For previous installments, click VERY BAD PUBLISHERS. These tales are lessons I learned from The SECOND worst publisher I ever worked with.

Anyway, this company is no longer in existence in the form I knew. It has completely shut down its trade divisions and only does “specialty market” books. It no longer publishes fiction of any kind and the people I once knew are no longer there. It does not use its old trade division name in any of its literature anymore.

There is no mention whatsoever in its marketing information or company history that it had ever published trade book lines or graphic novels. I guess they have decided to leave that bit of the past in the past.

And since they are no longer in any position in our market, and the people that once caused these problems are no longer there, I publish this tale as a warning to creators who might encounter these interesting contract difficulties elsewhere.

These posts were originally published about ten years ago, and cover my publishing history with this company up to 1989. The lawsuits mentioned further down began sometime in late 1990.

OK, this epic missive is a bit rambling and redundant, but what the heck. Here’s where all of the disparate elements come together.

When a publisher announces signing a contract for reprint editions of your book, sometimes it’s good news. Another publisher buys hardcover or foreign rights, you reach a new audience, and there’s a little bit more money in your pocket. Most authors don’t make much on foreign rights, but they still cash the checks, you know?

But expanding the audience with reprint editions wasn’t what was happening here.

I told you of how one day my old publisher had me in the office and bit my head off, told me I had no talent, and then told me to get out of the business.

Mere days later, I was his bestest little artist, like a daughter. He loved me and my work, denying everything he had said before. Either he had schizophrenia or something was up.

Something was up.

The publisher was in financial trouble and had been for years, sinking into debt before I even got there. They had been bought out by their printer quite some time ago because they couldn’t pay their printing bills and even though the long departed Woman claimed their graphic novel division had more gross revenue than any other division of the company, gross is nothing. Net is everything. The net was in the red and had been for years. (At one point, they had also sunk huge sums of money into a travel quide book scheme that had bombed badly. So, their GN division wasn’t the only trade book line that was sinking the company).

My publisher was pissed off because the printer/owner was pulling the plug on the trade division and he was about to be out of a job. He was not in a good mood, especially where flaky little artists like me were concerned. He had bet that we would bring in huge bucks with our graphic novels and save his company, and he had lost his gamble.

Only a few of the GN’s made any money. Yet some authors had received far larger advances than mine, including one comics artist who was paid $10,000 to produce about a dozen black and white illustrations and a color cover for a novel that only sold about 1,000 copies. While I was getting chump change, bigger name creators were getting big advances, but their books were selling less than mine was. The publisher was unable to figure out how the comics market worked and how to get popular comics creators from the direct market to sell in the retail trade (in all fairness, the rest of the comics market didn’t really figure that out for another decade either).

The printer/owner had a plan to continue to bring in revenue on those books that were still profitable like mine. Our printer/owner was working up a secret deal to sign our contracts over to another publisher, but had no intention of telling any of the authors about this. Only 12 authors were being bought out including me, because we were the only ones bringing in any real dough. We weren’t making any money on our books, but the publisher sure was. Most of the books were New Age books. I think mine was the only GN that was bought.

However, they had no right to transfer our contract agreements without our permission. Instead of contacting us for permission or to negotiate a contract sale deal, the publisher told all of the authors involved that only reprint rights to our books had been sold.

My publisher was glad to see the back of the lousy comic creators he believed had helped ruin his company when we failed to make him really, really rich (he lived the good life anyway, but he wanted a really, really good life), so he blew up at me in the office that day and got it all off his chest. However, when my publisher realized that my book was one of the ones picked up by the reprint licensor, he had to keep me happy so I would continue producing new volumes. A core feature of the secret contract sale was that the creators were going to keep producing new works.

So, the next time my publisher saw me, he was all smiles again. He brightly asked when I would have a new volume ready only days after he had told me to give up art for good. He had not remembered that he had signed all my licensing rights and black and white publishing rights back over to me. “I don’t recall that!” was one of his favorite phrases (right next to “Artists sell themselves so cheap.”)

The printer/owner had sold my entire contract to the licensor without letting the licensor know that there were virtually no rights left to buy, because my publisher had simply neglected to let the printer/owner know he had signed those rights back to me months earlier. So, one day it was “Get out of publishing!” and the next it was “I love your work and when are we going to get a new book?”

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For previous installments in this series, click on VERY BAD PUBLISHERS.

The rest of these posts won’t make much sense unless you read the previous installments.

Finished?

Good.

OK, now I advise you to pop on over to John Green’s blog and read his comments about how the publishing world might be improved if authors took smaller advances up front. Something I did at the SECOND worst publisher I ever worked for, expecting a good return on royalties after I got some nice five figure midlist sales.

But as we see, creative accounting can make sure you don’t get those royalties. 10% or 20% of cover would be very nice, but my personal experience is that there are some publishers out there who will do everything in their power to make sure you never get that 10% of cover. One of my publishers even figured out a way to knock 10% down to 1.25%.

The comments section on Mr. Green’s blog is an essential read. Mediabistro linked to Green’s blog, and also has a couple of other links that may be of interest. Mediabistro should be a daily visit for you.

And now, back to my story.

My experiences with my ex- publisher began when they approached me about A Distant Soil when I was in high school. They decided I was too young to take a chance on, so I ended up doing a lot of work for a series of other unfortunate clients. A few of them were also Very Bad Publishers.

I’m not sure how instructive the experiences were, just creepy in a hedonistic 1980′s science fiction convention sort of way. The only good thing I got out of my contact with those jokers was a lot of squicky subtext in A Distant Soil. And some information and experience I was able to use to make some dough on my project. But more on that later.

It was 1986 before I went to work with the Very Bad Publisher in this series. The trade division was shut down in 1989, and a lawsuit was filed about a year later. Can’t recall exact dates anymore. It was about a year before that was all settled. But soon after, they were calling asking me to help sell their backlist in the direct market.

I think that’s a riot.

Anyway, flash forward ten years.

Another thing I have learned in publishing is that no matter how acrimonious your split with someone, no matter how much you hate each other, or how badly someone has treated you, or how hurtful they claim you have been to them, there is one thing you can always expect from your former adversary:

They’ll be back.

Years after The Woman was gone from our publisher, she approached me and tried to chat me up at a convention. This didn’t go over well with me and I gave her the cut direct. To put it mildly, she was furious.

Some ten years after I had last worked with her, she was still fuming. She sent me an 8 page letter threatening a lawsuit over about a half a dozen things, primarily over her extremely deluded belief that I had done an illegal reprint of the GN I had illustrated for her. (And let’s face it, a 64 page comic is a squarebound comic book, not a graphic novel. OK?) I had bought the books fair and square from my publisher for resale like any wholesaler.

In addition, she had been writing A Distant Soil fanfic and selling it, and was making extremely bizarre claims that I was plagiarizing her fanfic. Some may recall that I used to be extremely touchy about fanfic. Now you know why. One of my former editors was writing and selling fanfic of my work, and ten years later, was claiming I was getting all my ideas from her…and if that isn’t ballsy, I don’t know what is.

To make matters even stranger, she claimed she had not actually been reading the comic series.

Hunh?

Wow, that’s some amazing skill, to know what I am writing and drawing without having actually read it.

OK, IMHO this was just a pathetic attempt to get my attention, but only the infantile think bad attention is better than no attention.

I turned her letter over to my attorney just like you are supposed to with this sort of thing, and in the absence of a sufficient personal response from me, she began calling me on the phone.

I deduce she got my unlisted number from a fan in Texas. I dismissed The Woman with some choice swear words. She wailed, “At least I don’t have to call people names!” Holy cow, what, are we in elementary school?

I handed her back to my attorney again where this kind of nonsense belongs. I still recall her screaming “Why do you need an attorney? Why do you have an attorney on retainer? I bet you get sued all the time! You’re that kind of person!”

OK, that part was actually both funny and pathetic at once, so I laughed.

I don’t have an attorney on retainer, but if I was rich enough to afford one, I’d probably need one because where money is, lawsuits follow. And to be perfectly frank, I have been involved in exactly two lawsuits in about a 25 year career, and both involved her.

After being turned back over to my attorney, and getting some more sad and weird mail from her, she finally made a noise like a hoop and rolled away. Later, she boo-hooed on message boards about how mean I was and how we had just had “a misunderstanding” and how I had “overreacted” to her fanfic. Actually, I had reacted appropriately to her outrageous claims and threat of a lawsuit by turning her over to my lawyer.

Mean, mean, Colleen! Being so mean to fanfic authors! Uh hunh.

Exit The Woman, who would at least have appeared to have had some class if she had exited a little more gracefully.

Reenter the ex-publisher.

Or, to be more precise, the ex-publisher’s ex-partner.

Recall the last part of my massive epic about my adventures with my ex-publisher. They had been operating under the mistaken belief that my fellow authors and I were engaged in some kind of conspiracy with the publisher’s ex-partner to take all of our books to his New Age publishing company. As I said, I barely knew the ex-partner, had no idea he was starting up a new company, and couldn’t have cared less. I was self publishing A Distant Soil, at the time, and later moved to Image. I had no contact with the ex-partner in at least 15 years. We’ll call him Tom.

Tom’s New Age small press had a trade division line that looked to be set up a lot like the old publisher. I’d never heard of his company nor seen any of his books in stores, but I did some research when this all came up again. They appeared to have one hit book that sold very well and a lot of books that didn’t. They were adding a line of unauthorized celebrity biographies as well as insta-books about other people’s books: fan-service pop bios and info-tainment. None of it could even be considered close to academic quality, but then, it didn’t claim to be. They were out to make a buck. Authors who didn’t even know the material were instant experts after a quick read of whatever popular novel was being made into a movie. A few weeks research on the internet, add some reprints of previously published articles, bind it, and you’ve got a quickee dollar riding the coattails of someone else’s success.

I’d done some articles and art for books like this, but usually as favors for colleagues. I think my grand total income on about 1/2 dozen books of this kind was $500 combined. Usually, I didn’t get paid at all. I took most of these sorts of gigs because I was a fan of the source material. If someone wanted to interview me about what I thought of Anne Rice, or they wanted me to write an article about Clive Barker, it was a pleasure.

Over time, these sorts of books made me uncomfortable, especially after someone wrote an unauthorized bio about me. I steer away from these kinds of assignments now. Especially the ones that don’t pay…

Anyway, some years ago, I was contacted with news about Tom and his new publishing venture. I hadn’t given Tom a thought in almost two decades because I never gave Tom a thought even when I was in the same room with him. He may have been a publishing partner at my old company, but I hardly ever spoke to him and he never worked directly with me. He was gone before the lawsuit came along. I had very few memories of Tom.

Now I was being told that Tom was just the greatest guy. Some of the people at my old publisher had gone on to work for Tom, including staff and authors. My contacts were telling me Tom was not behind any of the ex-publisher’s weirdness. Tom was doing well with his new company and they were in serious need of decent artists. Wouldn’t I consider doing a new book cover for one of Tom’s celebrity bios?

Despite the glowing recommendation, I had reservations.

First, I did not believe for one second that Tom was not behind anything that had happened at the old publishing house. He was still there when I was the unpaid office drudge, and I don’t recall him stepping forward to say, “But my friends and colleagues! At the very least, she should have health insurance!” I don’t recall him stepping forward to say, “Dudes, these contracts of ours, they really suck. Can’t we give the authors a better deal?” I do recall nice houses and cars for the publishers, and a barely mobile Toyota with no front left end for me. I recall getting a ticket for having an expired sticker on my car because I couldn’t come up with $22 to pay my taxes, and a loaf of banana bread to eat that was supposed to last a week.

That’s what I recall.

Second, I’ve pretty much had it with the small press. Few of them are small because they want to be. The pay is usually lousy. Now I was making very good money as an artist at good publishers. I had a series at Marvel going on, and GN’s at other publishers, as well as various illustration assignments. I was making the best income of my career. The A Distant Soil GN’s were even earning decent money at Image. Even though they weren’t selling nearly as well as I would like, the superior Image contract enabled me to make enough money to continue my series. Go, Image!

My contacts at Tom’s new publishing house assured me over and over that not only was this locale simply a jolly place to be, but they would pay me very good money to do a cover for an unauthorized book about JK Rowling.

My fangirl sense was tingling. JK Rowling! Harry Potter! Oh, boy!

OK, what to do? Take the chance? Grapple with the ex-publisher’s ex-partner? Was he a rat or not? And when would I get another chance to even get near the glory that was HARRY POTTER? I sure as heck wasn’t likely to get a shot at illustrating the real books, but this would be cool by proxy.

Against my better judgement, I agreed to the job and the price they offered (not nearly as good pay as I was told it would be) and I whipped up a color sketch.

Before I even turned in my doodle, I knew I had made a mistake.

The art director called. She did not want to work with me. This she made very clear. The publisher usually worked with in-house artists and she was not happy to work with some stranger. She was clearly not familiar with terms of art or my work. I later learned she had no art training at all. One thing was for sure, she wanted me off the assignment, and yet she couldn’t just fire me. The publisher had told her to work with me.

So, she was going to make things difficult.

The first difficult thing she was going to do was she was going to cut my pay. By a full third.

(more…)

Not a word of this will make any sense unless you read the Previous installments at The Very Bad Publishers Link.

“She doesn’t recognize me because of the beard!” Tom announced as I approached.

No, I wouldn’t have recognized Tom in a lineup. I barely knew this guy. I hadn’t seen him in many years. The only reason I knew who he was was because he was the only person in the diner bouncing up and down and calling my name, while announcing “It’s Tom!”

So, that made it easy to figure out who it was, see.

And Tom brought his kids. He informed me he had relatives about an hour away, and he brought the kids because he knew I wouldn’t mind.

You know, I like kids. I really do. Kids are wonderful small people. Kids are also wonderful small people who have absolutely no business in a business meeting. I hope I was able to pick my jaw up off the floor before the kids took my look of horror personally.

“Why, you look as pretty as ever!” enthused Tom.

Tom was far too familiar for my taste, and I don’t mean I thought he was flirting. This was simply an inappropriate comment from a stranger. This man I barely knew was gladhanding on all cylinders. From his behavior you’d have gotten the impression we were the bestest of buddies who had lunch every day.

Then Tom lurched forward, and revolted at the thought that he might try to hug me, my hand shot out for a stiff and formal shake that was so militaristic I appeared ready to thump my armor and shout “Integritas!” unto my Centurion.

Tom’s smile faded a tad, and then he introduced me to Mr. Disney who looked like a normal bloke.

I considered leaving right away. After I was declared as pretty as ever, I had no appetite. I didn’t even want my free lunch, which was going to cost me, I was sure.

There’s no way to make this long, ridiculous story short because it was one hell of a long hour.

A very important lesson for anyone in publishing, or any other business for that matter: don’t insult your potential client by making it clear that you have no freaking idea who they are, what they do, or what their history is, especially after you have made the extraordinarily tacky semi-social faux pas of assuming a false sense of familiarity.

Mr. Disney didn’t say much at first because good old Tom was engaging in a giddy rush of narrative about our happy lives together. All of it was news to me.

“I was your first publisher!”

“No you weren’t. You weren’t even my tenth publisher.”

Tom was a bit taken aback to be contradicted like this, and plowed forward, insisting he was my first publisher. Apparently, he had a lot of emotional investment in believing he had discovered me, like I was a continent, or an exotic fruit. Actually, I was published by DC Comics first (Who’s Who and Amethyst), and Marvel hired me months before Tom’s company did (Swords of the Swashbucklers by Bill Mantlo). I also had credits elsewhere that predated my involvement with Tom’s company.

“Well, I published your first graphic novel.”

Actually, no. A Distant Soil was published previously as well, and even though it would not see book format for years, technically, it was still my first graphic novel work.

Tom was getting a bit pissed. He insisted he published my first graphic novel because a book was a book and a comic was a comic. Tom couldn’t understand why I was being so contrary. He liked me. We were friends.

“We are not friends. I don’t even know you. I haven’t spoken to you in years,” I said.

Tom insisted we were good buddies. “Don’t you remember how you would come into my office and sit down and talk?”

I recall only one instance of sitting down in Tom’s office to talk. It was about 18 years prior, and it lasted a matter of minutes.

“I have never had a substantive conversation with you in my life. I do not know you.”

I decided to order something to eat after all because I had found the least sociable thing on the menu: a blooming onion. They’d be taken aback every time I opened my mouth, and not just because of what I was saying.

I wasn’t going to win any awards for my diplomatic conduct, but I wasn’t going to sit there and let this guy misrepresent me or his relations with me to anyone.

Another example of his misrepresentation:

“I created the first graphic novel,” he announced.

These words actually came out of this man’s mouth.

(more…)

You will want to read the previous Very Bad Publisher posts before continuing.

The first posts appeared on the message board nearly ten years ago, and then were reposted to my blog with two updates some years later. I can no longer recall the exact dates, but all of this occurred before the release of Frank Miller’s Sin City film. These comments are from the blog.

They are presented in toto. Several posts are gone due to a snafu during blog migration, which did funky things to the formatting. During editing, I did not notice that all comments were not imported properly. I had already deleted the old blog. Alas, a few of those comments were from James Owen and Carla Speed McNeil. The remaining posts are intact, exactly as written, including one from manga artist Tintin.

There will be one more follow up after this to go over a couple more things and that will wrap this up. But I will continue to post “creator beware” info. Most young creators have no idea what their contract actually means. My purpose with these posts is to try to keep you from making errors which can destroy your creations, and more importantly your creativity.

This week, Frank Miller popped in to have a look, since his name was taken in vain in the last Very Bad Publisher installment. Here is his note in its entirety:

As ever, Colleen, you put things in focus. And you stand on principle, which is harder. But you can’t do one without the other. You do both well.

What a pack of gibbering losers out there. It’s like an Ayn Rand nightmare.

Let them eat Jus.

Hang Tough,

FM

PS: Yeah, this is OK to print.

I have no doubt whatsoever that a man who admires Ayn Rand would not be a good match for Tom’s company. Which only brings home the point I made earlier about the necessity of researching your clients before you approach them.

I will not offer further commentary on these letters. Come back in a day or so. I have a new post with new information, and that will wrap up this series.

Bill:

Colleen, thank you for allowing us to learn from your experiences. These articles have been enlightening! And very sobering.

I know someone who was offered some inking work by a small publisher. He was very excited. The publisher even sent him a free copy of Dark Horse’s inking how-to book, The Art of Comic-Book Inking.

He was just waiting for his contract, and then boy-oh-boy he was going to be a pro!

Days went by, then weeks, then months, and still no contract.

I lost touch with this guy years ago. I don’t know how things worked out. Not well, I suspect. It’s too bad. He was, and probably still is, a phenomanally talented inker.

Anyway, it’s easy to see why someone would get all excited to get what appears to be their first big break, and how good judgment could go out the window. It’s unfortunate, however, because your columns illustrate how easy it is for creators to be used, abused, chewed up and spit out by unethical, sleazy, and downright cheesy publishers.

I’d say it’s a testament to your talent and your intellect that you were not only able to survive your experiences, but were able to rise above them and prosper.

Son of Tom:

I’m “Tom’s” son.

(more…)

None of this will make any sense unless you read the previous installments at the Very Bad Publishers Page.

Nice recommendation from Tom Spurgeon over at The Comics Reporter:

Colleen Doran is detailing one of those protracted publishing horror stories that has to be read to be believed and that everyone should read before fully committing to making comics with any sense of professional devotion.

Thanks.

Most of these posts originally went up nearly ten years ago, but today’s is new. I pondered a few days before uploading, then edited the heck out of it. You don’t need more of the wacky, and I don’t need to relive it anymore.

Man, reviewing all of this was draining…not nearly as draining as living it, though.

I appreciate the letters from Son of Tom, because they validate some of my memoirs, even though he disagrees on the role of Tom in the development of GN’s. As I said, didn’t really know the guy, and never worked directly with him.

One thing I did learn from all this explains the puzzling problem of people who bubble up from the oubliette to raise a stink now and then: they are frozen in time, and think you are, too.

Not necessarily referring to Tom here, but…

If they met you when you were 21, starting out, broke, then in their minds you are always there. No matter how much time goes by, how much you accomplish, they will assume you can still be had on the cheap, will sign crap contracts, have never done a thing with your life since they saw you, and have never learned a damned thing, either. They never do, that’s for sure.

Nothing is stranger than dealing with someone who saw you at a convention and can’t forget the sight of you in your Galadriel costume.

Just because they never change, don’t let that stop you from moving on, no matter how much they whine when you do. If they can’t keep up, tell them to enjoy the slower pace, and leave them behind.

I appreciate the internet, because back in the day, I couldn’t point you to this.

About a year ago, a case law website posted some documents from the lawsuit.

I’d say this pretty much backs up what I remember about it all. Keep in mind, the lawsuit was settled, so none of these people were found liable for anything. Our settlement was confidential, and not only have I never revealed it, I spent so much time trying not to remember it, I forgot what it was, except I was very happy about it.

Moreover, I haven’t a clue who most of those people are, and don’t know what role they played in all this. I suppose they could get mad at me for these posts, but in ten years, no one bothered to come to me directly about them, except for the Son of Tom. I sincerely doubt any of this could damage the principal players, since the imprint is gone and everyone associated with it is, too. Harming a dead imprint is not the purpose of these posts.

I have no hard feelings toward the company as it exists today. Those people didn’t do anything to me, and these posts aren’t about them. None of the people I once knew are with the company any longer.

The date here is later than I recall: 1992. Yet one more reason why my early years self publishing were particularly stressful. I started self publishing in 1991. This legal snafu ran on for nearly four years.

I also have no recollection of the court’s decision to split the suit between matters which required arbitration, and those which went to court.

A minor point; some of us had books reprinted with improper copyright notices. My book was published with an incorrect birth date: 1968. I was born in 1963. For years, someone spread the rumor that I changed my birthdate in a scheme to trick everyone into believing I was five years younger than I actually am. Here are the court documents which show that not only did I have absolutely nothing to do with the edition of A Distant Soil that has my incorrect birth date in it, but I sued its publisher.

It’s odd that some see a conspiracy in a typo. Stop sniffing the loser dust, people.

I also want to emphasize that Tom was gone from the publisher years before the suit, and is not named in this document.

Reading the letters from the Son of Tom, I am happy to know this kid didn’t have a clue what was going on. I repeat, his dad had nothing to do with the legal stuff.

A lot of the treatment I received at the old publisher was bizarrely unprofessional in a FAN FROM HELL kind of way. I’ve said over and over that real fans are never a problem, it’s the pros (including aspiring pros) you have to watch out for. It is highly doubtful your editor at Harper Collins (I know, I worked there, too) will induce you to draw slash porn for them on the sly in exchange for food, or will publish and sell fanfic, but Starblaze was that kind of place.

It’s not that I’m close-minded, it’s just that I subscribe to the wisdom of the Five Geek Social Fallacies, which should be required reading for anyone who comes anywhere near fandom. Just because I don’t want to draw slash for my editor for food does not mean I am making a judgment on people who enjoy kinky manga…except for the Loli and tentacle stuff. Ew.

My connection to this publisher came about in part because the man who created the Starblaze line was my mentor, Frank Kelly Freas. Kelly was discreet to a fault. Though he had a bad split with Starblaze and another Very Bad Publisher, he barely mentioned them until after I had signed on with them. Then he couldn’t shut up about them. Too late!

The Woman waged epic battles with fellow employees that were so hideous and personal I won’t go there. Let’s just say that at the moment we begin the sex change operation adventure – EDIT: which I decided not to elaborate upon, but cannot resist a momentary mention of, because that place reached stratospheric heights of uberdrama, and that should give you some indication of same – the whole epic jumps the shark and I don’t want to ski with the Fonz. I have decided not to link to blogs that do because they don’t address issues about contracts and publishing that will be of any use to you. However, I admit it was strangely comforting to discover that I was not the only one revolted by the personal dramas.

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