Colonizing SFWA

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The latest issue of the SFWA Bulletin just arrived; it has a new feature, a page titled "New SFWA Members and Their Credentials." I'm guessing it lists everyone who's joined in the past year, though I'm not sure about that.

Out of the forty-one new members listed (some of whom are editors or publishers rather than authors, and some of whom are associate members (with one or two pro sales)), we've published seven; six of those used at least one SH credit to qualify. No other periodical or anthology appears more than about three times on that page.

I imagine some SFWAns might look at those figures with dismay—this upstart magazine is going around publishing new writers, opening the gates for anyone to join!—but I can't help being pleased.

Especially since only twenty-one of the new members listed qualified via short stories; so a third of the new SFWAns who qualified using short stories did so via SH sales. Cool beans.

This issue of the Bulletin also features a copy of the SFWA bylaws. I had been under the impression that the bylaws were the source of the Secret Fifth Qualification (the fact that a magazine must have been publishing for a year before it counts as pro), but in fact the bylaws define qualifying publications less stringently than the SFWA website does. Perhaps at some point when I'm in the mood to be frustrated I'll once again try to find out where this rule comes from and why SFWA doesn't include it in the list of qualifications on their site.

16 Responses to “Colonizing SFWA”

  1. Jay Lake

    I can’t cite a by-law source for this, but I’ve been told by the parties involved that the SFWA Treasurer makes the actual determination as to whether a given publication is considered a qualifying sale. So if there’s wiggle room or “Secret Fifths” they fall within that officer’s range of judgment. AFAIK.

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  2. Jed

    Yup, from what I’ve been told, the Treasurer (as ex officio chair of the Membership Committee) makes that determination, sometimes with the assistance of the Committee, which consists of the officers/Board. (The bylaws do say that the Membership Committee has discretion to determine what publications count.) But when the Secret Fifth Rule was brought to my attention, even the Treasurer didn’t know about it; the only people who seemed to know about it were the President and the Executive Director. I’ve since heard it from enough people that I believe it exists, but very few people in SFWA seem to be aware of it, and I still can’t figure out where (if anywhere) it’s written down.

    But yes, the Treasurer and the Board do appear to have a fair bit of discretion in deciding what publications qualify, which is good. I just like rules, when they exist, to be written down and publicly available.

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  3. David Moles

    Jed, is the rule

    1) It must be published on a regular basis, i.e. no fewer than three issues within one year of the publication of the qualifying story

    (from the website) in the bylaws? It seems to me like you could infer the Secret Fifth Qualification from that.

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  4. Jed

    Say a new magazine (that pays pro rates and meets circulation requirements) starts up in August of 2003. It publishes monthly. A story by a new writer appears in the August, 2003 issue. After that there’s a 9/03 issue, a 10/03 issue, and an 11/03 issue. That looks to me like “published on a regular basis” and “no fewer than three issues within one year of the publicaton of the qualifying story,” so by my reading of the rule you mention, the writer who’s published in the 8/03 issue should be eligible to join SFWA when the 10/03 issue comes out, or the 11/03 issue at the latest. The Secret Fifth Rule states that no matter how many issues the magazine publishes, it’s not a qualifying publication until 8/04, at which time it becomes retroactively qualifying. Which means the writer published in the 8/03 issue has to wait 8 to 9 months longer than I’d expect to become a SFWA member. And yes, I asked the people who knew the rule several times (each) to be sure that they weren’t misunderstanding the question and I wasn’t misunderstanding the answer.

    It could be argued that monthly (or even weekly) publication can’t be considered “regular” until it’s gone on for a year, but I don’t see why a quarterly that puts out four issues over the course of a year should count as “regular” in fewer issues than a monthly that puts out twelve issues over the course of a year. (Even if three or four is too few, surely putting out six consecutive montly issues, on time, should be sufficient to claim a “regular” publishing schedule. Especially since a publication that claims to be monthly but only manages four erratically spaced issues over its first year does qualify as having a “regular” publishing schedule by that rule.)

    I can certainly understand that a lot of publications start promisingly and then disappear. But “must last for at least a year” is a different criterion than “publishes three issues within a year after the issue in question,” and was told to me as a separate rule. And again, almost nobody I asked (including major editors and the head of the SFWA Membership Committee) had heard of the one-year qualifying rule, so it’s not just me who didn’t see it as obvious.

    It’s possible that the rule you cite was intended to include the Fifth Rule—but if so, then it’s not as well phrased as it could be, and the phrasing should be changed to be clearer. (That “regular schedule” rule doesn’t appear in the bylaws either, mind you, but I’m certainly willing to believe that there are real rules that aren’t in the bylaws; I just want such rules to be written down somewhere where the public can read them.)

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  5. David Moles

    Good point, Jed — I was thinking about Polyphony and such and totally missed the obvious case of magazines with very frequent publication schedules.

    Personally I think the whole concept of an “issue” is problematic, too. I think someone ought to sit down and try to figure out what the rules were originally intended to accomplish and how well they’re accomplishing that given the current structure of the industry… but nobody really has an incentive to do that, so I doubt it’ll happen any time soon.

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  6. Jay Lake

    Anent Polyphony, the anthology rules are different anyway. There seems to be latitude of exception for anthologies that fall below the print run minimums with respect to, erm, importance to the field. P, being POD, misses the print run minimums but may eventually garner an exception. I believe there’s one or two open SFWA apps with P as a (or the) qualifying market.

    I’ve also sat in SFWA business meetings and observed certain Senior Figures in the Field(tm) rant on about emarkets and small press, and if people can’t sell to the real markets, we have no obligation to reach out to them anyway. Some of that is generational — “when I was kid we got our Internet over coal-fired semaphores, by God” — some of it is (un)conscious market snobbery — “I have no problem selling to [insert major market here], if they do, they should work a little harder.”

    The legitimate argument underlying some of that irritating rhetoric is that SFWA is an organization of working professional writers, and as such is free to define for itself “working professional.” SFWA isn’t in the business of developing new writers, doesn’t represent the interests of aspiring writers, etc. Nor should it — that’s not its purpose. So the sense of barriered exclusivity that arises from some of these SFWA qualification discussions is often a matter of where one stands, not a matter of bad faith or inherent snobbery.

    Jay

    (Disclaimer, I am a full SFWA member, and STRANGE HORIZONS was one of my qualifying sales.)

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  7. David Moles

    I’m sure the generational thing is there. Funny how conservative the SF world can be, isn’t it? (Okay, I don’t find it as amusing as I used to.) I don’t really see how pretending SF publishing is the same today as it was in 1965 helps anybody, but I’m not surprised by it.

    Anyway, if anything, the guidelines probably aren’t strict enough. (Then again, if they tightened “professional” down to “able to make a living at it”, they’d eliminate most of the field, including plenty of regular Nebula nominees.)

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  8. Jay Lake

    Yes, well apparently every few years someone inside of SFWA goes on the warpath about redefining “professional” as working, and tries to have an ongoing submission or productivity requirement added to the by-laws. Bloodshed ensues, much writing time is wasted, and the hounds are eventually whipped back into their kennels.

    And some folks are very conservative. There are major, well-respected writers out there right now with Web sites or stump speeches telling new writers not to bother to submit to electronic markets because that’s not real publishing. That war’s already over, the other side just doesn’t know it has lost.

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  9. David Moles

    To me, that’s like poets telling people not to get MFAs or accept teaching positions because The Waste Land sold twelve thousand copies in hardcover.

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  10. Jay Lake

    I’m sure it’s no mystery where my sympathies lie…

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  11. David Moles

    We all know that your master plan is to take up every available short fiction publication slot except for the ones in Polyphony, for which you will then be able to acquire the work of any writer you like for slave-labor rates. 🙂

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  12. Jay Lake

    To quote Donald Rumsfeld, “Bwaa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa haa!!!!!!!!!!!”

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  13. Nick Mamatas

    The pro market wars are really a tempest in a teapot. The leading digests’s circulation numbers don’t even compare to their own recent pasts. Fairly prominent magazines like MZB’s and SF Age collapsed after relatively minor market shocks. The gap between pro and semi-pro is more rhetoric than fact, all the way down the line.

    As far as my own qualifying sales, one was to SH, one was to an online magazine that collapsed one issue after my appearance in it, and one was to a magazine with ten times the readership of the most popular SF digest and a 50 cents a word pay rate. Since then, I’ve sold two more stories to this last magazine, made a couple of other pro-level sales, and landed a hardcover deal. Of course, all some old SFWA crank will see of me is Strange Horizons, a dead magazine, and a mag he probably never heard of.

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  14. Jay Lake

    Hey, Nick —

    Sure, it’s a tempest in a teapot, but that’s a mighty important teapot to a few groups of folks. Joining SFWA can be kind of like graduating from high school — it’s the most important thing in your life for years, but starting about two days after the fact it’s hard to remember what all the fuss was about.

    So who cares? Editor/publishers, especially small press, interested in a certain validation of their market; and new and aspiring writers desperate for their union card. I’ve tried real hard to stay in touch with my “please, God, just one sale and my life will be complete” mentality, because everyone who’s a pro today went through that phase, and everyone who will be a pro is going through it.

    (Well, maybe not *everyone*, but I was geeky enough to go through those phases, for years. I’m sure there are writers out there far more cool and emotional secure than I…)

    Jay

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  15. Nick Mamatas

    Naturally Jay. The problem, I think, are those writers whose high school analogues are the aging jocks who still hang out in the parking lot five years after they graduated. Lacking anything else to do, they relive the old glory days and pick fights. Only the worst toadies stay impressed with those old jocks for long.

    There is a certain cachet to being a SFWA active, though to be frank, the utterly rotten internal life of the organization outweighs any validation getting my name in the directory might have meant for me. I joined SFWA and HWA at the same time last year; HWA I re-upped to right away because there is at least room for a new member to participate in policy; in SFWA, nearly every idea or move is drowned in fury, recriminations, crypto-fascist ramblings about Western civilization, and threats of lawsuits.

    SFWA, an organization of writers, many of whom also have editorial and publishing experience, cannot even put together a members’ handbook. And not just this last time — the last two attempts at a handbook were crippled by major problems as well. That alone is a sign that the org. has horribly limited value.

    I think emerging writers who think SFWA is King Shit and unfair for keeping the bar too high would have a very different, and more realistic attitude, were the teapot kept in focus.

    There is also a certain cachet to being published in LCRW, or Rabid Transit, or Polyphony. A far more profound cachet in my eyes, even without SFWA pro-status.

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  16. Jay Lake

    Ditto what you said about SFWA, Nick, and thanks for the POLY mention!

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