Remember when I said Monday that changes to the RITA contest this year might also affect the Golden Heart? Here’s how.

Last year, changes to RWA publisher recognition occurred so that an author’s ability to enter PAN (the Published Author Network of RWA) was no longer tied to whether or not an author’s publisher met RWA-set standards. Instead, now, an author can join PAN independently of her publisher’s ability to host official editor appointments and publisher Spotlights at National, yada, yada, and her requirements for joining PAN are instead based on achieving a set minimum dollar amount of advance/royalties combination on one novel or novella. This change enabled me, myself and Moi (all three, I assure you) to join PAN last spring. Yipsee-doodle.

Suddenly, I found myself unable to enter the Golden Heart (which didn’t bother me in the least). I was thrilled not to enter the Golden Heart. After all, the year I finaled, I had two books contracted, and one of those books, BORROWING ALEX, was published just a month before the National RWA conference in Dallas. I confess, it always felt a bit strange to me to enter my unpublished manuscripts in the Golden Heart when I had books available for sale, but that was the avenue open to me, so that was the avenue I took. Fine and dandy. I entered the GH with an unpublished manuscript in 2007, and I finaled (yay, me). Did I feel guilty about taking away the chance for a truly unpublished author to final? Um, not really. Because I think every RWA member should have a chance to enter either the Golden Heart or RITA contest if she so chooses. However, the RITA changes this year now prevent that.

Now, if you sell a work of over 20,000 words to a non-Subsidy, non-Vanity Publisher, you can no longer enter your unpublished works (ie. not the work you sold) in the Golden Heart. However, once that book you sold/contracted is in print, unless it’s mass-produced (ie. not POD, which are books printed as they are ordered) you can’t enter it in the RITA contest either.

You can’t enter your published work in the RITA.

You can’t enter your unpublished work in the Golden Heart.

I’m a bit bamboozled. This is the first year since I joined RWA that I can recall a member not having the ability to enter either contest. That bugs me. Even though it doesn’t apply to my situation.

I also find it ironic that an author can join PAN on the basis of her earnings, then find herself unable to enter the same book that qualified her to join PAN in the RITAs—because her publisher uses print on demand technology instead of Print Runs of a Mysterious Number Yet to be Announced.

What am I missing?

By the way, there’s an excellent discussion about the topics of today’s and Monday’s blog post occurring over on Absolute Write, if anyone wants to check it out. Last I checked, no one in that thread had received confirmation of what constitutes “mass-produced.”

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:

•  Have an original copyright date (printed on the copyright page) or a first printing date or a first North American printing date of 2008.
• Not have been previously entered.
• Be mass-produced by a non-Subsidy, non-Vanity Publisher in print book format.
• Meet the requirements for the category in which it was entered.
• Be a work of original fictional narrative prose.

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.