I remember, early on with the agency, when I went out to various conferences around the U.S. that were part of the RWA. The differences were huge and it is these differences I want to talk about. Several of the chapters were small with not a lot of big name authors in the membership. These chapters were struggling because it was a case of the blind leading the blind. In one case, the authors who were published were all published with the same small e-book publisher (who BTW has now gone under). They attempted to run contests as fund raisers but these often struggled as well. The prestige was just not there. Still, they were able to run the contests because these were advertised nationally through the RWA.
On the other hand, there were chapters who were doing amazing. They were larger and continued to draw in more membership. Their authors were being published with larger publishers. They had the "big guns" in their chapters. These people taught others how to write.
They had resources and connections.
And then the drama showed up.
And chapters broke away.
Now, I do want to stress that Covid did intensify a lot of the issues and some still just blame Covid, but the problems do run deeper.
Once these writing organizations and individual authors broke away from RWA they lost their connections and shared resources. Any information on the industry, the craft of writing and so forth came from what individuals could scrounge up on the Internet. The contests they ran now were failing due to a lack of authors paying to play because these people did not even know of the contests. They had become a closed system so, unless you were in the system, you had no idea what was happening on the outside.
The chain reaction continues with the quality of the writing just going down hill. If the quality of the writing is not there, the editors and agents don't see a benefit now of attending conferences because they just are not going find anything worthwhile. In this case, think about the RWA National Conference and you can really see the chain reaction. When the drama hit, the big publishers all pulled out of going. Without the big publishers, you lost the big name authors who would show up. There was now nobody to network with. Without the editors and the big publishers, agents all said, "what's the point?"
Even agents have now started reconnecting in smaller groups. There is a group of about 15-20 agents who meet up regularly via Zoom just to network since they no longer have the connections from the conferences.
So, what do I see now as an agent? I attend conferences where it looks more like those small writing groups that meet at the local library. At a recent conference, I was told, by the coordinator, that they could not convince any editors or agents to attend. The editors they did get were free-lance editors who were there just to get authors to buy there services...
Hopefully you see where this is going to.
Honestly, if writing chapters and authors want to see a growth, they need to start reconnecting with people and not just those in their closed systems. Being part of a larger organization will increases exposure to what your smaller groups are doing. Being part of a larger organization now increases quality educational resources to improve the genre, the writing and the image. And finally, being part of a larger organization gives the editors and agents a reason to now want to work with them to find the great authors that may be hidden out there.
I get that some people walked away because they felt they had a reason. Others walked away, not because they felt they had a reason, but because they were told they had a reason (thank you social media). Others walked away because they no longer felt connected. I know I had several authors who walked away from the RWA because the contests they loved, were no longer available. But, just walking away and not attempting to address the issues (real or perceived) does not fix anything.
It might not be easy, but it will be worth it.
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