Response to the RWA Board’s Statement on the #RITAGH Contest

Last week, Romance Writers of America and romance writers everywhere celebrated the announcement of the finalists in our genre’s most prestigious awards, the RITA award for published romance fiction and the Golden Heart award for unpublished romance fiction. I couldn’t be more excited for this year’s finalists, many of whom are my friends. My concerns about the contest are not in any way meant to take away from their wonderful accomplishment.

Following numerous rule changes to the contest over the past several years, this year’s contest results were quite different than they’d ever been before. Namely, some categories had a huge number of finalists (contemporary: 18, historical: 17, paranormal: 13) and other categories had very few (romantic suspense: 4, erotic romance: 3, inspirational romance: 2). There was a lot of discussion about those results last week, including this wonderful post by RITA finalist Stephanie Draven, with which I totally agree, and many of us sent letters to the RWA board, including me. My main concerns in that initial message included:

1) the scoring sheet that places a double emphasis on the romance component and can possibly disadvantage any subgenres with a plot in addition to the romance plot

2) lack of judging instructions, judges being assigned books in categories they didn’t want, and judges for the first time ever being allowed to judge categories in which they were entered

3) the inability of category romance books to compete against single title romance books of the same subgenre).

Today, I received the board’s form response from RWA President Terry McLaughlin, which I’m sharing in its entirety as instructed, along with my own response, which is somewhat amplified over what I sent to Ms. McLaughlin earlier this morning.

Permission to share the following is granted, with the condition that it is shared in its entirety.

RWA’s mission is to advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers. The purpose of the RITA award is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas. A primary strategic goal for RWA is and has been to raise the awareness and status of the RITA awards. I can assure you the board makes every decision in light of RWA’s mission and strategic plan. The board and staff spend countless hours every year compiling and analyzing RITA-specific data and industry trends with the goal of ensuring the RITA award continues to meet its purpose and remains viable.

In an effort to discover and recognize outstanding novels and novellas that best exemplify excellence in the romance genre, RWA’s board  approved a contest score sheet reflecting the stated judging guidelines that “the love story is the main focus of the novel” or novella.  The board also agreed that any contest entry earning a score of at least ninety percent—an “A”—would advance to the final round.

The goal was for the new score sheet and system of selecting finalists to work in tandem to best meet the purpose of the RITA contest.  In the first round, works are not placed in competition with each other or within each category; instead, each entry is judged against a uniform standard and is considered on its own merits.  Each entry, regardless of how many other entries share its category, has an equal chance of finaling.

The board viewed this as an improvement over the former system that often reduced first-round competition in smaller categories and sometimes, because of the limit on category finalists, granted finalist status to entries with lower first-round scores than those of non-finaling entries in other categories.  With the new system, every entry judged as excellent in the first round is automatically a finalist.

The board is aware of members’ concerns. As always, any decisions made regarding future contest rules will be in keeping with RWA’s mission, the purpose of the RITA, and the goal of raising awareness of the award among readers and industry professionals.

Terry McLaughlin

RWA President

My response:

Of course I understand that the board’s intentions were good. I’m not sure why so much time in this response needed to be devoted to that point, since I’ve seen no one question the board’s intentions in any of the countless posts regarding the contest. Not to mention, the board’s intentions are beside the point. It’s the results that matter here. And this response still does not respond to the concerns I and many other authors have expressed regarding this year’s results. Personally, it leaves me with the feeling that those concerns were either not heard or are being ignored.

In response to this paragraph:
The board viewed this as an improvement over the former system that often reduced first-round competition in smaller categories and sometimes, because of the limit on category finalists, granted finalist status to entries with lower first-round scores than those of non-finaling entries in other categories.  With the new system, every entry judged as excellent in the first round is automatically a finalist.

 

Please clarify if I am understanding correctly that the board is intentionally de-prioritizing categories in the first round of the contest. If so, what is the purpose of the categories in the RITA contest? Why must entrants enter in a specific category at all? Please note: I would be entirely against any scenario in which categories were done away with and think this is the most disturbing and problematic part of the board’s response.


Moreover, the following two quotes from the above board letter seem to indicate that the board knew certain categories scored lower historically and therefore must have known that they would score lower under the new 90%-of-points cut-off rule: “The board and staff spend countless hours every year compiling and analyzing RITA-specific data and industry trends” and “The board viewed this as an improvement over the former system that often reduced first-round competition in smaller categories and sometimes, because of the limit on category finalists, granted finalist status to entries with lower first-round scores than those of non-finaling entries in other categories.” I don’t know how to read this other than to assume the board made a conscious decision to de-prioritize the categories, as well as the books in certain categories (in general, those with plots in addition to the romance), in the first round.


Please clarify if the board recognizes that in giving extra weight to the romance component that the contest is making it more difficult for books with plots in addition to the romance to be recognized as excellent.

 

And, finally, please clarify if the board truly believes that some whole categories of romance books were significantly more excellent than other whole categories in 2013. Or, rather, please clarify if the board truly believes that some whole categories of romance books had almost no excellent books in 2013.

 

Also, does the board not recognize the role that judging deficiencies played in this year’s contest results? As I said in my initial response to the board, opening the judging to ALL RWA members – all of whom should be viewed as peers – would alleviate the lack of judges available to evaluate certain categories. It almost has to be more difficult to get as excellent of scores from judges reading books in categories they generally don’t like to read.

 

Fairness to categories and all books that receive the 90% score could easily be achieved by a rule which mandated that the top 8 points earners in each category will final PLUS everyone whose books earn a first-round score of 90% or above.

 

I am also greatly concerned that the current RWA board seems to think that narrowing our definition of romance and excellence in published romance best serves our collective interests. Given that many of us don’t operate within those narrow definitions and that most readers do not conceive of the books they love that way, this does not seem to best serve the interests of career-focused romance writers.

 

Already, so much conversation on this response has happened this morning. I hope the board understands how distressed many in the RWA community are over the contest and people’s feeling that the board is not hearing our concerns.

 

Sincerely,
Laura Kaye

 

I encourage everyone – even if you disagree with my point of view here – to contact the board directly with your thoughts. Because the contest is intimately wrapped up with the question of what is romance?, this topic is too important to all of us to remain disinterested and silent. Email addresses are available here.