…yeah, so, if a publisher is publicly saying, “We’ve spent out authors’ royalty money and can’t pay them without a loan or GFM”, that is HIGHLY concerning and I would take it as a sign NOT to do business with that publisher.
I would also, if I had already signed a contract with that publisher, seek professional advice about rights reversion, and a full independent audit of all sales.
It’s difficult to convey the breathtaking speed with which we decided, en masse, to punish the director who had attempted to force the script on us. We considered it a killing insult to be *scripted* after he’d made such a point of discouraging our active, authentic enjoyment.
Anyway, we ruined the next competitions by being as soulless as possible. The following semester we all chose not to join the advanced choir again. We told other girls not to bother.
For the rest of our school careers, that director couldn’t get another advanced group together.
Decades ago I was in a small “advanced” choir. It was a point of fierce pride that we had to be selected and show proficiency to get in. We considered ourselves hardworking, relatively skilled.
One day, during practice, we started messing around.
We enjoyed a couple of songs we were practicing, and began spontaneously moving to the music. This was frowned upon in specific competitions, so our director tried to discourage it.
Unfortunately for the director, these weren’t competition pieces but regular parent-concert stuff. We understood the difference, and were unmanageable in the way only teen girls can manage.
Well, those concerts were a hit. The director was praised not only by parents but by other district choir directors, whereupon he made a second critical error.
Now, I was defiant by dint of attempting to survive a brutal home life. The interesting thing here is that *every girl in the choir, no matter her background*, made the same decision near-instantaneously.