One of the things Futterbly should have pointed out is that she is in another country other than the US (I know her personally), so some of the laws in her country may vary vastly from those in the US, so beyond everything else, we are dealing with international law as well. The artwork she is referring to is artwork that was done by hand, for her own book, and is artwork that she was using previous to her coming to MH. She had previously published some of her books in a self-publishing situation. She brought those to MH. Others were new works that were published but the artwork was original and things that she physically created by hand. The public domain things she refers to were things that were free use under creative commons without restriction. This was checked thoroughly at the time. I have personal knowledge that they were free use without restriction under creative commons.
For the sake of clarity, I will fully and completely out myself at this point. I was the former and original vice president of the company. I do have personal, firsthand knowledge of the conversations and exchanges that she is referring to, and precisely what was in said contracts. While fully outing myself at this point may open me up to some backlash, I feel it is what I need to do at this point in time. This company has taken away too much from me already, and I will not allow them to take away my dignity at this stage.
Everything done by this company is in an effort to cover their own behind with no regard for anyone else. Every piece of paper they send out has so many holes in it that it may as well be a piece of Swiss cheese that would never hold up in court. I have had these reviewed by a legal professional in the US, and was told that they belong in the restroom, as they were useless as a legal document and no judge would abide by what was stated in said documents, including the document that supposedly legally prevents me from writing this post. They require notarization, and yet they made exceptions for several people and allowed their contracts to go into effect without the notarization. Several authors had books published and had still not even received contracts for those works. They claim to have any open door policy, but anyone who disagrees openly with the owner is discarded. Then she turns around and blames the disparity on a member of the staff if the problem is an author and she needs to save face. I have seen this happen twice, and I was the member of staff blamed. She vehemently denied saying anything negative about me, but as vice president, I had access to all email accounts, and the company Facebook, and I saw the messages and emails for myself.
Almost no one except those that were practically in the owner's pocket received payment, and you practically had to badger the woman to get any sort of money at all. It is a disgrace. And yet, constantly, money would go out of the business PayPal account for personal purchases, which is beyond unprofessional. So, there was no money coming in to pay authors and staff, but she had money to buy things she wanted to buy? I never could reconcile that.
Like I said previously, technically there was a document all staff and authors signed that would prevent any of us from actually commenting here, and it is why so many of us that have commented, myself included, up to this point have stayed behind our veiled anonymity. I have it on fairly good authority that that document is garbage, but whether it is or not, I don't really care. My moral and ethical principles tell me that speaking out and telling you all who I am so that you can know that I have a basis for what I say is the right thing to do. They've already taken too much away from me and I have lost too much thanks to this company. I will not lose anything else.
