✔️ Changing Accounting Systems and/or software
✔️ Amazon allegedly swapping to a ‘different way of paying’
✔️ Accounts errors
✔️ Long but sporadic emails that ramble and actually say very little at all
✔️ Owners / Management uncommunicative thereafter
✔️ Authors turning against authors
✔️ Bigger authors prioritized over smaller ones
✔️ Secretive groups
✔️ Authors telling you not to contact the company because the company are *super busy*
✔️ Authors saying readers should buy direct from the publisher as they get more money (no this just fills the publishers coffers so they can afford to cover existing debts)
And the biggies…
✔️Authors asked to waive monies owed in exchange for rights back to their work (WTF)
✔️Authors gaslighting and calling other authors liars and stirrers
✔️Authors being scared and not knowing what to do.
Wait, is this more stuff about Silver Publishing? He was a crook, right? That is different.
Nope, this isn’t to do with Silver, this is DSP and I love the guys at DSP BUT no communication leaves a void that can be filled with all kinds of speculation and it is scary as hell.
I have personally had a lot of authors, coming to me, privately, some in tears, some unable to cover bills, some having instructed lawyers, some owed upwards of 3k, 4k, 6k. This isn’t a couple of hundred dollars for some of these guys, this is bigger than that. This is foreign translations unpaid, this is money they are owed sitting in an account that DSP is allegedly struggling to access.
And worst of all, communication is completely absent. Why wouldn’t we all believe the worst?
My email to DSP today – “In addition, you NEED to communicate. Not some wild long complicated email, but a simple one with bullet points as to WHY you aren’t paying. People are NOT believing you. I don’t believe you. “
Authors need to believe each other, and stop passive/aggressive telling authors they are wrong to listen to their guts. Everyone’s experience of DSP will be different depending on 1) the income you generate for them 2) if you are staff 3) whether you got a lawyer/agent involved.
The one thing I learned from Silver and ARe
ALWAYS KNOW WHERE YOUR MONEY IS – BECAUSE IT IS YOUR MONEY
Trust your gut, do not allow yourself to be bullied into wait and see tactics. Demand answers, have respect that you are a strong author who has worked damned hard for DSP.
I wish, god i WISH, someone had told me this when I was going through the Silver shit.
Well this has sure put a dent in my day, I hate it when I find out authors are not being paid the royalties they are rightly entitled to. I remember the issues with Silver and ARE as I bought many books on there until word got out about their practices so I stopped using the sites. I do buy quite a few books from Dreamspinner and I’m really angry to hear they’re also stiffing their authors. Do you have any issues with Amazon as I now buy more books on their site? I also use Smashwords and haven’t heard of any issues with them. I do thank you for bringing this to readers attention.
Thank you for sharing more details. Dreamspinner Press is the only publisher where I still buy tons of books. I have multiple pre-orders in with them (through August) and have been noticing multiple authors posting about non-payments of royalties lately and that is scary. Along with lots of other readers, I was caught not being able to download all my books from ARe and EC when they closed so I’m going through my DSP purchases right now to be sure I have them all and making print screens of my pre-orders and the totals in case I need to ask for anything. I really, really like DSP, and have felt that they stand head and shoulders above other publishers of LGBTQ+ books so if this mess continues to an equally messy conclusion, I’ll be very, very disappointed. I really want my authors to get PAID – that’s why I pay the intermediary and try to put as few intermediaries as possible between the author and myself so the authors makes the highest percentage of money they can. Come on, DSP, pay up or acknowledge fully what’s going on and let us all move forward.
Thank you for your candor on the subject, people seem unwilling to get this out in the open. As a reader, I thought the issue was minor until your blog post.
Thanks for the warning. I was just about to poke them regarding a novel ms. Guess I’ll stick with agent hunting for a while longer.