To all the authors: Thank you

This post contains the email I sent to the authors I worked with for my new book, Best Women’s Erotica 2015. Today, I read Alison Tyler’s post about her tribulations with Cleis contracts, and it, combined with the comments, and the responses I got from my email (below) made me decide that sunlight is the best disinfectant here. I’m livid to find out that the new digital rights standard is 35%, when I’m only getting 7% on several of my titles.

I’ve edited Best Women’s Erotica for a decade. Every year I would receive around 300 submissions from all over the world, and with three stories allowed each, that means I’ve read at least 3,000 hopeful stories for that series alone (though it’s probably more like 6-9,000 stories). Under my stewardship, the series has won awards ranging from bronze to gold, and a few authors have managed to be published in the series at both ends of this decade.

With the entirety of Best Women’s Erotica, I’ve published 191 stories written by female authors who hail from Australia (Victoria to Sydney), England (London, Brighton, Surrey, beyond), Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Canada (Toronto, Vancouver), France (Paris), New Zealand, India (New Delhi), Vietnam, Russia, Mexico City, and nearly half of all the United States put together. With our sexually explicit words and dreams of a better world, together we have changed the conversation about women and sexual strength.

I didn’t want to share this email until I’d contacted the writers, paid them, and received their responses. Their responses ranged from “no wonder BWE 2015 came out with a whimper” and “I noticed the release date weirdness, and how Cleis hasn’t mentioned it once on FB” to “This is it exactly.” It looks like everyone was trying to figure out what was going on, and thankfully, everyone wants to work with me again. There is a general consensus that self-publishing is a really, really good thing for our community — and I agree. Keep an eye on Digita Publications.

Sent February 11.

Dear BWE 2015 author,

Please accept my apologies for the way communication, payment and deliverables of your book copies have gone. This has never happened before, and I’d like to explain what went wrong.

The good news first: Cleis *finally* paid me my advance on Best Women’s Erotica 2015 this week, and I am sending your payments today. As a condition of them paying me what they owed, which was over two months past due, I will now release your mailing addresses to Cleis so they will send out your book copies.

Normally I have everyone paid before Christmas, and authors have books in hand before the holidays. I pride myself on it. The advances I take are small, and only cover payment of the authors; they pay me, and I hand the money to you. The book was contracted to me, and you, to come out by the end of November (Nov. 17th was its ebook date on Amazon). Cleis was under contract to deliver our money within 30 days of publication: that they violated this, and only paid me after I harassed them for it, is very upsetting. On top of that, Cleis kept pushing the book’s publication date out further, without telling me — I’d only find out the truth of the matter by checking Amazon.

While this was all happening, Cleis Press sold itself without telling any of us, its authors. They did so in a way that was reprehensible and truly deceitful. They never actually told us they were selling or had sold, and as some of you already know, we all found out in the press after the fact.

Cleis unexpectedly approached each of us authors in September — when I was working with you on BWE 2015. Cleis told me to sign a contract addendum to clear up digital rights on one of my books, saying they were just “bringing their records in line.” I think most authors trusted them, and signed. I didn’t. I looked at the document, and sent it to my attorneys — it looked nothing like what Cleis claimed it was.

Nine days later, Cleis Press started to threaten, harass, and bully me (and they threatened other authors, I later found out). It was a Friday; I awoke to multiple voicemails, emails and text messages, all in varying degrees of pleading and threats. The threats included pulling my books down off Amazon, and another threat was that Cleis would re-contract my anthologies directly with the authors, out from under me, cutting me out of my anthologies altogether. One text message started, “Violet, I know you’re a good person…” another began “Violet, you came to our house for Thanksgiving, how can you do this to us?” Do what, I wondered?

That same day I was also bombarded by phone calls and voicemails, to the same effect — and in emails, also, which ranged from “I have great news for you!” to “Please call, it’s urgent.”

I called, and was told that Cleis was getting its records in order, because times were hard, and they had hired consultants to help them streamline the business. Also, I was told, the document they needed me to sign would correct an error with a few of my contracts that gave Cleis proper digital rights, and would bring up my digital royalty on these titles to the industry standard, 25%. (These are old contracts, and Cleis was very slow to acquiesce to giving me digital rights at all — only doing do when I threatened to quit working with them them several years ago). A very different story than the first email, for sure.

I said, well that sounds fine, if you fix my digital royalties. Cleis said they’d re-send me the addendum to sign, and added, “I can expect you to sign this now, can’t I?” I said I’d need to look it over and consider any questions I had; they answered that they’d wait on the phone — right now. It felt wrong, especially after the threats. I said that it was Friday and I needed to run errands, and I’d get to it when I returned. I ended the call.

I looked at the document Cleis re-sent: it was not what I’d been told, and there was nothing about fixing my royalties in it. It also said, “hope to get your signed copy this evening!” I emailed my attorneys again to be safe about it all, and went about my evening.

Saturday morning I awoke to a knock at my door. A courier was on my doorstep with “documents for Violet Blue to sign”. This was over the top, and a freaky invasion of my privacy. The courier was told to leave and not to return.

There was much more craziness than this, but you get the picture.

I guessed during this insanity that Cleis must be preparing to sell the company. I reviewed all my contracts with them, and saw that in over half of my contracts they had said one thing, but secretly inserted language that lowered my royalties — and I was none the wiser, because I never expected them to lie to me so directly. Especially for a press that built its brand on integrity. (They actually never told me the truth about why they needed the addendum signed.)

The pressure continued. Cleis said they never intended to update my royalties and bring them up to standard. It all made me sick. I had to fly to Seattle for a conference, and spent the three days there unable to keep food down, throwing up every time I tried to eat. I was freaking out about the lies, the deception, and how I could have worked with people for 15 years who had absolutely fucked me, fucked over my art and lifeblood, and all of my values. And what Cleis might be doing to other Cleis authors, some of whom I brought into Cleis, people whom I care about very deeply and protectively. My hacker friends were worried, but 100% there for me. Thank the gods for Hushcon’s hacker culture, who nurtured me and made me feel safe and loved while I was secretly a mess.

Present day: Cleis has sold to a company called Start. I don’t know much about them, other than they’re buying up indie publishers (they bought Nightshade a while back). I do know that the way BWE 2015 has been handled is abysmal, and it has fucked with my reputation as an editor — I’m always on time with authors I work with, but not this time.

And I’m deeply sorry I couldn’t take care of you the way you should have been.

You are all superstars, and — to put it mildly — it has been an honor to work with you. Your writing is so excellent it shakes me up in a good way, and I’m so deeply humbled that you trusted me with your work.

I really hope I get to work with you, each of you, again someday. I couldn’t have hoped for such an incredible cast of talent to conclude my work on the Best Women’s Erotica series. If I had known it was to be my last, I wouldn’t have changed a thing in what we made together.

Now, I’m off to get you paid and get your BWE copies into your hot, talented little hands.

Luckily the contract for BWE 2015 isn’t one of the bait-and-switch contracts, so I’m going to promote the hell out of it — and you deserve all the positive attention it brings.

Warm wishes,
Violet

PS – This email address is going away at the end of February. If you want to contact me after this, I’m [redacted] (please ask before adding to email lists though!)