? Right. Unfortunately, all her comments are on the second page, and for some reason that makes them impossible to link directly. Warning: Huge Block of Text.

To start off, "Emma Wayne Porter" asserts the following:

“Professional” authors are already paying for packaging, editorial, promotion and admin (copyright and such) through the rather huge chunk the publishers take from the revenue pile. FACT: The author gets what… 6 - 8% of the take? That means the traditional publisher gets 92 -94%.

Nora, you know, Nora god-damn Roberts, responds thusly:

Just no.

When a publisher BUYS the rights to your book, they PAY you an advance on royalties. You do not PAY them. You get a check for the SALE of your rights. You have sold your book, you have not paid to have your book published.

The publisher then shells out the money for all the areas of publication, invests considerable time and money into that publication as it has bought the book and paid the author an advance on royalties. When the book is published, the author will receive more money when that advance earns off. The author does not pay, but is paid.

In addition to getting a check rather than giving one, the author receives the support, experience, muscle, editorial input, etc, etc, from the publisher.

Vanity press is called vanity for a reason. You’re paying for your ego. That’s fine, dealer’s choice.

But it’s a different matter when a big brand publisher uses its name and its resources to sell this as dream fulfillment, advertises it as such while trying to claim it’s not really their brand being used to make money on mss they’ve rejected as not worthy of that brand in the first place.

Delightful! It gets better though. A wanker named "Zoe Winters" shows up with gems like this:

The sooner authors realize that ALL publishing routes in some way feed their own vanity, the sooner they can stop wanking over the issue and figure out the best BUSINESS decision for them. For SOME the best business decision is going to be traditional publishing because they either don’t have the time, interest, or skills to start their own business like this.

For some, it’s going to be self-publishing.

And eventually gets into a little back-and-forth with Nora, which I won't bother to reproduce in full but here's one glorious Nora highlight:

~It is perfectly valid for “you” to speak of a writing career~

Zoe, this just pisses me off as it supposes I didn’t come up through the ranks, sweating my way, going through what every other new writer goes through.

It supposes I really don’t know what I’m talking about in today’s publishing arena because I’m somehow removed from it by success.

So I have to stop all this and go back to my privileged career—which for me, is continuing to sweat over the keyboard to write a book.

The sensation is something like hearing Morgan Freeman say "motherfucker" in Wanted. So awesome. Much more to that debate if you go looking, just search page two of the SBTB post for Nora Roberts or Zoe Winters.


This last part came out of fucking nowhere. A blog post was made on the New Yorker website. Yes, that New Yorker. There is wank in the comments, but as these are New Yorker readers it is highly eloquent and always done with the pinky extended. I will translate into terms wankas will find more familiar (note: comments are from the bottom up, because they're better than you):

MyMusings: OMG UR JUST BITTER

lynnmede: THE OP IS HAX

YasmineGalenorn: OMG UR DISSIN MY FRIENDS *FLOUNCE*

heypat: U STOLE THAT ICON AND UR BEING WHINY

The rest of it is actually well-reasoned discourse that uses the quality writing to make valid if slightly barbed points. Entertaining nonetheless.


And finally, THIS JUST IN from PubRants. Watch that post for further fappery developments! Notably, Harlequin has decided to dissociate the "Harlequin" name from their vanity publishing rig in response to the RWA slamming them, and the MWA has weighed in. ETA: And the wank has matured nicely! Here's a couple comments of note: Anon #1, Anon #2, "Harlequin, were not stupid" [sic].

And here come the ETAS!
#1: SFWA tweets a heads-up, and the glorious katamari of wank rolls on!

#2: Coutesy of magnolia_mama, Lee Goldberg drops his two cents from the MWA soapbox. In a shocking turn of events, he seems to be making a cogent, reasonable argument. My world is rocked.

#3: annathepiper links us to SFWA's statement, which is possibly the strongest yet! For a snippet:

...Further, SFWA believes that work published with Harlequin Horizons may injure writing careers by associating authors’ names with small sales levels reflected by the imprint’s lack of distribution, as well as its emphasis upon income received from writers and not readers....Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA. Further, Harlequin should be on notice that while the rules of our annual Nebula Award do not expressly prohibit self-published titles from winning, it is highly unlikely that our membership would ever nominate or vote for a work that was published in this manner....SFWA does not believe that changing the name of the imprint, or in some other way attempting to disguise the relationship to Harlequin, changes the intention, and calls on Harlequin to do the right thing by immediately discontinuing this imprint and returning to doing business as an advance and royalty paying publisher.

Count on the pew-pew lasers genre to bring the burn!

#4: Found by pariforma, someone named Jackie Kessler has an excellent (and amusing) summary of the whole mess on their blog. The pricing breakdown (with reference links to the Harlequin price-sheets themselves) is particularly well-done.

#5, which should be like #3 but I missed it the first time: via lady_ganesh, Mr. Scalzi has spoken. Does anyone else smell something...burning?

Or in other words: Hey, prospective writers! Harlequin cordially invites you to take nearly as much money as the company gives its first-time romance writers as an advance and give it to them instead, in the foolish and ill-advised hope that by doing all the work the publisher is supposed to do for you, you might get the attention of the company who is already putatively publishing your work. At which point the publisher will reach down from its lofty perch in the clouds, wave its magic wand at your wooden toy of a novel and make it a real boy, and then say to you, “yes, you actually are a writer, not just some foolish chump who has just spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to slap the word ‘Harlequin’ on your self-published work.”

...

After mentioning all the ways Harlequin has helped the RWA conference in the past (read: “you are nothing without us!!!!”), Hayes writes:

"It is disappointing that the RWA has not recognized that publishing models have and will continue to change. As a leading publisher of women’s fiction in a rapidly changing environment, Harlequin’s intention is to provide authors access to all publishing opportunities, traditional or otherwise."

Let me translate that last paragraph for you:

"It is disappointing that the RWA has not recognized that in a recession, our company’s commitment to its bottom line trumps any ethical or moral consideration when it comes to the treatment of writers who haven’t figured out that we’re supposed to be paying them, not the other way around. Harlequin’s intention is to suck money off these rubes in every way possible, so there."

Mmm, PR barbecue. As a bonus, there's a lovely herd of teal deer in the comments, including some truly lovely wanking by one Diana Peterfreund and a few others. Scroll on through, it's a good time.

Blooper reel: We, uh, may have played a part in crashing SBTB for a while there. please don't kill meeeee

#6: Zoe Winters continues her wanking in the comments of an article at the Examiner. Thanks dreamworld!