Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

We blogged a couple of weeks ago about Iris Print and the speculations that it was closing its doors. One of the more prominent authors, Rebecca Day, had encouraged people to still buy her book Thaw that was published by Iris.

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.

Ms. Day has made a new announcement on the status of Iris Print.

The royalty check I received last week was returned by my bank for insufficient funds. I wrote Kellie yesterday, asking her to make good via Paypal, and have heard nothing.

It appears that Ms. Day will be able to get her rights back as soon as Kellie officially announces the closing of Iris Print but at this time asks people to not buy new copies of Thaw as there is no guarantee that Day will see any royalties from those sales.

Update: The website has been updated and the publishing house is closing its doors after a little over 1 year in operation.

I’m not quite clear on all the details so I’ll just report what I’ve been emailedand what I can glean from message boards. Tiger Publications is a small print press. According to my sources, Tiger Publications is closing its doors despite the lack of any announcement on its websites and seemingly conflicting messages online:

“As of today, one of my clients, Tiger Publications, has ceased operation and closed shop permanently.” Link (music)
“I am guest blogging as part of the Tiger Author spotlight at Bragging Rites Unleashed! ” (June 2 post)

The google pages show that there once was an announcement but the cache pages have been scrubbed of any signs of it except in the search engine summary.

One poster at Absolute Write forum stated that there are two divisions within Tiger Publications–Tiger and Tiger Kids–and it is Tiger that is shutting down. There is no differentiation that I can see between the two divisions on the website although …

Publisher’s Weekly has a small article about the state of GLBT Publishing. The while the writers of GLBT fiction are strong, the sub genre seems to be marginalized. In my view, it is clear that today there is less and less visible publishing of gay and lesbian books. Carroll & Graf, Alyson and Harrington Park Press—in recent years the most energetic publishers of gay/lesbian fiction and nonfiction—have all either failed, drastically reduced their list of GLBT titles, or have been undergoing serial management/ownership changes. As for what most folks would consider the mainstream publishing houses, they are publishing far less of what could credibly be labeled ‘gay or lesbian books’ than they were 10 years ago. I don’t know if e publishing is picking up the slack here or not. Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander by Ann Herendeen is a great GLBT book that was originally self published and then bought by Harper and repackaged beautifully.

I received a warning regarding Ocean’s Mist Press and a question as to its current status. Apparently sometime in 2006, Ocean Mist announced that it would be closing its doors. Then in early 2007, it was announced that there would be new management. No books were released, although the submissions page gives instructions on submissions for 2007 and 2008 releases. There were no releases in 2007. A new book by Essence is up as a May 2008 release. (No links or names here as these posts are not intended to be publicity vehicles).

The complaints against Ocean’s Mist Press are as follows:

They stopped communicating with their authors.
They will not remove authors books as asked.
They are selling books without paying author royalties.
They have a laundry list of customer complaints.

Stardust Press is an epublisher who started last fall (2006). It doesn’t appear to be a fly-by-night operation as it was reported that it gave $50 advances per the contract. For whatever reasons, Stardust Press will soon no longer be a going concern according to a source.