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Well, my publishers have been in correspondence with two of the major companies that have not paid us, and hopefully this will get straightened out. I would love to know who supplied those files, and how they represented themselves.
I have heard, too, that many of the pirated files are in really bad shape, which is no way to read. I'm a nit-picking perfectionist when it comes to my typescript, and to think of it out there with missing paragraphs and missing punctuation is just disturbing. It's like somebody stealing your horse and then riding him around covered in mud and burrs and with a sign on him saying he's yours. Sigh.
There are a lot of odd things about the e-book industry. To get a book on at some companies, you have to give them a lot of books. OR use their press for print books, which is priced pretty high. If you're a print author, you can get in---but if you're a younger print author, with only a couple of backlist in your control, you can't. We tried to communicate with one such to ask about this policy, and what it got us was a barrage of phone calls from a determined woman who wants to help us get in print---I haven't had such an assault since (in my foolish youth) I sent one book to a pay-to-read agent.
The industry right now is the wild west. There are companies charging full hardbound price for a download. But the author only gets the usual percentage. There are companies that bounce from format to format, trying to invent the wheel themselves, rather than going with something established. There's one company gobbling up another, with all the attendant questions of rights.
Interesting times to try to do business, is what I'll say.
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