Because it is so small, authors think publishers are their friends and feel the need to step in and stand up for them. They aren't your friend and they have a team of lawyers to do the job. Publishers can be friendly with you and vice versa, nothing wrong with that. But this is business not a fricking sorority. I am a contract writer, and my allegiance is to myself. I know, bitchy, but that is my personality and it is the truth. I am not part of the company, but an independent contractor.

In this instance, I think the compulsion to take sides has a lot to do with blatant self-interest on the part of authors. It isn’t that someone is dissing my girlfriend (be she Tina Engler or Crissy Brashear), it’s the fact that if my publisher is negatively affected, I could be negatively affected.

I generally think it's a bad idea for an author to gossip about any publisher period. Offering opinions? That's different and my opinion is that this is between EC's owners and Samhain's owners

Actually it’s not an unnecessary party~Crissy OWNS Samhain. She doesn’t work for them. She owns it. So in effect, it is between the two owners, although you’re right in the sense that Samhain, the business, isn’t involved. That was poor wording on my part and I apologize, but it doesn’t change the truth of the statement either.

I generally think it's a bad idea for an author to gossip about any publisher period. Offering opinions? That's different and my opinion is that this is between EC's owners and Samhain's owners

Why the heck does that matter? The suit is between Brashears and EC. I don’t see why Samhain’s name is being dragged into it because it has no relevance whatsoever. So the woman works for Samhain now. The whole issue is between Brashears and EC.

The Smart Bitches website made a passing mention of Brashears now working with Samhain, but this isn’t even mentioned at all in Jane’s post because it’s irrelevant. Why bring up unnecessary parties? It over complicates things.

The problem with being an e-publishing business, is that people who read e-books hang out on the Internet and gossip about their favorite things: in this case e-publishers. Gossip on the Internet never goes away. Ten years from now people can search this blog out.

And the biggest problem with being a publisher is that if you tick off your authors . . . you are ticking off WRITERS. Writers (or so I’ve heard on one of my favorite movies — Throw Mama From the Train) write. And writers who are e-published, write on the Internet.

I don’t think bringing all this out into the open is necessarily an unhealthy thing. In the old days, the big NY houses tried all sorts of stuff they never would today. My own publisher, Ace (who has, for the last fifteen years been terrific to me — and I’ve not heard anything bad about them in that time) was responsible for publishing Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings without giving him any $ when TLOTR first was published in the US. Since they weren’t paying the author (due to some strange laws or lack thereof that have since changed) the Ace books were cheaper than the books brought out by the publisher who had contracts with Tolkien (DelRey, I think).

Tolkien was blessed with rabid fans who forced their bookstores to send the Ace editions back to the publisher. Ace eventually contacted Tolkien, sent him royalties and begged him to talk to his fans so that they would quit boycotting Ace. Without the spread of information, Tolkien would have been without recourse.

Certainly a lawsuit is news, especially one that might have an impact on EC or Samhain authors. It is probably not an excuse for jumping automatically on anyone’s side. There is not necessarily a “bad” guy involved in a lawsuit, just two parties who are unhappy with each other and need an outsider to arbitrate. This is to stop matters before people start a Hatfield/McCoy incident.

Anybody care to start tallying the “good guys” -’ meaning stable, approachable, trustworthy, and generally author-fair and -friendly -’ in epublishing? Loose Id, Changeling, Liquid Silver?

Automatically in some people’s minds, because of a lawsuit between EC and a former employee, both EC and Samhain are being labeled the “bad guys.” This lawsuit isn’t about unhappy authors who are not getting paid on time or at all or about working with a controlling narcissist (yes, I just finished reading Lisa Kleypas’s Blue-Eyed Devil) who makes threats of a personal nature, yet some people are interpreting the lawsuit to mean EC and Samhain are no longer reputable.

Two things here being said in this filing by Christina Brashears that I think are of interest…

*Request Inspection of the books.

Here’s the Ohio statute on the rights of a shareholder to inspect corporate books and records.

so the paraonoia is a tad premature methinks

*G* Karen, I think paranoia goes with the business. I’m certainly paranoid.

So it's ok to comment on any other publisher except EC because you guys happen to write for them?

I generally think it’s a bad idea for an author to gossip about any publisher period. Offering opinions? That’s different and my opinion is that this is between EC’s owners and Samhain’s owners and until I know if it affects me, I’m better to just wait and see.

I really don’t have anything to add to this since I don’t know all the issues at hand and I don’t want to waste my time speculating. If I had relevant info that I was free to discuss, it might be different. But I don’t.

The best approach I can take as an author is just to sit back and wait, see what happens.

Authors getting up in arms over this is the absolute WORST thing they could do, IMO. It won’t affect the situation any and it won’t help a career, either.

Jane, yes, it’s newsworthy but just because something is newsworthy doesn’t mean that everybody who might have a distant connection is going to want to discuss or debate. Chances are this has a lot authors rather tense and until we know more, until we know if it’s going to affect us, what really can we do but wait?

*Request Inspection of the books.

*She has been defamed both in writing and verbally.

Nobody compared EC to the other e-book car crashes, so the paraonoia is a tad premature methinks, and only serves to bring out the people who aren’t so happy there.