Warning: Classless Post Ahead
My name is Lissa Matthews and I’m an Ellora’s Cave author.
Sounds like an Anon meeting of sorts, doesn’t it? Maybe it should be. It’s not a pleasant thing to be right now, an Ellora’s Cave author. Where once it was for some of us, for others of us, it no longer is.
No doubt you’ve heard about everything going on with Ellora’s Cave. How they aren’t paying on time. How they’ve laid off all the freelance artists and editors, and there’s only a handful of office staff (2 of those handle royalties for all 800+ authors). How there’s a lawsuit that’s been filed by them against Dear Author and it’s owner Jane Litte for defamation. (Links below)
It’s a fucking mess, y’all. That’s the only way I know to put it. I’ve shared my opinions in a very abbreviated fashion, but I’ve received emails, and private messages and instant messages and text messages and direct messages from all walks of social media and well, it’s my blog so, I figure I’d address several things here.
This email is personal to me and full of my own thoughts and opinions and interpretations.
For one, the lawsuit pisses me off to the point that it’s comical. And not in a let’s laugh it up at Jane’s expense comical. It’s a horrible move on the part of Ellora’s Cave and I’m afraid it will push more authors back into the closet in regards to speaking up when they feel they have been wronged by a publisher. Not to mention the artists and editors who are involved as well. I am not a fan of the blog Dear Author. Haven’t been since before I was published and definitely not afterward when I received a big fat ‘she doesn’t know what she’s talking about’ review on one of my first books. But every person who posts on that blog or on any blog has a right to their own opinion and has a right to state it. Jane said nothing that hasn’t been written about in an Ellora’s Cave email or in Publisher’s Weekly or any number of other press outlets. That the emails were suppose to be remain private… Well, yeah, there is that. But when you find out that such drastic changes have been made or are being made and that people you work with are not being treated in a professional manner, yeah, some of that proprietary privacy goes out the window. (more…)
