RWA offered to serve as a Trustee and bid on the Triskelion Assets on behalf of the authors. The authors were requested to send $100 per contract to RWA and RWA would bid in the bankruptcy proceedings on their behalf, returning all of the unspent money to the authors. There appear to be over 200 contracts in question and which amounts to a bid of a little under $8 per contract to beat out the Loose Id bid of $1500.00
The Triskelion authors rejected this, apparently believing that the Loose Id bid is in their best interests.
I did see that there are some authors making the argument that the contracts are not the property of the estate and so it will be very interesting to see what the ruling will be on that issue.
The auction is currently slated for November 15, 2007, but I am not sure how the auction can take place when there is a challenge as to exactly what the Trustee is entitled to auction off.
I think it was a nice thing on part of RWA. Loose ID is offering something pretty nice, but what if they don’t win? That would be my concern.
If RWA bought the assets, I’m assuming they would have returned them to the authors? I would have jumped on that. Loose Id is obviously a place for the stories to land, but the RWA deal would have left the authors with their options open, and, personally I’m always drawn to scenarios with the most options.
It is very nice, however, to see these authors caught in this situation being offered a way out.
Didn’t Loose-Id already say that if they buy the contracts they’ll revert any and all rights to the authors if that’s the author’s prefrence? If this is the case, I don’t see why the authors would dispute the sale.
Going along with a publisher buying the rights, hoping they’ll follow through on what they’ve said, when they were offered the opportunity to secure the contracts themselves through a non-publishing third party doesn’t make any sense to me.
The only thing I can think of is that the majority of the authors didn’t think the rights to their books were worth $100.
But then again—just because I like arguing with myself, though I don’t usually do it in public—in the same situation I don’t know what I’d do. I have seven contracts with Samhain, so I’d have to 1) send RWA $700, which is a pretty good chunk of change, or 2) hope the other publisher won the contracts and either a) rereleased the books, therefore saving me the time of searching for another publisher or b) returned the rights to me at no cost to myself.
It’s a tough choice, I guess. I wish the authors the best, whichever way they go.
RWA takes longer to get going and comes up with something confusing, expensive and complex? Am I surprised?
The Loose Id deal was first and is free. It should be more than sufficient given the negligible monetary value of the contracts.
p.s. Personally I’d trust Loose Id a heck of a lot more than RWA, but maybe that’s just me.
Since I know several of the Loose-Id owners, I’m with veinglory.
It’s certainly not my intent to insult anybody. I know none of the people involved on that level so—as an impartial observer—I see it as a choice between controlling their own rights and having another publisher controlling their rights. Personal relationships aside, the former Triskelion authors and Loose Id are each separate business entities who should be acting for their own benefit.
While I don’t personally know the owners of Loose Id, I’m sure they wouldn’t have made such an announcement publicly if they didn’t intend to honor it, so hopefully it will work out for all in the end. I was merely pondering the difficult choice the authors had to make.
I guess I viewed it in the same way. I would rather own my own rights than be subject to the whims of another, no matter how generous and gracious the other is going to be.
Shannon, many former Triskelion authors do not want a dime of their own money going towards Triskelion’s debt. It is insulting to ask authors to pony up $100 for a book that may have made nothing or very little money. If Loose ID wants to spend their money on buying the contacts, go for it. Either Loose ID will publish the book or revert the rights back to the author.
If someone else decides to bid more than the $1500 on the contracts, at least they are free of the court. The new owner will either have to live up to the contract as is, or renegotiate the contract with the author.
And then, finally, the author has a say in what happens to the contract. Right now the contracts are nothing more than bankruptcy footballs.
Here’s the problem, though, whether Triskelion is going to get its discharge does not depend on how much the authors’ contracts are going to bring in. Any $$ that the TRUSTEE re-acquires for the debts is a benefit to the creditors, not Triskelion.
I.e., Triskelion may be entitled to a complete discharge whether the TRUSTEE is paid $1500 or $500 or $2000 for the authors’ contracts. But the creditors could be affected differently.
And it is not $100 per contract. At this point, with only the $1500 bid by Loose ID, the amount would be about a sandwich worth – $7.55 to beat the Loose ID bid.
And what if someone else comes in and outbids Loose ID, someone who isn’t going to be as gracious. Then what will the authors do?
How could they “not be as gracious”? They would have to live up to the contract they buy or renegotiate. That’s about the only 2 choices they have. And if the books aren’t available for purchase within a certain amount of time, the new owners of the contract would be in breach, and the author would have the right to ask for the rights back.
To the authors, any money that would go towards debt that Kristi Studts incurred by her mistakes is not acceptable. Especially considering the authors themselves are owed money…but since they are not at the top of the list, they will never see a dime. I would hope you could see how distasteful even paying $7.55 for a contract would be.
RWA was the one throwing around numbers…plus, the contracts are being sold as a whole, not in bits and pieces. So if not every author was willing to put up money for their contract, where does that leave the rest of the authors who do?
Just get the dang auction over with already. Trying to argue ‘the best solution’ when none of them are any good is just pointless. The only ‘good’ solution, to me, is one that gets the contracts free of limbo in bankruptcy court.
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