A difficult post to make

Just did the totals for a friend who asked. Did you realize I have 14 titles with Ellora's Cave Publishing, 9 self-published titles and 4 more soon-to-be self published titles. As Mystic Shade I have 6 titles out and as CF Duprey, I have one Civil War historical. That makes 34 titles in twelve years as a published writer.

That was written one year ago today. Today’s stats are different. Today I have only five titles still with Ellora’s Cave, 13 self-published titles and 8 titles as Mystic shade. That makes 26 titles currently in publication.

You’ll notice the lower number of Ellora’s Cave titles. I’ve been struggling with going public about this for the past several months but have decided I need to let my readers know what’s happening.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing gave me my start as a published author. They took a chance on me, gave me an editor, and my career as a published author was born. In those early days, the first decade of a new century, optimism reigned. Erotic romance was hot and I sold well. Well enough that the sales encouraged me to keep writing. Hence the 34 titles mentioned above.

EC has had its share of public scandals and there have been a few missteps along the way, but it has always done me right. It’s a small press, so I got to know the women who ran the company and that was important to me. But more than once I heard the sage advice from several of those women, “Remember, EC is a company and, in the end, it will make decisions for the best of the company. You’re an author, make decisions best for you.”

Being an author means taking control of your writing, it means making the best decision for each manuscript regardless of sentimental attachment. And so, when Table for Four’s contract was up with EC, I chose to try this new venture at Amazon and Smashwords and self-publish it. That action was just the one needed to give an older title a good boost. It sold well in the first year and continues to sell a couple of copies every month.

This had been a successful experiment, so when Learning Curve also ran out of contract, based on my increase in sales for Table for Four, I chose to also take the rights back for that book and self-publish it. It also did well, although recent sales have tapered off.

Publishing is like any other business. You have to constantly stay abreast of trends and Ellora’s Cave tried to do so. They accepted other genre, tried an appeal to a different audience, held conventions for readers and authors to meet. Unfortunately, none of these things worked as well as hoped.

How do I know that? Because Ellora’s Cave stopped paying royalties.

Yes, you read that right. EC is still selling books, but not paying authors the royalties they are contracted for. The last month I received monies for was June 2015.

What does that mean? It means, for the past year Ellora’s Cave has sold my books and not paid me for them. Not one penny.

I’ve been patient. My optimism has buoyed me all this year. Every week I think, “This will be the week they pay me my back pay.” I check my sales on Novelrank (which tells me how many of my books have sold on Amazon) and I see that my books are still selling – but I’m not seeing any money from the sale of my books that Ellora’s Cave holds.

So I made the decision last week to take all my Ellora’s Cave books off my website. I cannot, in good conscience, continue to promote books that enrich others while my income has taken a huge hit. Ellora’s Cave is making decisions that are good for its business; I must make decisions that are good for mine.

This past week Ellora’s Cave sent me a reversion of rights notice for five of my titles. Three I’d asked for, the other two I did not. As of July 30th, those titles will revert to me. These, along with three others that reverted to me earlier in the spring (two of which I asked for, one of which I did not), are currently regarded as “out of print.”

That means, of those 34 titles I’ve written, only 26 of them are currently available for purchase. Ellora’s Cave still owns the rights to five of my titles, but I will no longer mention them by name. I expect I will not ever get a check from Ellora’s Cave again. My optimism has run out. I doubt I will ever get the back pay I am owed and I suspect the company I loved will soon be out of business.

It’s a Catch-22, really. To tell you to not buy my Ellora’s Cave books. If you don’t buy them, they’ll never have the money to pay me. But if you do buy them, well, the money is going to someone else. It’s the reason I have been silent for so long. I do not want to put them out of business, but, as that sage advice said, I have to make decisions based on what’s best for my business.

Over the next year, I will take time to reformat, re-edit, re-cover the eight titles that are currently out of print. My plan is to re-release one a month as self-published books. Promise for Now will release in September, Stitches in Time (featuring new content based on my recent trip to Ireland!) will release in October. A boxed set of books I’ve written with a winter theme will be released in November and will include one of the titles EC just gave me back as well as other previously published stories.

As for new work? Tied in Knots, the sequel to Tied to Home is nearly done. I’ve seen the cover and love it. My goal is to self-publish it before the end of August, so keep your eyes out!

I said in the beginning that this was a difficult post to write. Actually, it was the decision to go public about no longer promoting my Ellora’s Cave titles that was the hard part. EC took a chance on me, gave me a career, and I will not diss them because of it. Choosing to not promote the five books still with them is a decision based solely on my need to be paid for the work I have done.

This post is one of the few I will both write as a newsletter and then repost to my blog and to Facebook. I wish Ellora’s Cave well and truly hope they find their way out of the morass and back into the limelight. And not just so I get paid, but because these women have put their blood, sweat and tears into a business venture that requires constant change. They’ve launched the careers of dozens of authors and I thank them for it.

Thank you for listening and watch for the re-release of the following titles over the next year (all are currently out of print):

Secret Submission

Submission Revealed

Hooked

Cabin Fever

Writers Unblocked

Promise for Now (coming in September)

Stitches in Time (coming in October)

Devil in Winter (coming in November’s boxed set)

As always, play safe.

Diana