Another source tells me that the company’s trade-paperback line is in trouble and that “it is doubtful it will continue.” Other sources close to the situation tell me it is their opinion that the owners “are looking to liquidate as much as they can, getting as much cash as they can” before filing bankruptcy, including, presumably, rights to books which they do not legally own and have still not reverted back to the individual authors and rightful copyright holders. Indeed, a quick check of Amazon tonight shows Dorchester is still selling Kindle editions of books they no longer own the rights to, due to contract violations and non-payment. In most cases, these rights have clearly been disputed by the lawful copyright holders, but no reversion letters or suppression orders have been forthcoming.

Damn! EREC beat me to it

Wow it has been a while since I have done one of these.

From: Erotic Romance ~ Cobblestone Smoke

UPDATE! Looks like MORE writers for Cobblestone Press are publicly reporting long term issues and mistreatment.

Mercy Celeste and Laura Harner.

Mercy Celeste says…

I was not happy with finding out 51 was published through twitter. It would have been really nice if some one had dropped me a line letting me know it was scheduled. and in the same vein I am not happy that they changed the title on the cover to numerical without consulting me or explaining why. I was not happy with how the cover art for Cold was handled. I love the cover and do not fault the artist. He turned in the art a month before release and I wasn’t sent it until the day of release. I am not happy with the formatting of Cold. And the editing process for that book made me angry. Seven books edited now and only one pissed me off. I will not go into detail. Let’s just say small errors were not found that should have been found of which I will take the blame. But the editor did things no other editor would dare do and that’s being nice. Yes I complained. Cobblestone Press no longer answers my email. So suffice it to say, I made a mistake in choosing them.

Laura Harner says…

My experience with them demonstrates a poor record of making on-time payments, a failure to disclose all retail sales and lack of making my books available in a major market, despite promises to the contrary. My first book was published on Aug 12, 2010 and as of Aug 6, 2011, it still is not available on Amazon.

When I say poor record, I have received 1 royalty check from them in six months. The royalty statements show small sales, however, there is not a minimum earned for payout clause in the contract.

Even more disturbing, during the time my royalty statement shows very small sales on the publisher’s website, I was the number one menage , erotica, and mystery seller at two different online vendors. I was also the number 11 best-selling author on one of the sites for a month, and that retailer is NOT currently listed on my royalty statements, nor have I ever been paid for a single book sold on that site.

And then there were seven.

Update: Mercy Celeste ~ An Open Letter To Cobblestone Press

But I want to point out something that is right there in writing…

Right about where someone at Noble Romance Publishing spills the beans…

I never price a book based entirely on length. I take author and sub-genre into consideration, as well. Different authors can command different prices for their work, because they are more established, have done the work to build a larger fan base, etc. I believe that’s a fair way to price.

Take a good look at what that means. Print it out and frame it.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!?!

How would you as a writer like being arbitrarily told you are “worth less” as an author despite the fact you might be writing more for this publisher?

How would you feel as a writer if your publisher started pricing yours and everyone else’s eBooks based on “perceived writer popularity”? Nothing that could be defined or fair like word count but based on how well they style their hair or how fresh their breath smells.

I mean say they sell an eBook by a fellow author of 30,000 words for 7 bucks or more and yours for their usual 6. I mean obviously that author makes more money right?

Would you hang with that publisher long?

I can just imagine the internal conflicts that would arise from this tactic.

Jesus things are the pits in the secondary ePublisher market.

From: Adobe ~ Security Advisory for Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat

This vulnerability (CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

Honest folks this is getting silly. This is the latest Adobe code base too! Simply amazing…

I have also been seeing rumors and such that this particular Adobe hack might be targeting the Twilight community with “poison PDFs”

From: Gather ~ Ebook reader virus in ‘Twilight’ PDF files

The identity thieves behind the Zeus malware attacks are now using the “/launch” command feature in Adobe Reader to launch malicious attacks without exploiting a vulnerability in the software.

Be careful what PDFs you are opening. Adobe Reader is being exploited to install Malware meant to steal information from your computer.

Turn this off if you use Adobe Reader…

Users can also turn off this functionality in the Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat Preferences by selecting > Edit > Preferences > Categories > Trust Manager > PDF File Attachments and clearing (unchecking) the box “Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications”

From TeleRead: Declining Kindle screen contrast – Good customer service from Amazon

Customer reports he has had two Kindle2 screen issues in a row he has had to send back for repair. Looks like you should compare your screen to another working model if you think you are having issues reading due to contrast.

“Commedia dell’arte was concerned mostly with disgraceful love intrigues, clever tricks to get money or outwit some simpleton.”

My own search found this…

A rigid convention of the commedia dell’arte is the periodic intrusion of Harlequin, who interrupts the play with low buffoonery.

I have to agree with SFWA… SFWA on Harlequin Horizons

SFWA does not believe that changing the name of the imprint, or in some other way attempting to disguise the relationship to Harlequin, changes the intention

EREC: I am Cynic, hear me bitch.

I am with Emily on this one. Harlequin will distance themselves from Digital Only Publishing with Carina Press but slap their “good” name all over a Vanity Imprint. Sorry, this was a totally bad business move. Ripping off writers usually is and Harlequin sold their “good” name to Author House. Putting Harlequin corporate integrity up for sale for only $599.00! Good move to the Publish America basement guys I wonder how this will fly over at RWA or any other writers organization since Harlequin is publicly stating full involvement with this business and promising to review people who pay to do this and make them authors in their regular lines. So basically they feel their authors should be paying them these days.

“Partnering with Author Solutions, Inc., the recognized world leader in self-publishing, is an innovative and original approach to discovering new authors to add to our traditional publishing programs.”

I think statements like that mean a big question mark for anything Harlequin since you have to wonder what the “regular” author paid to become published by Harlequin in the first place. Pay to play means exactly that. You can’t write worth a damn but you can certainly hand them money for the bragging rights. You can’t buy respect or talent people! The fact that Harlequin wants to sell you their name means the rest of their authors get put in the same boat.

Yeah this is not “self publishing”, this is “vanity publishing”, this is not gonna fly. Looks like RWA’s last hope of “traditional publishing” just crashed and burned in one day. Ellora’s Cave has more credibility than Harlequin and that my friends is SAD.

UPDATE!

Dear Kevin A. Gray,

Let me be blunt here.

Your company is trying to buy it’s legitimacy. See, I buy self published books from authors I follow over on Lulu all the time. But you see the difference?

Lulu is not promoting itself as anything but what it is.
That’s just it Kevin.

In my opinion Lulu is not wallowing in your muck or buying any type of legitimacy or reputation it did not earn from any traditional press. They do not promote themselves as anything but a service provider for self publishing. They are not hinting at bestseller success or “a chance” at becoming a “real” author for Harlequin just by using them. Maybe that seems to be not a big difference to you or your company, but it’s the small things like Lulu’s attitude about “self publishing” being a different model that has it’s good parts and bad parts which matters to me and makes apparent the type of companies I think should be considered by the public as just another “sleazy come on”.

Seems publisher Mobile Reference pulled it’s illegal versions of 1984 and Animal Farm from the Amazon Kindle library thus removing them from all Amazon Kindles even if you bought and downloaded it and were reading it. The users did get a refund but also the shock in finding out that Amazon can remotely erase any eBooks it sells from their possession without notice.

Obviously Amazon shouldn’t have been selling someone else’s copyrighted books it did not own in the first place and there is obviously some serious legally questionable processes with how it puts eBooks up for sale.

In my opinion the whole deal from how Amazon accepts eBooks for sale to how it interacts with it’s customers is not something I think is worth the top dollar Amazon asks for it’s eBook Readers.

Maybe this is good news for all the copyright holders and writers, maybe they want a world much like Orwell wrote about so they can immediately exercise their rights, but as a reader I certainly won’t waste my money buying into their utopia. I think this crossed a line and not one many customers will forget or forgive.

Followup: The Consumerist had some really good tips to stop Amazon from doing things to your Kindle in the future without your knowledge.

1. Every time you buy a book from Amazon, download it to your PC and save it as a backup copy. You’re allowed to do this. You should also be backing up the text file on your device that stores all of your notes and highlights, just in case.

2. Keep your Kindle’s wireless connection turned off unless you need it.

I know it sounds obvious but good consumer safety tips usually are.

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Oh please! Let’s cut the crap here.

It was accurately pointed out several places online that this “glitch” literally WIPED OUT ranking for all GLBT titles and even ones that had limited GLBT content cluing us, the public into something Amazon.com did not want us to see.

What I think, even if this was just some database “glitch”, what it showed is how you AMAZON are internally labeling the contents of random books based on some highly questionable process unrelated to how these books are published, their contents or how they should be sold.

I keep pointing out…
What is the difference between Lora Leigh and Josh Lanyon? Both should be categorized Erotic Romance… *but one is Gay and the other is Straight.* Yep, so any database glitch takes one out but not the other. Yep, that makes sense.

So tell me Amazon.com what was this misreporting about gay books again?