Hello everyone and I hope you all had an amazing new year!
2024 was quite the year, for everyone. I reached many personal and professional milestones such as directing and premiering my largest short film yet and publishing my first novel; The Murder Society, in March. Though sadly in the summer of 2024 I had a falling out with the publisher of my novel and it ended up being unpublished. And I feel you all deserve to know why.
EVERYTHING MENTIONED BELOW I HAVE PROOF OF.
I first got into writing professionally during Covid-19 and I managed to get two of my short stories published in a magazine. In 2021 I moved to a different city and my mother opened her own occult business, which one of her close friends helped her manage.
My mother came to learn that her friend was mutual friends with the editor of the magazine I had published short stories through and they decided to set up a day for her to visit my mothers store and surprise me. I met her on July 26th of 2023. I was thrilled, getting to meet the editor I had worked with in the past in person! We sat and chatted about writing for a couple of hours, she even recorded an episode for her podcast with my mother and their friend. I mentioned that I had just finished writing my first book and a friend of mine who was a published author was editing it for me. The editor then informed me that the company that published my short stories also publishes novels and that I should submit a synopsis. So that night I did and very quickly they agreed to publish me. I was so excited! As my original plan was to publish my book through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), which was a way to self publish my book for free through Amazon. Over the duration of writing my book I did extensive research into KDP and learned almost everything there was to learn about the program. This editor also made claims that the company could get my book into Indigo and Barnes and Nobles (I have 2 witnesses to this).
At the very beginning of the editing process with the company I informed the editor that I had ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and struggled with grammar and spelling. The editor assured me this would not be an issue. At this point I had already signed the contract with this company. And in an unrelated conversation with the editor she states they print their books through Amazon, simply using KDP. I was a little distraught, if I had known this before signing the contract I wouldn’t have since that was what I was planning to do myself in the first place.
The editor would send me back the manuscript with all the suggested edits and I would go through and accept them, with not much time in between. The book is over 100,000 words long and there was only around two months before my release date. I was not given enough time to go through the manuscript myself and I told my editor this and she assured me everything would be okay. Finally I was sent the galleys to approve, everything looked great! Except the editor sent me the document late and I was only given five days to approve the galleys before they were sent to the formater, where it states in the contract I would be given seven days. I briefly skim over the document, approve it and send it back. In an unrelated conversation the editor agreed that the time frame was ‘a bit short’.
When I received the very first copy of my novel in the mail I was excited but my joy dimmed when I saw something was wrong with the cover. In the contract it states that it was the company’s responsibility to create the front and back cover, but I ended up creating the front cover myself. I immediately informed the company of this and they blamed the error on Amazon, there was simply not enough bleed room for the cover when it was uploaded to the formater, causing the image to shift off the page. This was corrected by the company but some copies had already been sold, it was available to purchase through Amazon and the companies website. And of course I was excited to get them out into the world so I planned a book signing and reading at the local centre for the arts on July 5th 2024.
I messaged the editor through FaceBook and asked how much it would cost to order ten author copies for my book signing. The company has a deal where you don’t have to pay shipping on your first order of author copies, you only pay for the author copies themselves. The editor informed me it would be approximately $100, I thanked her for the information. I decided to wait until I had about $200 saved up so I could purchase twenty copies instead of ten. A couple weeks later I messaged the editor again and asked to place an order for twenty author copies of my book. She is confused and states she already placed the order for the first ten books so I would have to pay shipping for the next ten. But I never asked her to place the order, I only simply asked a question about cost. I brought this to the owner of the company and the editor apologized and stated this was her mistake and she would pay for the cost of shipping the other ten books to me out of her pocket. This issue was resolved and I had a very successful first book reading and signing, even though ten of the books I sold were printed with the faulty cover.
As friends and family started to purchase the book (all through Amazon because shortly after the release of my novel the company shut down their website, leaving Amazon the only place to purchase from. They never informed me of this) they came back to me with complaints, such as there were many spelling and grammar errors and there was a duplicated chapter. Furiously, I grabbed my copy of my book and searched through it, chapter thirty and thirty one were the exact same. I politely and professionally emailed the editor with photo proof of the mistake and asked her what could be done to correct it. She brought the situation to the owner of the company and they stated it would cost me over $100 to pull down the book, fix it and re-upload it. They claim this is what Amazon charges them to take down the book. But KDP is a FREE publishing platform and I know from the extensive research I have done (and the other authors I’ve talked to who have published through KDP) that they do not charge you to take down a book.
Frustrated, I explain I do not have that kind of money and that this was not a mistake on my end as none of the editing documents had a duplicated chapter. Swiftly they came up with an idea to fix the problem that wouldn’t cost anything, I also informed them that there were numerous complaints of spelling and grammar issues within my book. The editor responded with surprise and offered to also correct the 114 errors that were missed in my manuscript while they are fixing the duplicated chapter. The editor offered to have their junior editor go over it as well. I sent her a list of how many errors there were in each chapter and said that I had highlighted them all within my copy of the novel and if she likes I could send her photos of those highlights.
At this point I am very unsatisfied with my experience with this company, I write both the editor and the owner of the company an email asking to be removed from my contract, send a sales report and all royalties owed, I also sent a list stating in detail the reasons I want to be let out of my contract. This was in the summer of 2024.
Without protest the owner signed me back the full rights to my novel and sent me an NDA. I asked what type of confidential information I was privy to that made me have to sign an NDA, he claimed it was standard practice. But when I asked when my royalties would be sent to me, he simply replied ‘you haven’t signed the NDA’. Nowhere in the contract does it state I must sign an NDA in order to receive my royalties. I told him that holding the royalties owed to me in an attempt to force me to sign a non enforceable NDA was illegal. At this point he brought my mother into the conversation. We both questioned the owner about the NDA and why he was not sending my royalties or a sales report. I was also supposed to receive quarterly and semi-annual reports about my novel (as stated in the contract) and never did. Finally when he couldn’t come up with new ways to avoid the questions he sent me my royalties.
The editor blocked me on Facebook after making a public statement on the companies page that they were no longer aliflated with me or my ‘now unpublished novel’. I screenshotted this post and uploaded it to my instagram story (which is temporary). The editor then contacts me privately on Instagram asking me to take down the post and claims I did not have permission to use the company’s content. I informed her that I simply shared a public post that included my FULL NAME and the NAME OF MY NOVEL, I never claimed that the post was mine as the name of the company was in the post. I then called her out for scoping my Instagram account after she had blocked me on Facebook and blocked her.
After a couple days I didn’t really think about it anymore. Was I upset? Yes, frustrated. But I had my mind set on finishing my next book and the short film I was in the process of editing.
One night in October 2024 my emotions ran high about the situation. I felt like a failure, I worked so hard to publish my first book and now that accomplishment is gone. So I vented to a friend about it and walked them through the entire situation. I then remembered that the editor owned a podcast that was affiliated with the publishing company, so I decided to check it out and make sure she was not bad mouthing me. I found an episode in her podcast where she slanders me. I sat and listened to the entire thing in tears, listening to her call me an idiot three times, insinuate that I am an asshole, she states that I conned her and that my novel looked like a four year old jotted down all over a piece of paper and how it is obvious when the school system fails someone. Apparently she and a group of local ladies refer to my mother and I as Twit and Twat. A mutual friend of the editor and my mother was at the book reading, this mutual friend went to the editor and claimed i stumbled on my words as if I had never read the book before, the editor states in her podcast
“Umm, she did a reading, which apparently, umm, it has been brought to my attention, that she stumbled her way through. Couldn’t pronounce words that SHE wrote. Didn’t understand words, that she wrote. Ok you know, maybe you had help, allegedly, it was brought to my attention, allegedly allegedly… uumm there were rumours that it may have been umm, aided by certain ah, artificial programs.”
In this podcast she claims to be telling her side of the story but most of it is lies and slander. And almost every episode since has contained mention of me/and or the situation. She doesn’t mention me by name but she drops enough hints about who she is talking about that it is obvious to anyone who is paying attention. Such as when this all happened, the word count of my book, all of the issues i have stated above, ect.
For the first -approximately- forty minutes of this podcast episode she talks about truth and reconciliation, after this she even states that it is a distraction in case the episode gets flagged. I contacted a lawyer and sent the editor a cease and desist letter, as well as the three other local ladies who were slandering my name around town. One of which came to my place of work where I could not stand up for myself and harassed me. Since the editor lives out of town the three local ladies received their cease and desist letters first but must have warned the editor about these letters because she refused to sign for it and briefly brought it up in her next podcast episode. Then the lawyer sent a cease and desist letter herself which the editor also ignored but replied to in her podcast. She claims it’s ‘freedom of speech’ and is perfectly legal. She claims she can reveal my name and my book because she did not sign the NDA, but out of kindness she won’t.
This is the reason my novel was unpublished because I was unsatisfied with the company’s work and wanted my rights back. But for some reason in today’s world some people believe that it is okay to slander others and claim they want to ruin their reputation,
Not only did this editor lie about the percentage of royalties I earned off my novel in this podcast, claimed i did not advertise my novel, and claimed that because of my complaints against the company I destroyed her self-confidence.
All I want is for her to stop slandering me publicly on over five different platforms and for her to take it down. I don’t understand what led up to this point, I didn’t hold any grudges. I never said a single word about this situation until now.
I am telling you all this now because you deserve the truth, not to be petty or to cause drama. But because a middle aged woman is slandering and insulting a young woman and is getting away with it.
I wrote this as a warning for any new authors looking to publish their work, vet all independent companions thoroughly!