They're at it again.
Last year, when Triskelion Publishing got into difficulties, it was astounding to see how the gossips gathered around. What should have been a private author loop leaked like a sieve and what was always thought to be private ended up on public blogs.
And the vultures gathered around the corpse.
In truth, the company went down because the print program was a failure. Too much investment, too fast, led to cash meltdown and that was that.
But if you read the blogs you would have thought it went down because of incompetence and selfish behaviour by the owners. It wasn't. If they had made a roaring fortune from the print books, they would be laughing now, and they could have shaken off the critics. But the money ran out. At least they went bankrupt. In the past, epublishers just melted away in the night and the poor author rarely got closure.
The company has gone now, and remains as a Grave Lesson.
Now it's starting up again with another company. These things come in cycles, it seems.
I know nothing about the company currently under the spotlight. I've never had books there, never submitted any, but it is one of the longer-established epublishers and it has its way of working. Leaked emails are appearing all over theplace, to be lampooned and cut apart, when the emails weren't even meant for them. I have no bone to pick this time. I'm completely neutral.
But in the wake of every company that dies, whether it is because of its own faults or something else, it leaves a slew of bitterly disappointed and upset authors.
However, this is a symptom of market development. It really is. The smaller companies will either find themselves a niche or they will die, taken over or blown to the four winds. Bigger companies are venturing into epublishing and it's beginning to show.
Last year, when Triskelion Publishing got into difficulties, it was astounding to see how the gossips gathered around. What should have been a private author loop leaked like a sieve and what was always thought to be private ended up on public blogs.
And the vultures gathered around the corpse.
In truth, the company went down because the print program was a failure. Too much investment, too fast, led to cash meltdown and that was that.
But if you read the blogs you would have thought it went down because of incompetence and selfish behaviour by the owners. It wasn't. If they had made a roaring fortune from the print books, they would be laughing now, and they could have shaken off the critics. But the money ran out. At least they went bankrupt. In the past, epublishers just melted away in the night and the poor author rarely got closure.
The company has gone now, and remains as a Grave Lesson.
Now it's starting up again with another company. These things come in cycles, it seems.
I know nothing about the company currently under the spotlight. I've never had books there, never submitted any, but it is one of the longer-established epublishers and it has its way of working. Leaked emails are appearing all over theplace, to be lampooned and cut apart, when the emails weren't even meant for them. I have no bone to pick this time. I'm completely neutral.
But in the wake of every company that dies, whether it is because of its own faults or something else, it leaves a slew of bitterly disappointed and upset authors.
However, this is a symptom of market development. It really is. The smaller companies will either find themselves a niche or they will die, taken over or blown to the four winds. Bigger companies are venturing into epublishing and it's beginning to show.
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