Originally, I'd planned to write a completely different blog
post from the one I am now putting out there.
I was going to trace the history I have with Aspen Mountain Press and
the disintegration of the business, ending with how and why the senior staff all
walked out at the end of July. But after
a very disturbing post by AMP's owner, Sandra Hicks, on the AMP Authors yahoo
loop this morning—a loop I and other authors to whom AMP owes a lot of money
were banned from because we were too outspoken—I think it's better to just cut
to the chase and then to go through some of her responses. I believe it's essential that what is
happening at AMP is brought fully into perspective. And,
since I have kept every email correspondence, every royalties report from AMP
and third party sites, and chat transcripts of every staff meeting with Ms.
Hicks this summer, I'm in a unique position.
I'm one of the few people in the world who knows exactly
what happened to AMP and has the documentation to prove it.
The disaster at AMP was a drawn-out affair, one that several
people tried to address. At this time
last year, Lori Basiewicz was the managing editor of AMP and I was the head
editor and solely in charge of the Aurora Regency imprints—a line I'd built and
worked on myself.
My first indication that anything was wrong came when one of
my authors at Aurora Regency—a writer who was in my writing group, who was a
dear friend, who was someone whose integrity I trusted absolutely—wrote to me
in concern because she hadn't received her royalties. Lori and I struggled to find out what was
going on, pleading with Ms. Hicks to address the problems with royalties that
were starting to build up with our authors. None of the authors received
regular royalty statements after August of 2010, so there was no way to
determine if they sold any books or if there was an oversight. This was resulting in an atmosphere of
serious distrust—an atmosphere Lori and I bore the brunt of because Ms. Hicks
wasn't answering any emails. Eventually,
last March, Lori couldn't take the lack of communication anymore. She resigned, and I was the only visible face
for the management of AMP.
To be perfectly fair and up front, Ms. Hicks WAS dealing with several physical ailments that rendered her unable to maintain the day to day activities of a publishing house. That is not in question and never has been.
I'd been scheduled for serious surgery, one with a recovery
time that was long enough that I knew I needed to make arrangements for the
operation of Aurora Regency in my absence.
So, I emailed the owner, Sandra Hicks, and held off scheduling my surgery
until we had agreed upon how Aurora Regency would be handed in my absence. When over a week had passed with no response
from Ms. Hicks, I got angry and sent an email to her, forwarding the message to
the entire senior staff. Here's part of
it, from June 19, 2011:
Because of your inattention, you have lost staff, authors and books. And the flood is not only continuing, but growing rapidly. As a result, my income is going to drop substantially. I've lost three authors and their books in two months--*author names removed*. All three of them have devout followings and readerships. AMP can't afford the loss of any authors or books, particularly since Aurora is now responsible for roughly half of AMP's releases which was not the intended purpose of the line. I wasn't supposed to have to carry the release schedule.
As a result, here's what I expect to happen during my three months' absence, which is now effective immediately. I expect my royalties paid on time every month, both as a writer and a editor. I expect statements with those royalties so I know what I'm being paid for. I expect the Aurora releases to come out on time and in good shape, for my authors to get copies of their books upon release and for THEM to get their royalties on time and with royalty statements. If, for any reason, these conditions are not met, my leave of absence will become permanent. I will not return to a big old mess.
I've come to the conclusion that the only way you're going to bestir yourself enough to care about AMP and its writers, editors and staff is to return to the days when you have to do it all yourself. And the fact you didn't even respond to an email as important as the first one I sent is insulting.
I demanded these things because they hadn't been happening
at AMP for some time. That email got the
rest of the senior staff involved—involved to the point that Kelly Shorten, our
art director, telephoned Ms. Hicks who was in a panic. The result of that conversation was that Ms. Hicks would immediately turn over running of the company to the senior staff,
that a qualified bookkeeper would be brought in to straighten out the mess of
AMP royalties, and that we would have the power to do whatever it took to bring
the company back. We also made a pact among ourselves, the four of us: if, for
any reason, we found something that would make us consider quitting, we would
all quit. We would not enable Ms. Hicks
any further. We were staying for the authors, to make sure they were paid what
they were supposed to be paid on books that went out well-edited and packaged,
on the scheduled release date and uploaded to third party sites. I personally
would get as much done editorially as possible and stabilize the company, so
that I could have my surgery and be reassured that the company wouldn't go
under due to no management in my absence.
What we discovered when we took over was a nightmare:
Hundreds of emails in all the AMP accounts, gone unanswered
and unopened from authors and staff. The
customer service email account alone had over 500 unanswered emails over the
previous eight months. That took two
people working eight hours to resolve—and in the process, we discovered a
frighteningly large number of AMP books that had serious formatting problems
for a long time.
Authors who were contracted and never heard back from the
company, leaving their books unpublished and their rights tied up. I found books from two years previously that
were still stranded by AMP, the authors begging to just get a response from
somebody…anybody.
The royalties were such a mess that the bookkeeper, Kerry
Mand, elected to concentrate on just getting that month's royalties out and
working on some of the most pressing cases before working backwards through the
books and auditing a year's worth of royalty spreadsheets and reports--a course
of action I agreed with. We discovered
that in previous months, only portions of the royalties had been paid at any
given time.
Two weeks from the time that we took over, the only releases
scheduled at AMP were Aurora Regency books—books that I was personally handling
and scheduling. Nothing else. The last scheduled AMP book for release was on
July 18. The rest was all Aurora
Regencies and one Christmas title at AMP, scheduled by Lori before she left.
The submissions account had not been opened since Lori had
resigned three months prior. I went
through all those submissions and answered every single one since March of
2011, even connecting with authors who'd been contracted before Lori was the managing editor and forgotten. I got all those lost books on the release schedule and to editors, who I hired. The books were edited, proofed by me and uploaded to a special file where ready-to-be-published books were kept.
Yep. Everything was an absolute nightmare. We worked seven
days a week, up to twenty hours a day. And we made positive changes to
AMP. We got over a year's worth of books
uploaded to the third party sites. We
updated and improved the website. We planned and scheduled a new imprint for
only speculative fiction. We created new
emails for author concerns and staff concerns, keeping those emails out of the
submissions account. We developed a
policy between the four of us that NO email at AMP would remain unanswered for
longer than six hours. We released a
chunk of authors who'd been trying to get their rights back in the previous
months. The owner initially balked at
that but I pointed out that unhappy authors would be detrimental to what we
trying to build and eventually, reluctantly, she agreed. I got all the contracted books on the release schedule and to editors, who I hired. The books were edited, proofed by me and uploaded to a special file where ready-to-be-published books were kept.
We scheduled AMP through the end of the year, with multiple releases each week—and many of those books were the ones that had dropped through the cracks.
After a couple of weeks, things were starting to look up. The
authors were happy again, beginning to believe in AMP once more. And in that first month of our leadership at
AMP, we posted a huge increase in sales.
But as Kerry got further into the royalties at AMP, the more
concerned we all became. The art director and bookkeeper asked for—and
were empowered to use—the AMP Paypal and
bank accounts. All four of us were working with those accounts and past royalty spreadsheets so we could try to match payments to sales. In other words, to make sure all the authors were paid for every single book sale.
Kerry had managed to get the royalties done ahead of
schedule, and sent the royalties to Ms. Hicks to pay. On July 15th, we were all so
relieved. The royalties were done and
the authors would be paid on time. But
by the 18th, we started to get a lot of emails: the publisher didn't
pay the darn royalties! AMP paid only a
few authors and then stopped. So I
emailed the owner. No answer. I called her. No answer. I texted her.
Finally, she responded.
When I asked her why the royalties hadn't been paid, she said that to
her knowledge, they all had been. We
were online IN the bank account and Paypal, trying to match authors (and pen
names) to amounts to see who'd went unpaid. And as I asked her about a specific
author, we watched the payment go out from that account. Then she texted me
back each time and said that I was mistaken, that author had been paid.
Up until that moment, I believed that all the problems at
AMP were unintentional, and that there wasn't a chance of dishonesty on the
part of the owner. But that, when
considered along with everything else, made me suspicious for the first
time. After that, we couldn't believe
Ms. Hicks when she told us she'd paid for something. So we began to monitor the
bank account. It was essential that we
knew what the financial situation of the company was before we did or said
anything to the authors about their royalties.
We'd taken over and were so proud of the fact that the royalties were
done—and correctly—and then the payments weren't made, which made us look like
we were incompetent. It was then that we
starting noticing some peculiar activities in the AMP bank account.
The owner was using the business's bank account for personal
expenses.
Kerry worked backwards through the bank accounts and
spreadsheets, arriving at the amount of back royalties an author was owed, the
owner would go behind our backs and tell the author that WE were wrong and the
author had already been paid most of that amount.
In the meantime, we were seeing these personal expenses—for food,
souvenirs, car payments, doctors visits—coming out of the AMP account. We decided to confront the owner about this
in our weekly Skype conference—a system I preferred to use because we could
keep transcripts. When we pleaded with
the owner to separate her personal expenses from the company's, to set up a
monthly draw account that would be a percentage of profits—so that we wouldn't
have the appearance of impropriety—she refused.
She also implied that we had used her Paypal account without her
knowledge to pay a long overdue bill for advertising—when we'd mentioned
multiple times during that conversation that we were doing so AT THE TIME. REAL
time.
We were all so angry at that time that Dominique suggested
we stop the meeting, take a deep breath, think things through and meet again
the following day when everyone was calmer.
Unfortunately, even though we tried, the owner would not
budge. She apologized for what happened
the day before, assuring us that she didn't mean to question our use of the
Paypal account to pay an advertising bill as dishonest or inappropriate. But she wouldn't budge off the personal
expenses. She said the income of AMP was too irregular to establish a draw
account for a percentage of the income.
At that point, I made an offer to buy AMP. She replied that
she wouldn't sell for less than a quarter of a million dollars. I tried to purchase the two imprints I'd
built—the Aurora Regency line that was nearly a year old and the Aura
speculative fiction line that was scheduled to launch in October. She refused.
So there was nothing left to do but announce our resignation from AMP to
the authors, turn over everything we'd done to AMP, and leave.
As a result of all this, we decided to open our own
publishing house, Musa Publishing, where we would address all the issues we had
with AMP in advance. Ms. Hicks had assured us she was going to close AMP
because we had left, so we wanted to create a haven for AMP authors—a house
where their books could be reissued as soon as possible.
Once we'd left and were building Musa as fast as we could,
Ms. Hicks contacted me again to offer me the chance to buy the Aurora Regency
imprint and AMP. We agreed on Aurora and
she dropped the price for AMP down to a more realistic but still high number.
The four of us discussed the amount and refused the offer. We had put our financial resources into Musa
and couldn't afford to take on AMP with all the lingering problems there. She then offered to sell us individual
contracts/books. So we considered it,
added up the amount of back pay and royalties AMP owed us, and offered an
exchange: we would forgive our entire back salary and all my future earnings as
an editor who'd done 75% of the books released by AMP the previous year in
exchange for approximately 65 book contracts. Our plan was to immediately release those
authors from their contracts. We would
offer contracts to Musa to each author—an offer they were not obligated to
take. The four of us thought it was
worth forgiving the money owed to us in order to free as many authors/books as
we could.
But as soon as Ms. Hicks
received our check for the Aurora Regency imprint, she abruptly decided
against the deal we'd been working for the individual contracts—a deal that was
HER initial plan. She cashed our check for AR immediately, and then proceeded
to breach the remainder of the contract.
The website was not turned over by the agreed-upon date. The books were
not removed from the third party sites; we ended up doing that ourselves. Aside from the communications with us, which
she terminated as soon as she got some money, she made very few attempts to
communicate with the authors in her company.
Until today.
Today, Ms. Hicks finally answered a post on the AMP Authors
loop from a stranded AMP author—an author I contracted as managing editor, an
author who has no editor, no cover art, no publication, and has had no
answers. His post--minus his name—and Ms. Hicks' replies
are below. My comments are in between each section.
.
Author) Do you intend
returning answering queries, letters etc? What is the time
span involved so we know when to expect an answer from you?
Ms. Hicks) In all fairness, I can't tell you what sort of time frame to
expect an answer
in, except to say that I am working on them. It takes time
to respond to
THREATS such as the one Wells made and take care of other
business matters AND
attend to my health needs and the work that must be done in
raising my son
alone.
The *threat* Ms. Hicks is referring to occurred when the
author in question, Charles Wells, served a DMCA notice to the domain host and the AMP website was taken
down temporarily. The website that, by
the way, AMP has not paid the designer for. AMP authors have served similar notices to AMP's third party distributors. AMP books are coming or have come down at many online retailers, particularly the large number of out-of-contract books that up until now, AMP has not removed from their home website or third party retailers despite numerous attempts by the affected authors.
Author) Do you intend
returning rights to authors who have asked for them?
Ms. Hicks) Not in all cases. All who've asked will be getting a
personalized letter from
me through the mail system explaining what I am deciding and
why.
A personalized letter through the mail system would have to
go through her post office box, where scores of unaccepted registered letters
and snail mailed demands to take out of contract books off the AMP sites or notices of breach of contracts have
been accumulating dust and not been answered. That address is a Mailboxes storefront a few blocks, I understand, from the owner's home.
Author) If YES,when can we expect to have the documentation?
Ms. Hicks) When I get to the requests, I am writing a letter and
mailing it to the authors.
Author) If NO, can you please use this Loop to advise who yes
and who not? If NO, can
you please explain why you intend holding on to authors that
have lost faith in
AMP?
Ms. Hicks) Losing faith in a company does not void a contract. Any
business matters are
between the author and AMP. If the author wishes to make
those matters public,
they will. I won't violate their privacy in that way. It is
their own
decision.
Additionally, I'd like to tell the members here that this is
not a business
MEETING loop. I've posted a few announcements in the past,
and participated in
some general chat, but I don't use this for meeting
purposes.
"Losing faith in a company does not void a
contract." And yet, let's take a
look at the breaches of contract all AMP authors are experiencing. Unpaid royalties. No royalty statements. No
books published in nine weeks and only two since the end of July—and they were
late. A website that is out of date (and not paid for). No web presence, since
one needs to actually participate in conversations to be considered a
presence. No response to emails, snail
mailed letters or registered letters.
Out of contract books still being sold at AMP and on third party sites
while the authors don't get paid for them.
No editors. No art staff. No signature pages signed by the publisher for
contracts.
Those things DO void a contract.
And after months of not responding to communications by email, text, phone call, or certified letter, why wouldn't the authors bring up issues regarding the publisher at a Yahoo loop designed by the company to discuss issues within the publisher?
Author) Do you intend paying royalties AND supplying sales statements
in toto as per the contract? When can those owed money expect to be paid?
Ms. Hicks) Yes, I will be paying royalties and statements, but as of
the moment they are on
the back burner as I deal with all the other threats to the
company, and the
requests to relinquish contracts.
*bolding mine*
Wait a second—paying royalties that will be three months
past due on October 15th is on the back burner because of threats to
the company and all the reversion of rights letters? So what Ms. Hicks is saying here is that as
long as the AMP authors are in active rebellion against her, she will continue
to NOT pay royalties. Paying authors and staff the money due them should be the
TOP PRIORITY here, regardless of whether the author/staff member is speaking
publicly about what happened as AMP.
She's holding authors' money hostage, the same way she's holding their
books hostage, until they shut up and sit down.
That's my take on the situation, at least. I could be wrong. If someone can put a different interpretation on this for me, please do.
Author) Do you intend removing out of contract books from
the AMP web site and
within what time frame? Bear in mind many third party sites
have already done so
on request from authors who have provided documentary
evidence of the end of
contract...
Ms. Hicks) Yes, but again, I can't provide an exact time frame.
Interestingly enough, some
of the authors who have sort of provided evidence have also
negatively affected
authors that wish to remain with AMP. Any of the threats
that are coming from
in force contracts can cause issues for the authors. This
especially is true in
light of the clause to redress breaches. A scanned copy of
the clause with the
authors signature eliminates the DRM violation claims.
What authors wish to remain published by a company that
doesn't pay them royalties? I'd like about a hundred of those--with bestselling books of course--to submit to me.
Smart comments and pipe dreams aside, the clause
in the AMP contract to redress breaches reads as follows:
A). Breach of Contract
If either party breaches
this Agreement, the non-breaching party shall provide written notice by
certified mail to the breaching party of the alleged breach.
Upon receipt of such notice,
the breaching party shall have ninety (90) days to cure. At the expiration of such ninety (90) day
period, upon failure to cure, this Agreement shall terminate, except as
otherwise provided herein or otherwise agreed in writing by both parties
hereto.
Author) Do you intend
continuing business with AMP?
Ms. Hicks) Yes. I put a lot of love and time into AMP. Am I ill? Yes.
Is AMP ill, yes.
This situation has certainly given me a load of things to
consider. What if I'd
had a heart attack or ended up in a coma? I have to develop
a system to provide
back up for such scenarios.
She used to have a staff to provide back up for such
scenarios—a staff that resigned en masse when she refused to remove her
personal expenses from the company's. And now, it's going to be very hard to
find a new staff when the old staff is owed thousands of dollars in back and
future pay. Why would anyone think that
AMP would pay a new staff when they don't pay the old one or the authors? And, to be honest, the other staff members and myself were the ones carrying the load of AMP for a year before our resignation. Lori Basiewicz, the managing editor before me, and I were carrying on without guidance or even assistance from Ms. Hicks for months. We weren't doing that for her, but for the authors who were relying on AMP's integrity with their intellectual property and income.
Also, let's be perfectly frank here. Ms. Hicks hasn't had a heart attack or a stroke. Her health permitted her to make this statement today without any trouble or turmoil. Her health permitted her to drive to the bank and cash a check. Her health permits her to do many, many things--but not, apparently, to answer an email, cut a check, type out a royalty statement, or anything that might benefit her authors and staff.
Author) If Yes, please state
when we can expend within what time frame it will do so
and also do you intend doing so with authors who no longer
wish to be identifies
with it?
Ms. Hicks) The first thing I am doing is reading and responding to
authors. Each is
individual, case-by-case. Just because some authors no
longer wish to be
identified with AMP does not negate their contracts. I and I
alone will make
that decision, on a case-by-case basis as I look to the
future.
What negates their contracts is months without
royalties. And when the author sends the
registered letter as specified in the AMP contract, the publisher evades activating that 90 day period by refusing to accept the certified letters.
Also, these complaints have been ongoing for over a year. Is she saying that in all that time, she is only NOW reading authors' emails?
Author) If NO, when can we expect the return of rights letters,
payments, etc, that
will avoid legal action on the part of those owed money?
Ms. Hicks) As stated before it is one thing at a time. Having been an
author, I know the
return of my intellectual property is more important than
anything else. That
said, I would seriously consider how much attorney fees cost
and weigh them
against what I believe I'm owed. Aspen has the money to pay
its authors, but
being one person at this time, I have made the decision to
handle the rights
requests first.
*bolding mine*
In other words, Ms. Hicks is threatening the authors, implying that it would be more expensive and a more lengthy process to force AMP to pay royalties than it would be to just
shut up and not make too much noise about this, and that since they're complaining she's just going to work on the rights issues on a case by case basis, therefore delaying any attempts to pay the royalties. Aspen Mountain Press probably does have the money to pay its authors, seeing as second quarter royalties from the third party sites were just paid out. She is electing, however, to ignore those royalties as a punishment for bad behavior.
And as an author who knows the return of intellectual property is more important than anything else, AMP's owner, who suffered as an author from the Triskelion debacle, is proving stubbornly resistant to returning anyone's intellectual property despite the numerous and egregious breaches AMP has committed on every single contract in the past 14 months.
Author) At this stage I think
these are the main themes authors are worried about and
I ask, on behalf of all of them to give answers
as soon as possible.
While we all know
about your personal problems and many have wished you the
best for them. You should also be
aware that this situation have caused all of us to suffer anziety(sic),
depression, and other problems caused by stress. Do you truly believe that it
is fair, or worse still, legally defendable refusing to face up to this
situation?
Ms. Hicks) Actually, yes, it is
defendable as I have sought documented treatment for my medical issues as
well as the depression. It is not a refusal to face the
situation, it is an inability due to depression. And for
those that are
suffering anxiety, and depression, then I would surely
expect them to be more
compassionate of the anxiety and depression I am suffering.
Do I believe it is
fair? Of course not. I don't believe it is fair for a person
to suffer cancer,
lose a loved one, get laid off from a job they've worked at
for 20 years. Some
thing just have to be
handled one thing at a time, one day at a time. Seems tome like there was a
boatload of people who got paid just last month (and no,they did not get
their statements, they are sitting in my flash drive) And as a clarification to many of you, right or wrong, I
made the decision that it was better you got your money than the statement. Cutting
the checks actually took less time than attaching the document and
emailing it individually. Now,
that said, some of you think I owe you money that I actually
did pay--you did not
cash your checks. There is ample proof of that in the bank account. Will I send statements? Yes. When, not
until I can get people paid.
Have I not answered
emails? Yes. Why? Bad news upon bad news only deepens depression, doesn't
help it at all. For those who have known me since the very early days of our
writing careers and the beginning of this company, you knowthat I don't speak
ill of others, and that I haven't treated you badly. Am I coming out of this? With professional help. I don't
know what sort of time frame to expect for that either. Some days are better than
others. Right now I've upped my work
quotient to about 2 hours a day. Upped. Is that great...depends where you are. Right now for me it is-two years
ago-I was
putting in twelve to fourteen hours a day and editing as
well. I was also writing. Now compared to then? Bad. Perspective has a lot of
power.
Even answering this
post has zapped a lot of the energy I had for the day. Again, to all of you who've put in requests, watch the mail.
You are getting signed hard copies related to your requests.
*bolding is all mine—not the author's or Ms. Hicks*
When I was sent this post this morning by multiple authors,
I literally felt ill. Ms. Hicks actually thinks that she is in the right! That NOT paying authors and staff is
defensible! That a 'boatload' of people got paid just last month!
That two hours is day is somehow work, when a few months ago
AMP had people working 16-20 hours a day to try to save the company.
That due to her personal illness and her documentation of treatment, she has a legal defense NOT TO PAY THE AUTHORS TO WHOM SHE OWES MONEY? I've never heard of a court anywhere that lets a contract employer refuse to pay people who have fulfilled their end of a contract because the employer is ill. Never. And usually, if a legal entity like a company refuses to or cannot pay its employees, the doors are shut and all contracts are immediately terminated. If I'm incorrect, I'd love to see a post from an attorney pointing out where my logic is wrong.
In the end, I don't know who got paid; I know who DIDN'T get paid—I know
I didn't: either my regular author royalties, my editor royalties, my
percentage of sales for Aurora Regency or my percentage of sales for my role as
the AMP managing editor. I know that
Kelly Shorten, the web designer and art director, did not get paid the back
salary and contracted labor (website building, maintenance and design, the
database, shopping cart system) AMP owes her. Not a dime, when it's impossible
to run on online business without those things—things AMP is still using even
now I know that Kerry Mand, the bookkeeper we brought in to fix the AMP accounting
didn't get paid the hundreds dollars AMP owes her. I know that Dominique Eastwick didn't get
paid the full amount of money owed to her for promotions, formatting and
uploading books to third party sites.
And yet, when our company bought the Aurora Regency imprints, we paid AMP immediately. And despite her illness, Ms. Hicks was certainly well enough at that time to drive immediately to her bank and cash that check, but was not well enough to fulfill the remainder of the contract OR to pay any of us, authors, editors and staff, some of the thousands of dollars she owes us.
This is what I know.
There may be some authors who got paid; I can't say that
they didn't. But I know for a FACT that
the authors who have been the most vocal about AMP issues have not been paid.
Not a penny. Not since the royalties the
senior staff sent out when we were running AMP. These are the same people Ms.
Hicks banned from the company yahoo loop along with me, people who were
unwilling to keep quiet about the concern they felt for their books,
their publications schedules, and their money.
In the end, the senior staff left AMP because we could not have our names
and reputations associated with a publisher who put her personal needs above
the needs of her authors and staff, who thinks it's acceptable to contract
books and then either not publish them or not pay the author royalties on those
sales, who believes that somehow SHE is the victim here and not the scores of
people who've been left without income, who thinks that just by ignoring
emails, phone calls and registered letters everything will just go away.
This publisher, once a leading ebook house with an
owner/publisher whose integrity was accepted without question is the selfsame
publisher now holding books and authors alike hostage, threatening to
continue to NOT pay them if they speak out publicly against AMP because her two
hours of work a day will be spent dealing with "threats" to the company.
I once said on this blog that I would never discuss the
reasons the senior staff resigned at Aspen Mountain Press. Now I have to consider that one of the
biggest mistakes I've ever made. But I—and
the other staffers who left—had hopes that the publisher would do the right
thing: reverting all rights to the authors, paying out the royalties due, and
closing up shop. In fact, we were told
that was what would happen at our last meeting at AMP, the same meeting where
we were told she would not sell AMP for less than two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.
I have empathized with Ms. Hicks's personal situation. For a
long time, I protected her because of it.
In other words, I enabled her to do exactly what she is doing right
now. For that, I've borne a terrible
sense of responsibility when I listen to the authors at AMP and their distress
and anger toward the publisher. People
are at AMP who would never have been trapped if I hadn't encouraged them to submit
to MY publisher, the one publisher in the world I was certain would never cheat
or deprive her authors and staff.
I hope this is all unnecessary. I hope that Ms. Hicks, who
meant so much to me as a friend and mentor, will still manage to do the right
thing. But I don't condone holding
authors' books and royalties hostage contingent upon their good behavior. This is business, not a preschool. My money doesn't go to timeout because I acted out. There are
a lot of ugly, legal terms one could use here—terms that I'm certain will be
used in multiple court cases already peeking over the horizon.
So I think it's time to break the silence on this matter, time to let the
world know once and for all what's really happened at AMP in my experience, in
the hopes that somehow this knowledge might help to break the hold Aspen
Mountain Press and its owner currently has on its authors and staff. I have documents to verify everything I've said.
Publishers need to be held
accountable for their actions. It is
time now for Aspen Mountain Press to pay what they owe.
Give the authors
their rights back.
Give the authors an internal audit of the books.
Pay the authors and staff what they are owed.
And shut the doors on a one-time great little publisher that
is now the biggest cautionary tale of all.
And a special note to AMP authors, editors and staff--please post a comment on this blog detailing exactly the breaches of your contract. Tell us the last time you were paid, the last time you got a royalty statement. Let us know how you tried to contact Sandra Hicks, the owner of AMP, and how many times. Let us know what she has said in response to you. And I will continue to compile my articles and blogs about Aspen Mountain Press, complete with documentation, for publication at a later date. I also encourage you all to report Aspen Mountain Press directly to watchdog sites and blogs. Go to Preditors and Editors, or Piers Anthony's e-publishing blog. Absolute Write has an active thread detailing the disintegration of Aspen Mountain Press. Go to any writers guild you belong to, like SFWA or RWA.
It's time for you to break the silence as well.
