Meltdown at Red Rose Publishing
on September 7th, 2010Arlene Harris sent this link to a meltdown over at Red Rose Publishing. This bizarre mix of the personal and professional is exactly the sort of thing that made me run screaming from a few Very Bad Publishers in my dark and distant past: strange, manipulative, plaintive attempts to make the publisher’s failures the responsibility of the creator if said creator ever dares to breathe a word of non-payment or contract violations.
You do not care about Red Rose Publishing, your books, sales or the reputation of the company!
I have repeatedly busted my ass so even those WHO DO NOT SELL GET A CHANCE TO GET THEIR BOOKS in print, well F* me, for going out of my way to help any authors, take out ads or even do contests.
Right now I am so upset I am requesting that NO ONE get in touch with me unless it is an emergency or you are dying, because I am a little pissed off to put it mildly and until my colorful language and being pissed off passes, let me have a few to myself, that is if NO ONE MINDS, otherwise too bad so sad as I am taking it!
Take care and have a great day!
Wendi
No one should be desperate enough to put up with this to be published. Really. Get a blog.
The comments thread is worth a read. A few people in there (including one who claims to be a lawyer) have a dubious understanding of art and entertainment law, but there’s a mention of anti-evergreen legislation as it applies to author’s contracts that I simply don’t know the answer to. I know lawyers read this blog. Please enlighten us.
More interesting tidbits from disgruntled authors:
I resented being called a f***tard and hearing her call other people the same.
I resented being called via telephone and having to listen to her talk about her staff and authors, badmouthing them, calling them useless, and generally spewing vitriol, blaming everyone for everything and never accepting responsibility that sometimes it may well have been HER fault.
I resent not being paid royalties since I left. She has disregarded her own contract which states if you work a month’s notice, she will still pay you. She doesn’t.
I resent having my emails ignored when I have been nothing but polite in asking when or if I’ll be paid.
I resented being emotionally manipulated into adding extra books onto my workload, and also being told that the books needed to be up for sale now-now-now and it didn’t matter if they weren’t edited to the standard I wanted them to be.
I have never been called a f**tard by a publisher, but there was one client who used to call me the Virgin Slut because “…even though she acts like a virgin, you can tell she’s really a slut.”
Which, I think, is at least more interesting than f**tard.
One author bleats that it is terriby unprofessional of the other authors to go public with all the awfulness.
Fie, I say!
Silence dances the line between discretion and enabling.
Another commenter has perspective:
I knew that if she intended to cancel my contract, she would simply have done so via email. I mean this isn’t Random House. It’s a downmarket shoddy little epub with grubby hands and delusions of grandeur.
This is an unhappy situation and I feel very badly for the authors. That said:
Prior to pissing off The Good Goddess of Publishing, I had the hellish experience of talking to her on the phone and learned she knew everything about everyone. Authors who jumped in bed with cover models. Review sites she had in her pocket. Publishers going belly up. Ratings she leaves for authors she hates. Authors she claims to have on conference call when the author probably wouldn’t give her the time of day. Publishers she contacted to warn of authors they signed. Authors she’s made. Authors she’s ruined. Authors to avoid because they were ruthless and slandered her.
I totally wished I had worked for this company if only to hear about all the hot, naughty cover models.
(EDIT) This post just cost me an advertising account. We got bumped for Adult Language. No kidding.
Popcorn Night Costume: Mardi Gras Outlet
I am so swiping that picture for future wanks. It’s perfect XD
wonder if that costume comes in 2XL…
I hate the internet for all the distraction it brings me. I love the internet for all the distraction it brings me.
When I was in Buddhist priest training, we were all required to watch soap operas until we understood how they create suffering, and how we could stop doing that. The biggest component was simply keeping secrets, and then secrets about the secrets. A tells B, who tells C, but A doesn’t know that C knows, and is agonizing about whether to tell her, but doesn’t mention it to B, and so on to madness.
Standard economics points in the same direction. A free, competitive market, meaning one without special privileges for the In crowd, where you have to complete on the merits of your product or service, requires complete public information.
Also, of course, if you don’t have secrets, you can’t be blackmailed.
“Always tell the truth. This will gratify some, and astonish the rest.”
Mark Twain
Somehow I expect that the company will fail, lawsuits will most likely be a waste of time, and that Wendi Felter will raise red flags on Google searches for decades to come.
(Too bad Google doesn’t have a “dirty laundry” function, where you can filter by negative press.)
Piers Anthony surveys various internet publishers, giving nice capsule summaries. Of course, due diligence is always a good thing, especially with the Internet so easy to search.
http://www.hipiers.com/publishing.html
aw Torsten you coulda sold that idea to Google and made like a squillion dollars or something. Too late now, the interweb’s got it
The public huffy of “Don’t contact me about anything until I feel all better about myself!” is… unprofessional, of course. Professional, business communications will be made when it is convenient to the sender, which is usually immediately when there is a problem to be addressed. But her definition of “emergency” pretty much seems to mean “something I’m willing to deal with” instead of “The author actually needs the money NOW, as in emergency!”
How is it that people like this get into business?
Anyone can start a publishing company by getting a business license and calling themselves a publisher.