All Romance Ebooks & Visions of The Future: Part One

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From Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

All Romance Ebooks and its sister website Omnilit did something incredibly awful on December 28, 2016. It sent out a handful of emails, letting writers, publishers, readers, and others know that it was shutting its doors four days later.

The letter WMG Publishing got said this,

On midnight, December 31, our sites will go dark and your content will cease to be available for sale through our platforms. This includes any content you are having us distribute to Apple.

We will be unable to remit Q4 2016 commissions in full and are proposing a settlement of 10 cents on the dollar (USD) for payments received through 27 December 2016.  We also request the following conditions:

1.     That you consider this negotiated settlement to be “paid in full.”

2.     That no further legal action be taken with regards to the above referenced commissions owed….

It is my sincere hope that we will be able to settle this account and avoid filing for bankruptcy… [KKR: all bold mine]

I have no books on that site. Hadn’t for a long time. If any of my work is there, it’s there through other publishers or as part of an anthology. WMG pulled its books off All Romance Ebooks (ARe) almost a year ago, because of problems dealing with the site, the people behind the site, and just some really unsettling business practices.

How unsettling? Nothing concrete. It looked (from the outside) like their interface was breaking down. We knew of sales on our account that never were credited to our account. I believe WMG even tested the site by buying (or having someone buy) a book, and seeing if we got credited.

We didn’t. Then we tried to track down what was owed, what payments had been made, and communications issues. We had a handful of truly incompetent employees (nice people; terrible workers) in 2014, and at first, we attributed our ARe problems to them. But after some dealings, we realized that, nope, the problem wasn’t ours. It was ARe’s problem, and that was a very, very, very bad sign.

We pulled all our titles off ARe, deactivated our account, and moved on to other sites.

So when we got this ridiculous letter, we knew it would have no effect on us. But as Allyson Longueira at WMG noted, ARe (a major Apple portal) made its announcement while Apple is shut down for annual maintenance, and writers who have to switch from ARe to Apple direct can’t do so.

Not only that, authors will lose any algorithm from Apple, and probably any revenue from them.

. . . .

ARe is a distributor, mostly, and so it is dealing with its writers as suppliers and unsecured creditors. I’ve been through a bunch of distributor closings, many in the late 1990s, with paper books, and they all happen like this.

One day, everything works, and the next, the distributor is closed for good. In some ways, ARe is unusual in that it gave its suppliers and creditors four days notice. Most places just close their doors, period.

I’m not defending ARe. I’m saying they’re no different than any other company that has gone out of business like this. Traditional publishers have had to deal with this kind of crap for decades. Some comic book companies went out of business as comic book distributors collapsed over the past 25 years. Such closures have incredible (bad) ripple effects. In the past, writers have lost entire careers because of these closures, but haven’t known why, because the publishing house had to cope with the direct losses when the distributor went down.

The difference here is that ARe wasn’t dealing with a dozen other companies. It was dealing with hundreds, maybe thousands, of writers individually, as well as publishers. So, writers are seeing this distribution collapse firsthand instead of secondhand.

To further complicate matters, ARe acted as a publisher for some authors, and is offering them no compensation whatsoever, not even that horrid 10 cents on the dollar (which, I have to say, I’ll be surprised if they pay even that).

. . . .

Now, let me give you all some advice.

Lawsuits cost time as well as money. I know a whole bunch of angry writers are banding together to go to war with ARe. Which is good, on the one hand, because these kinds of things should not ever happen.

But on the other hand, it’s not good, because a whole bunch of writers are going to lose a year or more of precious and irreplaceable writing time to go after this company.

Some writers have that time; others do not.

Frankly, if the writers’ organizations put together some kind of lawsuit, sign on to that, because it will be more effective. They can afford good lawyers and they will have a huge number of writers that they represent.

I know you’re angry. I know you may have serious financial problems because of this shut-down.

You need to take a deep breath, and look at the impact ARe’s shutdown and the loss of fourth quarter earnings will have on you. Then you need to understand that any lawsuit will take a year or more (courts are slow). ARe might settle; they might not.

. . . .

Guessing now, purely guessing.

ARe had run ahead of their money since they started. They used today’s money to pay yesterday’s bills. They had no profit. So they were floating money—payments to authors, payments to creditors, payments like website and rent.

That’s why ARe’s technology grew antiquated, why they weren’t keeping up with the times, why payments in some cases were late or impossible to get. They probably got a line of credit too late or they didn’t have one or they were borrowing off credit cards.

This fall, book sales went down. I discussed some of that after the election, but I’ll be discussing it more and in a different way later in January. Like its authors, ARe was counting on a certain level of revenue. That revenue went down, starting in July (maybe sooner), and continued downward all fall.

ARe paid writers and publishers 45 days after the close of the quarter. So they had to have made the Q3 payments by early November. That probably used most of their capital. They figured the holiday season would save them, along with holiday ad buys.

I’ll wager those were below what ARe expected—significantly below. So, they tried the 2017 ad buy the week before Christmas, hoping that would save them.

Link to the rest at Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Patreon and thanks to C.G. for the tip.

Here’s a link to Kris Rusch’s books. If you like the thoughts Kris shares, you can show your appreciation by checking out her books.

As usual, Kris’s advice is sound. If you’re involved in the ARe matter, you’ll want to read her entire post.

In a past life, PG represented lots of people in lots of civil litigation. He spent a great deal of time in court.

In some cases, litigation is a necessary part of solving a dispute. The parties are unable to agree, so a judge or jury must decide the matter.

On the other hand, litigation takes a financial and emotional toll on the parties. In some cases, the tangible and/or intangible rewards of litigation outweigh the financial/emotional costs and in other cases they do not.

PG was once involved in finally settling a lawsuit over the validity of a will that had lasted 13 years. He’s comfortable in saying that the costs outweighed the rewards for the litigants in that case.

PG says it is almost always a bad idea to entrust your business or personal welfare to the outcome of litigation.

You can move on with your life without a lawsuit or sue and move on with your life. The moving on with your life part is always the most important.