BPH Accounting Shennanigans

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Which makes it even less likely that a PBH is hacking websites to remove this story?

If I were prone to believing in conspiracy-esque hacking ventures, I'd assume the agency under discussion had arranged the hack, not any BPH.

When her website went down, I assumed that was random hacker-drama. It happens, sometimes, and when it does, it's always assumed to be related to the blogger's most recent controversial post. Shrug.

Hearing that her *second* site went down--a fairly obscure one--had me rethinking.

Still, based on that alone, I wouldn't assume corporate malice rather than a grudge from some specific person in her past. But I hope she does have the resources to investigate properly, because she's taking a risk in coming forward to say "a major agency is colluding with a publisher to scam authors out of their royalties"--especially since she's previously said "publishers are ripping off authors of their royalties."

The combination here tells me that authors who don't sign the new amendment need to carefully examine their future royalty statements to discover if the publisher decided to treat them as if they'd signed, counting on the fact that very few could afford an audit to get the details.

Since the author guilds etc. don't seem to be doing anything, I hope a pack of individual authors get together to file a class action suit, with the goal not of "getting back payment of proper royalties," (easily dodged by admitting that records might not exist) but of reclaiming their copyrights so they can either renegotiate contracts from a position of knowledge and strength, or set off into self-publishing.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

If I were prone to believing in conspiracy-esque hacking ventures, I'd assume the agency under discussion had arranged the hack, not any BPH.

When her website went down, I assumed that was random hacker-drama. It happens, sometimes, and when it does, it's always assumed to be related to the blogger's most recent controversial post. Shrug.

Hearing that her *second* site went down--a fairly obscure one--had me rethinking.

Still, based on that alone, I wouldn't assume corporate malice rather than a grudge from some specific person in her past. But I hope she does have the resources to investigate properly, because she's taking a risk in coming forward to say "a major agency is colluding with a publisher to scam authors out of their royalties"--especially since she's previously said "publishers are ripping off authors of their royalties."

The combination here tells me that authors who don't sign the new amendment need to carefully examine their future royalty statements to discover if the publisher decided to treat them as if they'd signed, counting on the fact that very few could afford an audit to get the details.

Since the author guilds etc. don't seem to be doing anything, I hope a pack of individual authors get together to file a class action suit, with the goal not of "getting back payment of proper royalties," (easily dodged by admitting that records might not exist) but of reclaiming their copyrights so they can either renegotiate contracts from a position of knowledge and strength, or set off into self-publishing.

Agreed, nothing will change without a class action lawsuit and LOTS of negative publicity aimed at the BPHs! I think it is only a matter of time before enough of the midlist writers and maybe even a known name or two do precisely this.