RWA--The Rules, they Are A Changing

I've reviewed the recent RWA Board decisions which largely deal with publisher recognition (now eligibility) standards. Essentially ALL publishers are now eligible unless they are subsidy or vanity publishers. That should be good news, yes? But wait! Here's how they define that:

A Subsidy Publisher or Vanity Publisher means any publisher that publishes books in which the author participates in the cost of production or distribution in any manner . . . . This definition includes publishers . . . whose primary means of offering books for sale is through a publisher-generated Web site

which eliminates all e-pubs and says that all epubs ARE vanity or subsidy publishers. How is that so? Distribution does not a vanity/subsidy publisher make. And how does a publisher-generated website distribution equate to the author participating in the cost of production or distribution?

Then there's this

Any RWA General or Honorary member who has earned at least $1,000 in the form of royalties or a combination of advance plus royalties on a single published romance novel or novella published by a non-Subsidy, non-Vanity Publisher may join PAN as a full member following the publication of the title.

which means that someone epubbed will NOT be able to join PAN (a subsection of RWA of members who are in the Published Author Network) no matter what their earnings are.

It's a shame that RWA Board Members don't have any personal experience with epubbing. It's becoming a legitimate way of entering the publishing field. Instead of seeing this, RWA is not supporting its epubbed members who pay the same annual membership fee as everyone else. If dues were based on earnings (like they are in the DGA, WGA, etc.) then this might make sense.