Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
An eye-opener. If it is run by myopic and arrogant people, does it mean the SFWA is damaging to the genre?
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It might be taking steps on the road to senility/obsolescence.
They do some good meaningful work on behalf of authors (unlike the "Authors' Guild")--like their flagging of the contracts at Random House's Predatory Press Hydra--but they are clearly a bit backwards in their worldview (which doesn't help their credibility, long-term, in a genre that requires open minds to read and write) in focusing almost exclusively on the ways and venues of traditional publishing (once Hydra tweaked their predatory contracts to more closely ressemble traditional contracts, they shut up--the fact that the terms remained predatory doesn't bother them). Where other genre author associations are giving indie published authors consideration for membership (they constitute 30-50% of recent genre works for romance and SF, after all) the SFWA is still hung up on "validation via contract" and last century practices.
So it's not just their sensitivity to members' sensitivities that needs work.
Perhaps the incoming leadership can blow off some of the barnacles before ossification sets in. (Fingers and assorted limbs crossed.)
