Shouty person
Over on BlueSky, authors are sharing their #unbound horror stories. It’s awful. So much worse than I imagined. It’s Alan Dean Foster vs Disney all over again.
Unbound went into liquidation and immediately a new company, Boundless, popped up. They now own all of Unbound’s assets … and none of its debts.
There are so many authors owed tens of thousands of pounds each. Many of them have no other source of income and this represents a year’s worth of royalties.
Aral Balkan
@clacksee Sounds like capitalism, working as designed.
Shouty person
Aaron Reynolds of Effin’ Birds is owed £75k, including royalties paid by a US publisher to Unbound.
Shouty person
I supported several books through Unbound, bought others, and borrowed some from my library. Seeing how they’ve shafted so many people out of so much money, I’m really feeling like I participated in this scam. It’s awful. I’ve lined the coffers of management at the expense of the authors.
Shouty person
That leaves authors having to choose between:
A. Playing nice and letting #Boundless keep selling their books, hoping they’ll someday get some of the money they’re owed (while allowing that figure to increase daily); or
B. Claiming rights reversion on the basis of nonpayment, thereby cutting their losses to an entire year’s worth of income and having to start fresh on their own.
Shouty person
And #Boundless are stringing these authors along. Saying things like: We feel terrible so we’ll make goodwill payments of as much of your outstanding royalties as we possibly can.
Shouty person
Chuck, author of Bird Brain, didn’t even get the email telling them they weren’t getting paid.
Shouty person
Brian Boston, poet, is owed an unspecified amount.
Shouty person
Daniel Hardcastle, author of The Paradox Paradox, is owed £40k.
Shouty person
Tom Cox, author of many books, published seven through Unbound. He’s owed more than £20k.
Shouty person
Small Robots, who I think published a picture book of their art work, is owed an unspecified amount.
Shouty person
Russell Jones, who wrote The Decade in Tory: An Inventory of Idiocy from the Coalition to COVID, is owed 7k.
Shouty person
Alex de Campi, who wrote The Scottish Boy, is owed $8k.
Shouty person
Laura Kate Dale, who wrote Gender Euphoria, is owed £8k.
Shouty person
Laura Kate Dale says there are rumours that Unbound was expecting a big investment and decided to pre-spend it by dipping into author royalties.
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