I got his email today:
My mystery novel XYZ is being published by Publish America. Can I become an active member of the Mystery Writers of America?
I’m afraid not. Publish America is not recognized as a legitimate publisher by the MWA. You can visit the MWA site for more info. In the meantime, here is the current list of publishers accepted, and not accepted, by the MWA for Active Membership.
(You’ll find the list on the jump)
PUBLISHERS ACCEPTED BY MWA FOR ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP
Academy Chicago
Akashic Books
Alyson
Atlantic Bridge Publishing
Avalon Books
Avocet Press
Baker Book House
Barclay Books LLC
BelleBooks
BET Books
Bethany House
Bleak House Books
Brava
Brilliance Audio Books
Broadman & Holman
Chicago Review Press
Bella Books, including Rising Tide
Bloomsbury Publishing, including Walker Publishing, USA
Carroll & Graf
CDS Books
Chariot Victor
Chronicle Books
Citadel
Crossings Book Club
Crosstown Publications, including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Magazine
Crum Creek Press
Dafina Books
Denlinger’s Publishers, LTD
Dorchester Publishing?Leisure Books
Echelon Press
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, including Faber and Faber, Hill and Ware and North Point Press
Five Star Publishing (subsidiary of Gale Publishing)
*Foul Play Press
Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine
Genesis Press
Granite Publishing & Distribution
Harcourt
Hard Case Crime
HarperCollins, including Avon, William
Morrow, Harper Torch, Regan Books, Rob Weisbach
Harlequin, including MIRA, Silhouette Bombshell, Steeple Hill
Harvest House
Hawk Publishing Group
Haworth Press
HeartQuest
Henry Holt & Co.
High Country
Howard Publishing
HQN Books
Hyperion
iBooks, including Byron Press
Intrigue Press
Justin Charles
Kensington, including Pinnacle Books, Zebra, Llewellyn Worldwide
*Larcom Press
Leisure
Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club
Loveland Press
LUNA
Lyle Stuart
MacAdam/Cage Publishing
McMillan, including Pan Macmillan
Medallion Press
Mills & Boon LTD
Multnomah Publishing
*Mystery Time Magazine
W.W. Norton
*Orchard Press Mysteries (ceased publication March 31, 2005)
Orion Books
Overmountain Press, including Silver Dagger
The Penguin Group, including Berkley, Berkley Prime Crime, Dutton, GP Putnam Sons, NAL, Onyx, Penguin, Putnam, Plume, Signet, Viking
Palisades Publishers
*Paradise Books
PaperJacks
Perseverance Press, including John Daniel
Permanent Press
Piatkus Books
Pleasant Company, including American Girl Books
Poisoned Pen
Quiet Storm Publishing
Randomhouse, including Ballantine Books, Bantam, Crown, Delacorte, Dell, Doubleday, Doubleday Broadway, Knopf, Pantheon, Villard, Waterbrook Press
Red Dress Ink
Revell Publishing
River City Publishing
Salvo Press
SANDS Publishing
Scholastic Press
Sleeping Bear Press
Silver Lake Publishing
Simon & Schuster, including Atria, Scribners, Pocket Books and Pocket Star
Soho Press
Sourcebooks Landmark
St. Kitts Press
St. Martin’s, including St. Martin’s Minotaur, Thomas Dunne Books
Thorndike Press
Time?Warner Book Group, including Mysterious Press, Little, Brown & Co., Warner Books
Top Publications
Tor Books, including Forge, Tom Doughtery
Twin Streams
Tyndale House
Uglytown
Wildside
*Write Way (in bankruptcy as of 2004)
Zondervan
*Publishers Out of Business or on Hiatus
PUBLISHERS NOT ACCEPTED BY MWA FOR ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP
American Book Publishers
Armitage House
Avon Books LTD, UK
Barbour Publishing
Blackie & Co., UK
Cemetery Dance
Commonwealth Publications (Canada)
Creative Arts Books
Cromwell Publishers, UK
Fairwood Press, including Electric Story.com
Fictionwise.com
Four Seasons Publishing (aka Manatee Press)
Gardenia Press
iUniverse
Ivy House
Minerva Press LTD, UK
Neshui
Northwest Publishing
*Oak Tree
Paradox Press
Pemberly Press
Pentland Press LTD (USA and UK)
PublishAmerica
Sovereign Publications
Tate Publishing
Vanguard
VMI Publishing
Xlibris (Note: Xlibris books published in the early 1990s by Randomhouse do qualify for active membership)
PUBLISHERS ACCEPTED ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS
Bancroft Press
Brundage Publishing
Durban House
Harbor House
Hilliard and Harris
Huntington House
Imperium Proviso
Mayhaven
Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie (UK)
Pineapple Press
Seven Locks Publishing
Silk Label, including Royal Fireworks Press
Sterling House
Virtual Bookworm
Washington House, aka Trident Media
Genesis Press, huh? Often out of misguided loyalty and fear (esp. of lawyer owned companies), black folks are often afraid to speak up publicly.
Talk to the authors who are published by the (any) publisher first before you submit and ask the following questions: Any royalty statements at all as contracted? You get your payment as agreed? Fair remuneration? Any accountability? And finally and most important, did your ass get ripped off?
(Ducks and runs for cover).
Great post, Lee. This list looks very reasonable to me.
I’m not familiar with many of those, but I see they accept Wildside so online only in some cases qualifies. It’s their criteria.
Ironically, the MWA has an agreement with “unacceptable” iUniverse whereby members with “acceptably published” books that are out-of-print can send two copies and iUniverse will reprint without the MWA member paying a fee.
I was waiting for you to go off on that e-mail. I was surprised and thought it rather thoughtful of you that you didn’t and instead answered the question.
Not that going off is a bad thing. If nothing else, it makes your blog entries much more fun. And some of those people deserve it.
That is ironic Lew at the macro level but the key premise being that at one time it was a commercially published book only reprinted through iU. An iU original is a different matter. I can agree with that logic.
Yes, Mark … but I find the recursiveness something that Sartre would have put in Huis Clos if iU had existed … but perhaps iU IS Hell …
OTOH, Tom Stoppard could work wonders with the recursive irony … Instead of Tzara, Lenin and Joyce meeting at the Zurich library as they did in Travesties, they are all in the Limmat-side Zurich Starbucks logged in through the WiFi connection and blogging each other about PoD Even though they are physically just inches away they never realize it until GWENDOLEN comes into the Starbucks and — acting as the observation that provokes a quantum wave function collapse — brings them all together in the moment.
Sounds Brownian to me.