So I Got Duped
How It Started
circa 2013 Fitz, freshly signed and living for houndstooth skinny jeans
Ten years ago I set out to publish my first novel.
I was 20. I had all the fire and finesse of 20, and I was determined to share my story with the world. Even now, thinking back to “early 20s Fitz” I can’t help but cringe at the choices that were made. Particularly choices around footwear.
The first time I attended the PNWA Conference, I came home humbled and embarrassingly aware of just how much work my first novel needed. It was bad, and I didn’t feel inspired to fix it, so I left it where it was and pivoted headfirst into the next shiny thing.
The second time I attended, I had a plan. I knew how to pitch, how to plan, and which shoes would get me from one end of the hall to the next quickest should an agent appear in the wild. Again, in hindsight, I could have done things differently (read: dear elizabeth, i am so sorry i lurked so obviously tyty for being cool) but the hawk-swooping approach was exactly what landed me with my first agent. I pitched a colleague of hers, who ended up being too booked up at the time to take on new projects, so she passed me along within her agency to Kimberley Cameron.
Working with KC&A was great for me as a debut author. They had a wealth of experience my eager little heart gobbled right up, and to this day I believe every revision they requested made me a better author.
But the book didn’t sell. It sat. For nearly a year we tried to sell it. Until one day, my agent called to let me know she had two publishers interested in making an offer. Both were on the smaller side, but one looked like it would have better momentum for my work — and it was a foot in the door. I knew I had to start somewhere, and I thought this would be as good a start as any.
I sobbed when my galleys arrived.
It felt real. I signed books and gave them out. Bloggers interviewed me. ARC went out and reviews came in. After a year of nothing, suddenly it felt like things were taking off.
In all the excitement, it was easy to overlook the deadlines my publisher was missing. It started in the revision phase. I asked for changes that took weeks for implementation, and the responding radio silence filled me with a growing dread. My galleys came late. I worried I was just being too eager. Luckily, my agent was a second voice in the argument and kept us moving, and I believed that, as long as everything came together in the end, I’d be happy with the result.
Flash Forward 10 Years…
How It’s Going
circa 2023 Fitz, YEETING “LOOK WHAT I LEARNED” while nut-punching gravity
I’ve finished a couple books. Pitched one that didn’t go anywhere. Had a wonderful queer awakening and unpacked a ton of baggage through therapy. Became an acrobat. Grew a successful marketing agency, which basically ate up any free time I had.
^^ Life got busy.
So for 10 years I didn’t think about the quiet part of my life that was publishing books. The royalty checks stopped coming, so I just assumed sales stopped. My publisher’s newsletters slowed down, which I barely noticed. I reached out to my agent every couple of years about life updates, changes of address, or new projects I was working on, knowing that someday I’d have the time and drive to dive back into publishing.
With this new project (lovingly given a working title of Space Crypt) I want to do better. I want to be more present with my process, market myself better, and shy away from the anxiety, imposter syndrome, and general panic that arose every time someone tried to talk to me about my debut novel. I’ve stepped back from my agency so I can step into writing full-time. I’m ready to do it right.
A few months ago, ~30k words from finishing something swell, I emailed my agent.
I let her know about what’s been going on and how close I am to finishing Space Crypt. Being sentimental, I decided I wanted to see how long it had been since Zhukov’s Dogs came out.
That’s when I found trouble.
My publisher’s website no longer exists. A small amount of internet sleuthing painted a terrible picture. Per Writer Beware:
In general, though, complaints about CQ were few through most of 2016, and many authors reported being happy with the publisher.
In late 2016, however, things started to change. A trickle of reports of additional problems began to appear online: errors introduced into proofs, missed deadlines (CQ’s contract includes an elaborate set of deadlines for editing, proofing, cover art, etc.), poor communications, and a lack of marketing support (reportedly a change from CQ’s early days when it had an active marketing department).
By 2018, the trickle had become a flood. Authors began reporting not just the troubling issues mentioned above, but a host of others: revisions that never made it into published books, books published with uncorrected errors, typos on the covers of printed books, cover art received just days before the pub date, unanswered emails, book shipping problems, and late royalty payments, with some authors reporting that they hadn’t been paid in months.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. How had this happened? Hadn’t I gone through the traditional publishing channels to avoid the horror stories I suddenly seemed to be living out? I sent off my email to my agent with a polite, not-at-all-freaking-out request for a call to discuss what happened.
Candidly, I didn’t need the royalties. I published my first book mostly out of pride. Sure, if someday I happened to make a bestseller or two that put me into a position where I could quit my job and write all day, I’d be over the dang moon. At the time, though, especially after months of rejection after rejection, all I wanted was to get my story out there at a time where the queer YA market was so thin and deserving.
I was so upset to think that my rights could be tied up with a publisher that cheated its authors. Kimberley and I evaluated what happened and reached out to one of the remaining points of contact we could find at the publisher. I don’t want to unpack the details further due to the circumstances this publisher went under, but I do want to share the outcome: I am in possession of my rights again and venturing into my next era of publishing wiser, unafraid, and hellbent on doing better.
To close, since this is the first blog entry on my brand-new site, I promise future rants will be less soap box and more “hey, check out this cool thing THAT DIDN’T TOTALLY HECK ME UP”