Wednesday, December 7, 2005

And yet more Triskelion

I've had the opportunity to look over some papers relating to Triskelion's efforts to become RWA recognized, and it appears RWA's issue wasn't that the book was or wasn't romance, but format. RWA's guidelines for recognition specify a novel or collection of novellas. Elsewhere they define novellas as 20-40,000 words. Since this book had twenty authors, they feel it is a collection of short stories, and thus not eligible. Trisk, on the other hand, feels that a continuous thread ran through the stories, thus making it essentially a novel, and they refer to the different parts of the book as "chapters" rather than "stories." Again, I haven't read this book, so I'm not in a position to judge which it is.

But the big dealbreaker appears to be the fact that the authors donated their royalties to charity, so it "does not fulfill the requirement that the authors receive payment." This is RWA's wording, but as I said in my last post, I don't see a requirement of this sort in their definition of RWA-recognized publishers. The RWA does specify a "royalty-paying publisher," however, and you could reasonably infer from that they expect the authors to receive payment. If all the authors went into this project with the understanding that they wouldn't receive royalties, as Natalie asserts in the comments below, you could conceivably argue that although Trisk is a royalty-paying publisher, this wasn't a royalty-paying project. Would that be a valid argument against recognition? I really can't say.

There are a lot of questions here, and I don't pretend to know what the answer is. I do hope Triskelion manages to get recognized, though, because from everything I've heard, they're an excellent company.

6 comments:

  1. So...Triskelion gets a bunch of top-name authors together, puts out a book that from all appearances is highly entertaining...and misses recognition because they and the authors involved choose to send their profits to charity?

    God bless us, every one.

    And we wonder why RWA's current reputation is not a lustrous thing of beauty...

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  2. I think I'd buy the short stories thing, since a book of short stories is not a novella nor a novel, and I would imagine that if it is not a RITA eligible submission then it is not applicable (which, btw, Natalie, answers your question of yesterday about being PAN eligible, I am PAN eligible because my book would be eligible for the RITA in the SRE category, just as someone is PRO eligible with a book eligible for the GH) but this charity thing is splitting hairs, methinks.

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  3. Well, I've read some of the book and have to say it's rather difficult to place. I know the book has "chapters", but really, each story is a separate story and the elements connecting them are rather thin, so I wouldn't call it a novel. It really is more of a collection of short stories, no matter that Triskelion wants it to be called something else.

    I don't agree with all the reasons RWA had for rejecting it, but I kinda understand why they did.

    But I'm sure Triskelion will get some other books out there that definitely qualify.

    Now if only Trisk can work on having covers where I can read the title at a glance.

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  4. Selah, it is an entertaining book, definitely. I bought it as soon as I heard it was available in hardcover, and it was fun to see certain authors writing stories completely foreign to their usual style or genre. It introduced me to some newer authors, too, who I had not previously read. So as a book, it's a big success.

    (And all those people who are saying, "from all appearances" and "reportedly" and "I hear" and "it looks like"--GO GET IT! Or pull it off your TBR pile :) )

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  5. It's a shame that RWA isn't interested in promoting all forms of romance...... short story, screen play, etc. But it doesn't surprise me totally.

    On the other hand, it's nice that lots of the romance communities online read and review short stories and consider them romance.

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  6. Well, Anonymous, no organization can be all things to all people. In actuality, in sub-programs, RWA DOES support romance in all forms. There is a chapter for screenwriters, for example. But the more the focus is diluted, the fewer resources there are for each aspect.

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