Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

by Barbara Samuel

On March 26, the list of RITA finalists will be announced online at www.rwanational.org. Will the television stations and newspapers across the land be waiting to rush out and spill the news? Will romance readers be waiting for the dawn so they can fire up their computers and make a list of their favorites, and the ones they have not read? Will there be RITA pools forming at chapters and bookstores and book club groups? Will knots of eager fans be cheering on their favorites in July, when the winners are announced?

Sadly, no.

And why? Because romance readers are woefully uninformed about the RITA and how important the award is.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend over the past few years—how little the romance community, within RWA and even more so without, seems to understand about the RITA award. I’ve read the oddest sorts of comments about it, ranging from bloggers who say things like, “I have never heard of any of these writers, so the award must not mean anything,” to “well, judging is subjective, so this contest doesn’t mean anything” to the self-esteem builders that run to: “these books all got published so everyone should feel fine and not worry too much if you don’t make the finals—you’re all great writers.”

Why should you care about the RITA?

Quite simply, the RITA is the Oscar or Pulitzer Prize of romances novels. It is romance writers standing together to measure excellence among ourselves. The RITA is our professional gold star, a mark of excellence and honor given by professional romance writers to their peers.

There are other awards, of course, most of them reviewer awards, for which a single reader—often a very experienced, long-time reader of a particular kind of book—chooses her panel of favorites of the year. There are contests all around the country, mostly fundraisers for various RWA chapters, that judge a smallish panel of books and choose winners. There are magazine awards and blogger awards. All of them are wonderful ways for readers to find good books to read.

None of them are the RITA.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel obliged to say that I have won the RITA, more than once. If I tell you to buy RITA-winning books, I’m including my own in that tally.

But my wish for the prominence of this award goes far beyond my own self-interest. I take romance novels seriously. Not in a heavy, maudlin, humorless sort of way. I’m not a militant who writes letters about every media comment or joke about romances–that makes us look insecure and silly. Instead, I take romances seriously by believing in them as a valid and particular form of novel, a genre almost entirely shaped by women to our own tastes. Currently, romances are still not measured by the same standard as other genre fiction—by the parameters set up by the genre itself, not something outside of it—so we must be our own academy.

The RITA is designed to recognize excellence according to the parameters we’ve set up for ourselves. Here is our community saying, year after year after year, in more than a dozen categories: here are some books we found to be well-written, compelling, and powerful romantic reads, according to our own standard of what a romance should be.

Many readers may not be aware of how rigorous the selection process is.

It begins in the fall of each year, when hundreds and hundreds of published novels are entered into 14 categories. In January, these books are divided into small panels of around 6-8 books, which are then mailed to volunteer judges, all published romance authors themselves, who have about two months to read the books, and give each one a score between 1-9. Each book in the preliminary round is read by five judges.

The scores are returned to the contest coordinator, who tallies the scores. The top percentage (I think it’s ten percent, but am not completely sure) of books in each of those 14 categories are then announced as RITA finalists.

And believe me, RITA day, as we fondly call it, is a day when cyberspace and telephone lines are afire. None of us get much work done. I think it’s one of the most exciting days of the year and I still cry when a friend who has been aching for that nod calls me screaming, or I read on an email loop that book I adored has made the lists.

By the end of the day, bitter tears are sometimes spilled, too. Because this matters desperately to us—making the RITA finals has meaning and power. Trust me when I say that it might feel great to make other favorites lists, but we don’t weep over not making them.

The process is not over with the announcement of finalists. The finalist panels are then sent to a second panel of five judges who read all the books and rank them against each other. The book with the lowest score (a 5 is the lowest possible score) is then the RITA winner, which is announced on Saturday night of the RWA conference, which this year will be in Dallas.

That means that a finaling book has been chosen to be very good by five readers. A winning book has been through ten readers, all published authors. All trying to do their very level best to be fair, objective, and honorable.

That’s a pretty high recommendation.

Is the process 100% objective and fair? No. There’s no such thing as 100% objectivity in art. Tastes do cycle through fashions, and books that win one year might not have won in another. There are plenty of good book every year that don’t make the cut for whatever reason.

But you know, it’s as fair as humanly possible. I do believe in the judges, in their honor and fairness. Sometimes, sour grapes or enmity or just plain meanness might creep through. Sometimes, a judge thinks she’s being fair when she has a blind spot. Again, we’re all human. I believe in the honor of the judges and the process.

What has that to do with readers? The RITA finalist and winner lists are a great way for readers to find great books.

This morning, I’ve just turned in the scores for the panel of books I read for the preliminary round. Because I’m sworn to judge anonymously, I can’t tell you what they were, but I can tell you that three of them were excellent, two others good, only one did I find average. They were startling and different and homey and warm and everything in between. I don’t know the authors of any of the books (surprising, honestly, given how long I’ve been in this world—it’s not, after all—a very large pool of humans), though I have had a passing acquaintance with one of them.

Here’s the thing: on my own, as a reader—even a fairly well-informed romance reader—I wouldn’t have chosen any of them. I wouldn’t have realized that these would be my cup of tea, meaty romances of depth and heart, because there was absolutely nothing to let me know they were—the covers and back cover copy all pandered to some idea marketing has of What Sells. I’ve not heard at all of a couple of the authors, including the one who ended up being my favorite (believe me, I’ll seek out her work elsewhere). So how would I have found these books except for through this democratic process?

I wouldn’t have. Neither can you, I bet, sometimes. But this process will also help you find books you’ll enjoy.

Now, to those weird comments I’ve read about the web:

“I have never heard of any of these writers, so the award must not mean anything.”

You might not have heard of all of them, but you’ve heard of a lot of RITA winners: Jennifer Crusie, Jo Beverley (Hall of Fame), Kristin Hannah, Jill Marie Landis, Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Hall of Fame), Nora Roberts (a gazillion and Hall of Fame in at least a couple of categories), Laura Kinsale, Karen Marie Moning (I still remember the dress she was wearing for the ceremony one year!). For an astonishing list, go here.

You haven’t heard of every winner because fame takes time and a special sort of luck. The RITA process is designed to be democratic, to illuminate books that might get overlooked otherwise.

“Well, judging is subjective, so this contest doesn’t mean anything.”

Everything in life is subjective. Luckily, so are you, and you might find something to your pleasure if you read those lists.

“These books all got published so everyone should feel fine and not worry too much if you don’t make the finals—you’re all great writers.”

That’s very nice. It’s probably true on some level. But just because some people don’t win doesn’t mean that winning means nothing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If I had my way, the television stations and newspapers across the land would be waiting for the news of RITA finalists on March 26th. Romance readers would be tapping their fingers waiting for the lists to go up so they could rush to the bookstores and online sites to order the ones they hadn’t read. I’d like to see chapters and book clubs and knots of online reading groups making pools and taking bets, and readers eagerly waiting the news of the winners.

In the meantime, I’ll hope the readers here will take a few minutes and go read the list when it goes up, paying particular attention to books in the categories you like to read, then go buy some of them and read them, especially by writers you might not have tried, or even heard of.

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