What Can The Mystery Writers Of America Learn About Discrimination From The Sneetches?
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- March 8th, 2009 |
- Comments
The Mystery Writers of America (MWA), an organization that defines itself as ” the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre,” has developed a list of “approved publishers,” and a set of criteria authors must meet to join as active members or enter the prestigious Edgar Award contest. The MWA criteria blatantly discriminate against authors whose books are published by companies that are not on an MWA-approved list. And in an alarming trend, conferences and contests are adopting this discriminatory, elitist list.
The MWA approved-publisher list reminds me of the Dr. Seuss account about the Star-Belly Sneetches. If you recall, down in Sneetchland&ndashor wheresoever they lived&ndashsome Sneetches had stars on their bellies and any didn’t. The Star-Belly Sneetches cerebration they were so much better than the Plain-Belly ones that they ignored them, didn’t invite them to their events and generally would have nothing to do with them. This is a lot like the artifact any traditionally-published authors aren’t inviting us self-published or independently-published authors to have author position at their conferences.
Low the MWA criteria, for me to have “author position” at these conferences, my book must not have been published by a privately-held publishing company with whom I have a familial or personal relationship, and it must not have been published by a company in which I have a financial interest. And, the publisher of my book must be on the MWA list of approved publishers, which requires that a publisher meet a long list of criteria&ndashincluding having been in business for at least cardinal years since publication of its first book by a person with no financial or ownership interest in the company, and publishing at least five authors per year other than those with financial or ownership interest in the company.
Any who defend the consume of the list (let’s call them the old guard) have the list’s consume by conferences is not discrimination because no author has a right to have author position at a conference. The old guard says that the authors and publishers whose books are rejected are only rejected because their books don’t meet certain standards. They liken this to other requirements&ndashsay, for example, a job description that requires an applicant to have at least cardinal years of experience in the field in order to be considered for employment. So&ndashthe old guard asks triumphantly&ndashwould you have that all the people who don’t have cardinal years of experience are being discriminated against by this job requirement?
Duh. Of course we wouldn’t have that. We (let’s call us the reformers) would agree that we can’t claim it is our right to be on a panel at a conference or have our books for sale in a conference’s dealer room. All we are expression is that if any authors are to be granted certain privileges and position, the criteria for who is or is not chosen should be based on individual merit. Judge the books by their quality. Don’t assume you can judge their quality on the basis of who published them. Don’t assume that if they were any good they would have been published by a conventional publisher. That is discrimination because it’s exclusion based on being in a certain category or group, rather than on the merit of the book.
But back to the Sneetches. One day a guy named McBean showed up in Sneetchland with a machine that, for a bantam fee, would add stars to the bellies of the Plain-Bellies. Thrilled, they lined up, went tho’ and popped out with stars. With great excitement they proclaimed that they were exactly like the Star-Bellies and no one could tell them apart. No attack that the Star-Bellies were real upset. They knew they were allay the best and the others were the bottom, but they didn’t know how to tell who was who anymore.
Hmmm…maybe that’s what any traditionally-published authors are apprehensive about. Self-publishers and bantam independent presses have gotten so good that it’s hard to tell our books from theirs. Good grief! Individual might mistake one of our books for one of theirs, start reading it and actually like it before realizing that it should be considered inferior because its publisher isn’t on the approved-publisher list.
But the Sneetches’ account goes on. Once more, the clever McBean had a solution for them. For a somewhat higher fee each, he put the original Star-Bellies finished the machine and removed their stars so they once again looked different from the others and could proclaim that they were the best. Advantageously, so the Sneetches with stars had to go finished the machine again and get theirs removed. And so the others got their stars put back on&ndashand on and on until no one could tell at all who was a Star-Belly and who was a Plain-Belly.
Wow! What if thither was no MWA list of approved publishers? How would conferences like Left Coast Crime and Mayhem in the Midlands figure out which authors should be granted author position? Would they have to open their panels to applications from all authors? Would they have to accept all mystery books into their dealer rooms?
That’s what the Sneetches did. They finally decided that stars didn’t matter at all and that no kind of Sneetch is inherently better than the others. Will the Mystery Writers of America and conference organizers advised up the artifact the Sneetches did? We can only hope.