Re: Why?

"Tony Burton" <[email protected]> wrote:
<snip> MY guess is that they view representation in their store as a benefit to 
their 
members, so 
they only place the books of members in their proprietary storefront.  Eminently 
logical, if 
they are using placement as a selling point: "One of the benefits of EPIC 
membership is to 
have your book sold in our online Fictionwise store!"<snip>
____________________________________________

EPIC is not nearly as important in this industry as they would like to think; 
which is why, if I were you, Tony, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over whether 
your titles were included in their proprietary storefront or not. 

After a senior member of Mundania's management advised me that my titles would 
never, ever be considered for publication by *his* house, not because of their 
quality but simply because I had expressed a public opinion to the EPIC list of 
which *he* personally disapproved, I decided it was time to sever my connection 
with that organization once and for all. (I still have that particular post, Ms 
Lyons, in case you're wondering).

Because I share Piers Anthony's abhorrence of blacklisting, I found this 
statement from an electronic publisher who had just become a member of EPIC's 
board very, very disturbing; and it was one of the main reasons why I questioned 
EPIC's admittance of publishers such as Mundania to membership in the first 
place, let alone its allowing them to run for office.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you're a romance author, EPIC is 
the place for you. If you write in some other genre, probably not. 

While it would be really, really nice to have a ebook authors' organization 
which would professionally represent *all* electronically published authors' 
regardles of the genre in which they write, EPIC definitely ain't it. 

i.e. While I disagree with most of what the Romance Writers of America has done 
in the past twenty years, especially their attitude toward electronically 
published authors,  I heartily endorse their decision to exclude publishers from 
RWA membership for this reason, even if it was after the fact. 

When a publisher uses their clout to threaten an individual author with 
blacklisting for an opinion they expressed to their own professional writers 
organization's list that had nothing to do with the quality of their work, a 
line has been crossed from which there can be no retreat. 

This is what happened to me at EPIC. The publisher in question also used his 
capacity as an officer of that particular organization to attempt to enforce his 
threat, and *that* is an offense that I will never forgive for as long as I 
live.

Fortunately for me, electronic publishers are not nearly as homogeneous as their 
print counterparts or I might have suffered Piers  Anthony's fate. As Mr Anthony 
says in his autobiography, Bio of an Ogre, he was deliberately blacklisted by 
the rest of the print publishers for several years, thanks in large part to the 
SFWA despicable failure to support him when he desperately needed their help. 
His publication banishment finally ended when the late Lester Del Ray literally 
stood up and said "to heck with you!", or words to that effect, and decided to 
publish him anyway.

Electronic publishing has been, for the most part, mercifully free from this 
kind of bullying and, I for one, would like to see it continue that way. If EPIC 
wants the president of Mundania to decide what should and should not be in their 
online bookstore, that's their perogative, but they, and we, all need to keep in 
mind that free speech is another matter entirely. 

--
Freddie aka Kate Saundby
[email protected]
http://www.double-dragon-
ebooks.com/
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/aut
hor.asp?AuthorID=1745
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/K
ateSaundbyeBooks.htm


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