How publishing works redux, or pay your damned authors

So many things to talk on today. Let me gather my thoughts.

Ooohhhhhm

Okay, first I want to talk about the EC-like complaining the owners of Torquere are doing. On Twitter, one says: Cont)but I am pretty fed up.I am done playing nice and trying to pacify people.Things are what they are and ARE being resolved.That is all.

The other says: When people are putting all they have in to try & fix things attacking them doesn't inspire a desire to work harder. Just a thought to keep.

Once again, blaming the authors for their failing. You can't misappropriate thousands of dollars of authors' money, not pay the for books you have a contract to pay them on, and then expect them to believe you when you say things are being resolved.

This is not OUR fault as Torquere authors. We wrote books, promoted them, and helped sell them. Kristi and Joanna then took that money, and spent it. There's no, "Oops, I tripped and lost 20K". There's no overhead that should ever spend the money of a press' authors. This was someone taking the money and spending it, and then not being able to figure out what to do when it suddenly caught up with them because authors began to wise up.

In an update to the author list this weekend, the owners said the payment they were about to receive from Amazon was disconcertingly low. Really? That payment is for July 2016, and has been posted in Amazon since the 15th of August in report form. If you're really trying to make things work, make things right, you should be on top of the incoming revenue as soon as you have access to the information. You should also be putting that money aside to pay the quarter it is actually earned in, not to try to pay off debts you owe from third qtr 2015 onward. That's right. At least one author hasn't received a full payment for anything since 2nd qtr 2015. That's April May and June, 2015. On the Torquere site sales. That qtr paid for Jan-March 2015 on distributors.

Asking for payments and demanding rights reversions for breach of contract are not attacks. They are sound business decisions from authors who have been treated at best unfairly, and at worst criminally.

Pay your authors. Then you don't have to deal with all that nasty hand holding and pacifying people who earned money they will never see.

Julia