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Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware It's been a busy month for publisher warnings! Spectacular Productions From author Brian Keene, a warning about a small publisher called Spectacular Productions. Authors report long publication delays, missed pub dates, lack of communication by publisher Christian Hanner, lack of payment, and work accepted but contracts never received. It's amazing how many small press implosions feature this exact same litany of complaints. As Keene observes, Sadly, this is an all-too-common occurrence within the small press. A start-up publisher emerges, announces a bold list of titles, issues contracts, and then crumbles after publishing a few or none of the books, leaving authors to sort out their rights reversion and customers frustrated with the small press in general. This isn’t always done maliciously. Sometimes, the publisher is just woefully inept or ignorant of the business or finds they ran out of start-up cash quicker than they...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Readers of this blog may remember The Albee Agency, a so-called PR firm run by one Mike Albee, which posted fake testimonials from well-known authors and was outed by me and others. Read the whole story here . Well, it wasn't too long after that shitstorm of negative publicity that Albee disappeared. However, like many con artists who pull up stakes when their deception becomes too widely known, he couldn't kick the habit. Selling high-priced services of dubious value to inexperienced writers who can ill afford them is just too easy and lucrative to resist! So, sporting a shiny new website and a new business name, Mike Albee has reincarnated as Sandpiper Publicity . How do I know this, you may ask? Well, Sandpiper's website is not identical to Albee's. But it shares many of the same red flags: a claim of years in business contradicted by the website domain's February 2013 creation date ; claims of media contacts and su...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware This post has been updated. A roundup of recent publisher troubles and closures that have come across my desk: Noble Romance Publishing Noble, the subject of numerous author complaints (and those are just the ones that are still online; a number of others have been deleted in the past few months) since owner Jill Noble departed abruptly last year and left the company in the hands of Jean Gombart, is finally closing its doors . There's still no indication of the closing on the company's website, where as of this writing submissions are still being sought . Mercury Retrograde Press This nice small press for which I provided a blurb a few years ago, is closing its doors as of January 2014 . Vanilla Heart Publishing Authors have reportedly experienced a multitude of problems , including badly edited and formatted ebooks, missing and incorrect royalty payments and statements, failure to register copyrights as required by the contr...

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I first became aware of Iconic Publishing last year, when this post appeared on Absolute Write. It's a tale of breathtaking unprofessionalism on the part of the publisher, Jano Donnachaidh of Marietta, GA. Starting last February, I began hearing from Iconic authors reporting a variety of similar problems, including production delays, poor copy editing (books were printed full of errors), poor communication, and broken marketing promises. I've also seen several Iconic contracts, and they're pretty bad, with a sweeping claim on subsidiary rights (even though there's no evidence Iconic is capable of exploiting them), unacceptably vague reversion language, royalties paid on net profit, and a Right of First refusal clause that could be interpreted to require the authors to submit to the publisher any subsequent book they ever produced. One thing these contracts do make clear, though, is that the authors retain copyright. See th...