Romance book industry in turmoil over racism controversy

A hiring announcement by a very small publishing company over the summer has snowballed into an explosive confrontation on racism within the powerful Romance Writers of America (RWA) organization, leading to the resignation of more than a dozen board and committee members within a few short weeks and leaving the future of the influential trade group in doubt.

Read the full story here.

Notes: I'd been somewhat following the controversy/discussion since it started over the summer, and saw the whole thing explode on Twitter just before Christmas. It moved so fast I could barely keep up. But ... I was getting frustrated by some of the news coverage.

One of the things that was bothering me was that it did NOT start with Courtney Milan arbitrarily digging up a decades old book (and reissued in 2014) and calling it a "f*****g racist mess". There is context to why, and it started before she even joined the conversation.

Also, people are often dismissive of the romance genre. Maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's totally cool, but the industry itself as a business and as an influential driver within publishing can not ignored (self-publishing, eBooks, trademarks, plagiarism, etc.)

Anyway, I really worked that Twitter Advanced Search function HARD. There were numerous authors who made salient comments but are also very prolific tweeters (stuff gets buried fast)! But I have about 500 tabs of tweets open across multiple windows I can finally close!

The community is filled with really sharp writers, so hope I did the crux of the story justice and did not miss anything important, especially since there were so many developments in quick succession.

If you are looking for further reading on the subject and something more in-depth, Kelly Faircloth wrote a conprehensive, very longread that digs into RWA going back years at Jezebel.