I’m mailing Penny’s entry to the RITA contest today. Wish Penny luck! Erotic romance novellas don’t usually final in the RITAs, but a Secrets novella has finaled before, so you never know. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Um, not always. Recently, I was rather disappointed to find out that entry qualifications for the RITAs have changed yet again. Last year, for the 2008 contest, for the first time ever that I can recall, micro-press books could be entered in the RITA if the entrant provided copies that were printed and bound by the publisher (IE. entrants could not print off and enter paper copies of their ebooks). Amber Quill Press prints trade paperbacks of all its novel-sized ebooks, so last year I was able to enter RITA for the first time with BORROWING ALEX. I was very excited, as the same opportunity wasn’t available to me with HEAD OVER HEELS. So I entered. That opened up another can of worms, because then I had to decide whether to enter a short novel in the Single Title category to compete against novels up to twice as long, or to enter BORROWING ALEX in the Series Contemporary category, the category descriptions for which included enough language loopholes enabling me to enter it regardless that BORROWING ALEX didn’t have a number (as in numeral) on the cover, like books published by Harlequin and Silhouette do.
I didn’t expect much. With judges not accustomed to reading micro-press books in the RITA, dared I hope I could compete? Well, BORROWING ALEX didn’t final, but it competed just fine, garnering one 9 (the top score in the contest for those not in the know) and an 8 out of the panel of five judges (IE. my peers). Yay, me. I’d hoped that by entering the RITA last year with a micro-press book I’d help pave the way for future entrants in similar circumstances. Alas, this year, anyway, it is not to be. Here is the information from the public pages of the RWA website:
Books entered in the 2009 RITA contest must:
It’s the “be mass-produced” phrase in the third bullet point that bothers me. Why? Because, either: (a) I’m so out of touch that I didn’t realize this pretty darn big change had occurred; or (b) it occurred without a big announcement or fanfare, like that which occurred last year.
Now I’m wondering, what qualifies as “mass-produced”? I know print on demand (POD) technology does not qualify as mass-produced, because publishers who use POD technology, like Amber Quill Press, print the books as they’re ordered. Mass market prints “print runs.” But the 2009 RITA rules do not specify a print run number.
Does this mean micro-press authors can order 10 copies of their book and then submit five copies of that book for entry to the RITA? Does 10 copies qualify as a print run (“mass-produced”)? I’m not trying to be ridiculous, I’m trying to figure it out. I’ve “heard” (IE. as in a rumor) that 500 is the minimum number required for mass-produced, but the 2009 RITA rules do not state the 500 minimum. They just state “mass-produced,” which, to a mind like mine, is open to interpretation.
I don’t know, how do you feel about these changes? Regardless of whether they affect you?
Oh, yeah, these changes also affect which authors can and can not enter the Golden Heart, but that’s another blog post.