Okay, I needed to rant about this somewhere where the publishers won’t read it. As this deals with publishers outside of the fandom, I hope I am safe here.
For those that don’t listen to Fangs and Fonts, or watch my twitter, I’ve had a rough time with a couple of small presses that have closed down and caused me grief.
The first was one press that closed after sitting on an anthology for two years. Another company bought them, printed the book, then realized that the file they had bought contained extremely poorly edited stories that should have never been printed. That anthology now sits in limbo (for another year thus far) while apparently another person purchases the original publishing company away from the one that bought it. ???
Then there was a steampunk anthology that had its press close its doors, and when another company bought them, they had lost my story. Thankfully, that story found a home with another press, so that story has a happy ending at least. ;D
Same goes for a story I submitted to Bad Dog Books which got lost when Furplanet bought them. Thankfully Ashe gave it a chance and it’s now published in Fang 5. Another happy ending. 8)
But now I am faced with an anthology that was produced by an author who tried to go into the publishing industry. She did all the work, published and printed the book through Createspace, and out it went… annnnd a month later she nulled and voided the contracts before selling the anthology (two actually) to a British publishing company. They said they will get the contracts out right away.
So I wait.
And wait.
I contact them and they tell me they will send it soon.
I wait.
Six months later, I contact them again.
And forty-five minutes later, I find a post on Facebook that they just did basically explaining that the reason the contracts never went out is because the original press company LOST the emails to some of the authors, or the emails were invalid. Not to mention that apparently a couple authors jumped ship after the cancelling of their contracts, and thus, we can’t use the stories anymore in the anthology.
Oh, and they lost the high resolution image that was being used for the cover so they can’t use it anymore when they re-release the anthology.
Add in the new press’s owner going through a divorce and it seems like a whole bunch of WTF just happened. (and it’s taken six months to find out about it…)
So, I have said I still want to be in the anthology, gave him my contact information, and I am back to waiting again.
It does feel like I am cursed at certain points, though I know that’s not the case as I continually get things both inside and outside of the fandom published. It has also given me a wide variety of experiences to which I can teach others how to avoid/make the best of during panels and such. It has also given me insight into the world of small presses and the sometimes fickle nature of their owners and publishers.
But it still sucks. >:(
Anyway, thank you for listening to me rant. I really needed to get that off my chest and I hope it doesn’t change your opinion of me.
