Their annual contest, “More than Magic” judges published romance novels. As the contest rules explain:

Our judges are all romance readers. Within that group are RWI chapter members and members of other RWA chapters. We recruit judges nationwide and even worldwide (for e-books) and our only requirement is that they are regular romance readers.

They tell us which categories and what “heat” level they prefer to read, so our entrants’ books get into the hands of people who might give them the most favorable rating.

Our final round judges are chosen for the diversity of their romance reading interests and enjoyment, sense of fair comparison across all categories, and knowledge of the romance genre.

Oh, wait. That’s not the part that I meant to quote. The contest rules also say this:

– Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.

I…see.

On Kari Gregg’s blog, Cathy Pegau notes that she e-mailed them and was told that they decided not to accept same-sex entries because the majority of the chapter felt uncomfortable with them.  Apparently, it’s possible for the MTM contest to get entrants’ books in the hands of diverse judges from multiple RWA chapters who are comfortable with all types of romances and heat levels. You can write M/F erotica. You can write M/M/F. You can write about aliens from another planet who have tentacles, or barbed sexual organs. You can write degrading rapes. None of those things are barred from entry in the More than Magic contest, and if you write them, they’ll try to find judges who are predisposed to like your books.

But they won’t do that if you write same sex romance–even if it’s a sweet romance with no sexual contact whatsoever. No–when it comes to same sex romance, the fact that they might be able to identify judges in their chapter or outside of it who would be willing to read same sex entries and judge them fairly somehow becomes irrelevant. In that instance, the majority gets to say that those entries don’t belong.

Others have taken a variety of tactics. They’ve written to RWA (who apparently sanctioned this nonsense). They’ve written to the contest directly. I suspect that writing to RWA and the contest will result in much handwringing–there’s nothing in the P&PM or the Bylaws that prevent this, not without stretching overly much. There’s nothing in the P&PM that prevents a chapter from barring interracial romance, either. What should prevent such things from happening–is good sense and common human decency.

While we can put pressure on RWA to create and maintain more egalitarian guidelines, RWA as an organization moves at a snail’s pace.

But just because something’s allowed doesn’t mean that it must be accepted blindly. This is not okay. And just because we’re working on a longer-term solution by discussing policy changes doesn’t mean that we have to let the instant behavior slide.

And so I’d like to suggest something simple: I’m asking that people don’t enter the More than Magic contest, and e-mail the contest coordinator at jackie.rwimagic@netscape.com to let her know why. You don’t need to be rude or uncivil. Just clear and concise.

The message I sent was this:

Dear Romance Writers, Ink:

I will not be entering your More than Magic contest because, while you state in your judging guidelines that you make an effort to find judges who are compatible with diverse romance works, you exclude same-sex romances. This is unacceptable to me, and it irreparably poisons the value of the contest itself. I have forwarded my reasons for refusing to enter the contest to my chapter-mates.

I hope that you reconsider your guidelines in upcoming years, and find a way to make accommodations for all romances.

I’m also asking that unpublished writers refuse to enter their contest for unpublished writers when it’s announced–the “Where the Magic Begins” contest. I’m asking editors and agents to refuse to act as final judges for the “Where the Magic Begins” contest. If you have already entered, please write to them and withdraw your entry. Editors and agents, if you’ve already agreed to serve as final judges, please withdraw. And for everyone–when the final judges–if the final judges are announced for the unpublished contest, please contact any editors and agents you know to inform them of the fact that the chapter discriminates, and ask them to withdraw.

I don’t know if we can change RWA’s policies, but we can make it costly–extremely costly–for chapters to choose to discriminate. It may be their right to choose intolerance. But it’s our right to refuse to tolerate it, and to make them feel the cost of their decision. This is not acceptable.

I will be sending the text of this post to the RWA-PAN loop and my local chapter loops. Forwarding encouraged.

I think I’ve made my feelings fairly clear. I believe that agents who publish clients are engaged in an unethical conflict of interest. I also think that agents have always provided clients with services, and that an agent can ethically provide services to a client. The salient difference between the two is that an agent who takes rights is publishing, and an agent who facilitates self-publishing is providing publishing services.

Kristin says in her post that she talked to her clients. I can’t speak for the substance of her conversation with other clients, but she and I had a very long conversation, both about what I did to perfect the work that I published to the level that I did, and about the models that she proposed. I cannot tell you the number of times we went back and forth, both on her models and on the contract–I lost count somewhere around seven or eight. I can tell you that every time I expressed a concern and said, “This looks like a problem,” she came up with a solution. I think I am personally responsible for adding about four pages to her DLP contract to make sure we were spelling out termination, various rights and responsibilities and obligations, and so forth in a way that made sense for an author. (And that’s only a tiny little bit of a joke.)

I can tell you that when I expressed concern about a way that her contract might allow authors to take advantage of her, she told me–more than once–and I paraphrase–”That’s a risk I take. I’m not going to bind my authors to do something that they don’t think is in their best interest just because I’m afraid of what they’ll do.”

One of the things that Kristin is doing that I think is different (in a good way!) from anything else that I’ve seen is that she is making it possible for her authors to use her to get on venues they wouldn’t get on in any other way, without requiring them to make any commitments or representations to her regarding exclusivity in time or over venues.

I’m mostly going to let Kristin speak for herself on this, but I want to clarify my understanding of her distribution venue option. I can send Kristin a valid ePub file for one of my books with a cover and say, “Kristin, please put this up on Overdrive.”

She does so. She only puts it up on Overdrive (unless I ask her to put it up elsewhere, too). I get 85% of the take from Overdrive. She gets 15%. I don’t have to deal with getting on Overdrive myself, or fuss with making sure I get the Onix metadata formatted properly or any of the other headaches.

If I go to her a week later and say, “Kristin, take it down,” she’ll do that, too. (It might annoy her, but she’ll do it. The contract gives her some time to make it so, since no venue is going to be perfect about removing material, but that’s it.)

In the meantime, I’m posting that same file on Amazon and B&N and a number of other venues personally, and getting 100% of that income without any obligation to Kristin whatsoever.

There’s no exclusivity for the distribution venue option. It’s simply that she is representing me to vendors and helping me license works to entities where I wouldn’t be able to license it myself. In short, she is acting as an agent to get me onto venues that are either too much of a pain for me individually, or flatly not available. If I decide that I no longer want Kristin to assist me in distributing my works through Overdrive, I can walk away from it and do it some other way with no obligation.

I plan to use this to get my work more widely distributed. It will make me more money than I can make for myself. That is what agents do.

As for her other option… Right now, I’m not planning on publishing my next series through her full-service option. There are a number of reasons for that, but the biggest one is that I’m not convinced that it is the right choice for me at this time. This is not to say that it’s a bad choice for others, or that I will always make that choice. Just that it is not right for me at this time. There are circumstances when it would be right for me, though, and I recognize that where I am is not where other people are. She and I have discussed this together, and she is and has always been 100% supportive of my making the decisions that I feel are the right choice for me.

I do not think her plan is unethical, which would be a concern. I have read through her contract multiple times, and while she says in her post “we ask them to commit to a two-year term of license,” the contract itself (IIRC) does not use the term “term of license” but “term of liaison.” The difference between those two matters. It matters because if an author grants her a term of liaison, the author can pull the work from self-publication and hold it back, and so long as it is not published anywhere else for two years, Kristin has no claim. It matters because an author can choose not to have the work on a particular venue, and Kristin must respect that choice, even if it costs her money.

It matters because if an author breaches the contract and places the work for sale herself on another venue, Kristin’s only remedy is to file suit for breach of contract and ask for 15% of the amount made. She cannot file a takedown notification with the service. She has no claim or right to the material in question. This is precisely the same remedy Kristin would have if she negotiated a deal with a publisher, the client fired her, and then signed directly with that publisher. In other words, she has the claim of an agent–a contract claim–and not a claim in property.

It is not up yet on Barnes and Noble–but they’ve had the file 48 hours, and hopefully they should be making it available soon. It should also (eventually) be up on Kobo, Sony, and Diesel–but those vendors have always taken a little more time. (If you’re too impatient to wait, both Smashwords and All Romance sell epub files which can be used on Kobo and Sony Readers.) Unraveled will be available in print, too–the print formatting is finished, and right now, I’m just waiting to get the proof.

This is the final book in the Turner series, and I hope you enjoy it!

For those of you who are curious what is coming next… Spring of 2012 will bring a new novella entitled The Governess Affair, which will be the kick off of a new series about a group of friends called the Brothers Sinister. But don’t worry–there’s nothing cloak-and-dagger about any of them. They’re just left-handed.

Enjoy!

First, tonight–in fact, in a scant few hours–there will be a book club chat at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, where people will be talking about Unclaimed. The book clubs are usually pretty awesomely lively. If you’ve never done one, you’ll really enjoy it. Link here. I’ll be joining in at 10 PM EST, but the chat starts at 9 PM EST. I can’t wait to talk to everyone about it yet!

Second, it is the end of November…and there is no Unraveled yet.

I’m sorry.

There’s no good answer for this, except that I’m obviously not very good at determining when things get done. These last few months have also had me busier with non-writing things than usual for a variety of reasons, none of which are interesting, not even to me.

But it’s close. It’s really close. It’s so close that I could upload a copy right now, and the difference between this version and the final version would be small–maybe 1%. But that 1% would include typos and some rough edges that needed to be smoothed, and a handful of extraneous sentences that I really don’t need–that kind of thing.

It will be soon. It will be as fast as I can possibly manage. And I promise that as soon as it’s available, I will let everyone know. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding!

E-mail me at courtney@courtneymilan.com and tell me how you’d like your copy. As far as I can tell, I can give gifts on Amazon, All Romance eBooks, and … maybe others, still to be explored. Let me know how you prefer to get your e-copy, and I’ll see how best to get it to you.

Also, I promised an update on Unraveled in the comments section. I have had a lot of e-mails and the like asking me the following questions:

• Q. When is it going to be out?
  A. When it is done.
• Q. No, really, when is it going to be out?
  A. There is one thing I can fairly well promise you: It won’t be out before Thanksgiving. I am working very, very hard to try to make it land in the “late November” date rather than, say, early December. “Late November” almost certainly means November 30th. If it doesn’t, I’ll let you know. At this point, the book requires essentially nothing more than the application of work to book. (This is not always true. There are points in the writing of the book when it requires the pulling of hair and the gnashing of teeth. I am past that point.) I am not sure how much work will be needed. Here is the other thing I will promise you: If my choice is between releasing it late and releasing it unready, I will release it late. Hopefully I will do neither.
• Q. So does this mean the book sucks?
  A. No. I actually love it. I love it a lot. That is why I’m working hard on it, because I don’t want to mess it up.
• Q. Why can’t I preorder it?
  A. Because it’s self-published, and the major accounts do not make it possible to preorder a book. It will be available, promise.
• Q. Will it be available in print?
  A. Yes. I’m arguing with myself over various aspects of print pricing.
• Q. Is there an excerpt?
  A. Why, yes. Yes there is. I’ve delayed putting it up because I’m still fussing with bits and pieces. I will be fussing with bits and pieces up until the day that I post this sucker, so expect changes. But from this point onward, changes will be largely cosmetic. And so I’ve forced myself to put up the first chapter. It’s here.

I admit that I didn’t read it right away. Actually, I picked it up, started reading, and realized that the heroine and her brother were part of an actor’s troupe. I stopped reading instantly, because I was writing a book where the heroine had grown up in a traveling actor’s troupe. (Ahem.) Sometimes, you just don’t want to bias what you’re writing.

But a few months later, someone tweeted about that book, and I remembered how awesome the premise sounded–truly, utterly awesome! This is a book about a young woman who dresses up as another man’s valet. I love books about cross-dressing, in part because it allows members of the opposite sex to go places that were forbidden–gaming clubs and duels and Whites and Tattersalls. But having the heroine masquerade as a valet? That takes forbidden to a whole new level. Valets, after all, don’t just go places that are forbidden. They help their master dress, shave, and bathe. It’s like forbidden times two.

So I picked up the book again, and I’m so glad I did. The execution was even better than the promise. Not only did Joanna Chambers do the “forbidden” things that I looked forward to (and if you want to convince yourself how awesome she is, read this amazing scene on her website), but she managed to capture the intimate, asymmetric relationship that arises between servants and their master. Georgy (the heroine) takes her job very seriously. In learning to anticipate her master’s needs and desires, she actually learns quite a bit about who her master is. He’s a staid, responsible gentleman, who sees his attire as armor that he wears against the rest of the world. He readies himself for the day by putting on clothing with exacting taste.

But because Georgy is the one who is responsible for helping him put on and take off his armor, she gets to see behind the mask that he wears. She sees who he is when he’s not playing the Lord. And what develops between the two is something special. Not friendship at first; Nathan isn’t the sort of person who would make friends with his servants on a whim. It’s something deeper and more intimate, because Nathan casually trusts Georgy with the essence of him, and Georgy learns to treasure it.

I would say more, but I don’t want to spoil the discovery for you. Suffice to say that I utterly adored this book, and I hope you will too!

It’s available only in electronic copy right now. I’ve actually never given away e-copies, but this is definitely the time for me to figure out how that works. I’m going to give away three copies of this book to various commenters. Comment by tomorrow, and I’ll pick the winners and we’ll figure out the giveaways!

In the meantime, you can buy it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

The winner of Theresa Romain’s A Season for Temptation is… Rebecca WS! Rebecca, send me your snail-mail address to courtney@courtneymilan.com and I’ll put that in the mail.

The winner of the prize that I offered up for Limecello’s charity drive is…Elisa Jankowski! Elisa, send me an e-mail, too, and we’ll start you up on your many, many prizes.

Congratulations, everyone.

Also: I got my author copies of Unclaimed today, and I think that when September starts, I’m going to have to celebrate by sending out a handful into the wild. I’m so excited for this book to come out.

I want to be clear about one thing–while this is an open letter to agents in general, the agent I’m not addressing this to is mine. She and I have had several conversations about this new world, and I know we’ll have more. What has impressed me about her response is that when I’ve gone to her with a concern, she has thought about it, talked about it with others, and come back to me with a response that tells me that she gets where I’m coming from, that she respects me as an author. This shouldn’t be taken as a passive-aggressive dig at her; everything here I’ve already told her, and then some. If I ever need to tell her something, I’ll send her an e-mail or give her a call, and I know she’ll respect and listen to what I have to say.

{Edited to add the next morning: Please see my mea culpa here.}

So, to every agent in the world who is worried about the new world in publishing, except Kristin Nelson:

You want to know the number one question that authors are asking me about my self-publishing venture? Bar none, it’s this: “How are you dealing with your agent?” I can’t think of a single published author who wanted to ask me questions about self-publishing who has not asked that question, and wanted to talk about it at length. The ratio of questions about my agent to questions about everything else that I’m doing has been about 15:1. I’ve talked to other agented authors who have self-published, and they are also fielding questions about their agents, I suspect at approximately the same ratio.

Agents, I don’t think you have any idea how much your writers are talking about you right now. Seriously. I don’t think you have any idea. I am getting multiple e-mails every day from writers who are worried about what their agents are doing, and who are worried about how to handle agents, and who want to be fair to their agents but also don’t want to pay them a percentage when there’s little to no work involved, and/or the agent handles little of the risk.

Agents, I don’t think you realize how many concerns your writers have about you right now. Seriously. I don’t think you have any idea. I know you think that the lines of communication are open, but they aren’t nearly as open as you think. At least, I assume that’s the case–that your clients aren’t talking to you about their concerns–because when you breezily dismiss certain concerns, and when I’ve already fielded e-mails from clients of yours where they voice those exact same concerns, I have to assume that your clients don’t feel that they can talk to you about what you’re doing. The alternative is that they are talking to you about their concerns, and you just don’t care. I don’t want to think that’s the case.

Your clients do care about having an agent that is free of conflicts of interest. Your clients do care that you don’t create financial incentives for yourself to not fight for a better deal. Your clients do want to feel that you are always, always on their side, that they don’t have to question whether they’re negotiating for the best deal possible, because you will do it for them. Don’t make us doubt you. We want to trust you, but it’s hard to do that if you set up a publishing arm.

And I know that you have some clients who do trust you, no matter what you do. They would probably trust you if you asked them to sign a contract for their soul in blood. You may have gotten the impression that that feeling is universal.

It isn’t. I promise you, it isn’t. If you do things that could have the appearance of conflict, we wonder. If you take actions that look like money grabs, we are taken aback.

You’ve got one big thing going for you. As far as I can tell, every published author out there desperately wants her agent to stay relevant. You’ve helped authors build careers. You’ve fought for them. You’ve made authors lives easier. Agents have kept us sane at times when we were ready to scream and burst into tears. Authors don’t want to get rid of you.

But most authors won’t give you 15% to press the “upload” button, either–and we sure as heck aren’t impressed when you pitch us at a 50/50 split. We’re talking to each other. A lot. When someone agrees to a 50/50 split, and then discovers that the work that was done was about $300, and not done very well–that they’re paying someone 50% to undersell their work–they’re not happy. You may not see a lot of this chatter, but authors do–we’re holding this conversation over and over, through e-mail and on loops, and I’m seeing a lot of authors from every part of the list saying the same thing. The number of authors who are saying that they trust their agent, no matter what she does, is vanishingly small.

I don’t think it’s an easy time to be an agent right now. I know that agents are doing the math–at this point, given the contraction in the market, there isn’t enough money out there in traditional publishing to make all of you a living. If your sales dwindle to just foreign sales and a few traditional deals a year, you’re going to be hurting. You’ve peered into your crystal ball, you’ve looked at your fellow agents, and you know the truth: in the future, some of you are not going to be in business any longer.

When it comes to assisting authors with traditional publishing, you know more than the author. You have more expertise. You’ve seen more books go through the process. You know the pitfalls and you can really help the author along.

But you’re in a tough spot right now for a second reason. When it comes to assisting authors with self-publishing, agents know less than the authors. Your agent friends can help you if you don’t know something about a particular house. But they don’t know the right answers in self-publishing. There isn’t an agent out there that has the savvy that Bella Andre, Joe Konrath, and Amanda Hocking have in self-publishing. Not a one.

The traditional information storehouse has been inverted. Right now, the people who know the most about self-publishing are authors, and trust me, the vast majority of authors are aware of that. For the first time, authors are having questions about their careers, and their agents are not their go-to people.

And so you need to sit down and really ask yourself what you are bringing to the table. A lot of the early business models that I’m seeing make it obvious to me that the agent is asking this question: How can I get a piece of this self-publishing revenue stream?

I understand why you want to ask that question. But from an author’s point of view, I don’t want my agent thinking, “God, that’s a lot of money–now how do I get 15% of it?” This is especially true when I also think, “Gosh, but my agent doesn’t know as much about self-publishing as I do.” I want my agent thinking, “How can I make my author more money than she can make on her own?” I pay my agent 15% of my traditional publishing take because I believe she’ll make me more money than I can make on my own–at least 17.6% more, in fact.

Don’t get me wrong. Some authors will find it valuable to have someone arrange details of cover art, formatting, editing, etc. so that they can just sit back and write, and they’ll give up 15% for that. But…I also believe that very few agents will be able to make a living off of the self-publishing earnings of authors who do not want to acquire savvy in this new world. The question for agents needs to be not, “how can I keep my fingers in this pie?” but “how can I convince my most successful authors that I can make them more money?”

If you can’t figure out what you’re going to do to make it worthwhile for a Joe Konrath, or an Amanda Hocking, or a Bella Andre to stay with you, you don’t have a viable long-term business model. It’s that simple. If your business model is, “let’s hope my authors don’t figure out how to do things on their own,” you don’t have a business model. Your authors are figuring it out, and we’re happy to teach each other how to do it for free.

I think there’s a non-zero answer–that is, I do think agents can bring things to the table. I suspect that my agent and I will be working out the details of our relationship for a very, very long time.

But no matter what the terms of our arrangement in the future, she will not be publishing me. Ever.

Tomorrow, I’ll have the other half of this monster post–which is why an agent opening a publishing arm is a serious conflict of interest and a breach of professional ethics.

So go here, and donate: http://limecello.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/crisis/

As a sweetener though, I’d like to add this. For one random commenter (who comments both here and on limecello’s blog–I’m requiring the comment here just because this is a prize that will not be exciting to many people who don’t read my books), I’ve decided to put in something extra special.

The winner will get all of the following:

1. The first look at an e-copy of Unraveled. I’ll send it to you the same day I send it to my copy-editor, so you’ll be getting an early version–it’ll be even earlier than even the review copies I send out.

2. An even earlier sneak peak at the first two chapters. As in, you’ll get them tomorrow. We’re not even in the final editing stages, and stuff has been known to change, but there you are–it’s an extra-special early sneak peek.

3. When the book is released, an e-copy in the format of your choice, and again, when the print version comes out, a signed print copy of the very first print copy I receive–with the edition specially marked for you.

There. How’s that for a bonus? Now go forth and comment and make me pay up, guys!