Shenanigans...

[Marc Joan]

Found this on FB. Depressing.
The Curious Incident of the Dog & the Missing Royalties

 

[Quillwitch]

from what ive seen some agents posting recentenly, it is not just amazon. Seemes the big houses have been guilty of this too. disgusting indeed.

 

[E G Logan]

Found this on FB. Depressing.
The Curious Incident of the Dog & the Missing Royalties

That's horrific. And it's a well-regarded publisher.

For anyone in the same situation, I have in the distant past found the Citizens' Advice office lawyer very helpful, and free. (Not in my case about publishing.) They may also have a volunteer accountant.

 

[Quillwitch]

Why does my vision of the future involve authors caravaning from university to university and festival to festival to sell their books directly? This is making me want to set up a direct sales website for small, trusted groups of authors who all have access to the ins and outs of the accounting. For certain niches, it might work.

That is something JK Rowling is doing now, with setting up her own web page to sell her ebooks online. What really scares/irks me is how easy it is for publishing houses/companies to just lie about the money and blatantly steal from authors and the law does nothing about it. Laws need to change.

 

[Marc Joan]

Why does my vision of the future involve authors caravaning from university to university and festival to festival to sell their books directly? This is making me want to set up a direct sales website for small, trusted groups of authors who all have access to the ins and outs of the accounting. For certain niches, it might work.

I do get the feeling of an industry with opportunities for those who can move and shake. But I don't know enough about how it actually works in practice. I suspect there are non-obvious barriers to entry / barriers to market access.