Janine, I understand completely – my own ‘to be read’ pile is massive. If I had to write reviews in addition to just reading, it would take years.

Tina, I wouldn’t say things are resolved – just that I’m reasonably confident that I’m eventually going to get some royalties from copies of Thaw that might sell as a consequence of any reviews. ‘Resolved’ implies that I know what’s happening with the unsold copies and most importantly, with my rights, and I don’t at this time. There’s no excuse for the way Kellie has treated you. It’s unprofessional and counterproductive in the sense that a poor author/publisher relationship does nothing to sell books. Her personal feelings towards you don’t excuse her from good business practices (and simple politeness).

I don’t think Iris was doomed because of poor publication choices, but I suspect they weren’t adequately capitalized. Most new businesses aren’t, and I get the sense that when things started to go south, Kellie did that avoidance thing people do when the bill collectors start to call. That never works.

the comment about the ‘head in the sand’ came from someone who did take a prior slam at titles released by Iris Print

Well, Tina, that was because I was sent some of Iris Print’s manga items for review and they were just dreadful. I sent them to a reviewer who *adores* manga and she found them either boring, or in one case, stomach turning. Now that’s just one person, and tastes vary, but since this person spends a very large amount of money on manga and probably represents a typical consumer of this kind of thing, I think that’s worrying. Me, I don’t like manga because I can’t get into the story telling method but I don’t have a problem with its existence. But when someone summarises the story line of a Iris Print manga and says it literally made her retch, and I have a similar reaction to the summary, then you can’t blame me for not having a high opinion of the product.

We were sent several items by Iris Print to review, and to be absolutely frank, only ‘Thaw’ was superior. A small press needs more than one superior product to be successful.

Now, I’m sure you’ll snap back and tell me how popular etc those manga were, and I’m sure that’s the truth. But I can only speak from my own experience, and I was.

Consider me confused. Tina, I don’t see anyone saying or even implying that Iris was doomed because it’s a global BL venture. All of us here like global BL. One person said Iris was doomed because of Kellie’s “head in the sand” attitude, and that seems to have turned out to be the truth.

Sorry for that, the comment about the ‘head in the sand’ came from someone who did take a prior slam at titles released by Iris Print, but not in this thread; my apologies. Backing out gracefully at this point, I’ve a plane to catch. :)

Pushing that aside, I do have something to say on ‘the notion’ I see reflected in some comments here, that somehow Iris Print was doomed from the start. That’s a very invalid statement.

GloBL [Global BL] is profitable, just because you may not like ‘western yaoi art styles’ doesn’t mean there’s no money in it: Yaoi Press is doing fine and before Dramaqueen had investor issues with their Japanese releases, their GloBL RUSH anthology was a financial success. :)

Consider me confused. Tina, I don’t see anyone saying or even implying that Iris was doomed because it’s a global BL venture. All of us here like global BL. One person said Iris was doomed because of Kellie’s “head in the sand” attitude, and that seems to have turned out to be the truth.

I’m pretty sure that all the commenters on this thread like Western written BL. I like both Western and Japanese. They’re so very different they satisfy different sides of me. (Japanese BL light novels are like pieces of candy. Western BL novels are like a meal.)

But I don’t even see anyone even mentioning Western yaoi art styles or Iris’s manga (but hey to give it a mention, I bought RUSH and even subscribed, and hope to see more of it).

Emmy said:

…edited by an underage high school student.

As far as I know it’s still not illegal for any minor to read textual sexual material unless the material is deemed obscene by a court in the jurisdiction where that minor lives, so underaged doesn’t really come into the problem for me.

However, having a high school student edit a professionally published work is, well, completely unprofessional and I’m not sure I’d want to read the results.

I appreciate the impulse not to review – I was considering asking people not to buy Thaw until I’d heard from the publisher, but last week I did receive an email from Kellie, have now got a royalty statement with promise of a check to follow. I think I’m likely to get it, so those of you who are thinking about reviewing, please do!

Will do, though as I said, it may take a while.