EC legal troubles: Time will tell all

I thought I’d post an EC author reaction to this latest report of the ongoing legal drama involving Ellora’s Cave and Samhain’s owner and former EC Publisher, Christina Brashears. To read more click here.

First I wanted to say that when I went to Dear Author to check out the article and the comments, there was a Samhain Publishing ad on there. Right off I’m thinking there may be some favoritism ahead when I read this.

But then again….read on…

Looks as though the legal battle is dragging since April 2008. There’s been a counter suit and failure to show in court leading to contempt charges. Why didn’t EC’s lawyer show up? This is the third lawyer they had on the case, the first two withdrawing. What is going on?

I can say that my books there haven’t been making like they used to, but then I haven’t had a release there in a while.

I don’t get the reason sales are down for OTHERS as there is such a surge in ereaders like the Kindle, the Sony reader, and the as for the iPhone and the upcoming iPad. Ebook sales have jumped across the board, so why not at EC too?

Here are a few possibilities: Readers are not visiting individual publisher websites to buy ebooks like they used to. It is too convenient to buy books from a one stop shop like the Amazon Kindle store, the Sony store or Fictionwise (owned by B&N). I know from my own experience, I buy ebooks from Fictionwise’s Ebookwise site. (I have an eBookwise reader which delivers my purchases right to my reader via a USB cable.) Ellora’s Cave and Cerridwen aren’t even listed on Fictionwise or eBookwise. EC is on Amazon, but the books are marked up. On the EC site a Quickie is 2.49, but in the Amazon Kindle store it’s listed as 3.98. IMHO that is a lot for a 12K story. Add in that there are 2 release days a week at EC with like 6-8 books each time, no one is really getting a chance to emerge as a star like they used to.

Anyway, I’m interested to see how this all pans out. If it was me, I would have wanted to settle out of court. Or at least show up to court. Avoidance is not going to gain time.

Patty Marks, the CEO of Jasmine Jade/Ellora’s Cave, wrote to the authors to reassure that the legal battle will have no affect on the business of publishing.

Time will tell, right?

As for me, I have an idea I’m about to work on after I’m through with edits on my current project. I plan on subbing it to EC. Why? Because I’m there already and they DO pay. Basically, I don’t care about the legal problems these folks are going through. As long as I get paid, I’m okay. I have titles at EC that continue to sell well month after month and they’ve been out for years. Have I thought about subbing to Samhain? Of course. And I haven’t reconsidered that possibility, I just don’t have anything to offer them at this point. I am more focused on getting in a NY pub right now, and I think my ghost hunters will be the ticket I need to do it. This is going to be the year.

[Pictured is one of my EC releases, Sea Hawk's Mistress {buy link}. The other, Friends with Benefits by Kelly Jamieson {buy link}, is published by Samhain Publishing.]