Unfortunately, I have been an author of CHBB and Hot Ink Press. That is a year of my life I will never get back. They were nice at first, SJ Davis (publisher) especially. You hand in your book and she tells you how amazing it is and everything.
I had her do it with me. And like every author with a book they want published, I fell for it.
Then came signing the contract. And what a contract it is. In a Word document and the publisher didn't even sign it, just typed in her name. So I did the same. Now I think back, I do wonder why I even continued from that point on.
She invited me to various private groups for just CHBB/ HIP/ Vamptasy authors and introduced me to the group. They were welcoming and everything and I felt like I was home. In the groups, you're given access to all their files, including pages to promote and stuff. And you think, wow! it's great how everyone works together to make each other successful! And my doubts over the contract disappeared.
But months later, I hadn't heard anything to do with my book. I contacted SJ various times and she ignored all my messages. Until I wrote on her Facebook wall. She didn't like that at all. So she set a release for my book at CHBB. I asked about the cover and she told me to contact one of the cover artists and ask what I should do.
Isn't it the publishers job to do all this?
But I stupidly didn't question any of it. Still on a high that something might actually go right for once, and I contacted the cover artist. She explained that I needed to go onto shutterstock, choose an image I liked and she will do the rest.
Let me tell you, I hate choosing an image for my covers. I'm with two other publishers and I just fill out a Cover Information Form and they do all the work. I love being surprised. But again, I didn't question it, even when I had to ask multiple people to help me find an image because I didn't even know how to use the damn image website. I found one in the end, a nice zombie one for my zombie book. I asked the cover artist if I could have the Lady holding a certain weapon and a shadow of a man with large wings on the wall behind her, to show someone out of the view of the camera stood in front of her. A simple thing to ask, but one that took a month to sort out. I was asked to go back to shutterstock and pick the images I wanted...again...I hate searching for my own cover. The image I have in my head is completely different to what someone else makes. And I couldn't find the images, so again, I asked for help.
And so the process of the cover began. She did it in about five minutes and what I got back just made me wish I never went with them. It was horrible! As though a five year old had created it. But I'm a nice person and I couldn't tell her that, so I stuck with it. Posted it for all my fans to see and tried to imagine my release day instead of the horrible cover my beautiful story had.
It wasn't that simple when a cover artist came along to my page and slammed me for the awful cover design. She told me no one would buy the book because the cover will repel them. I ignored her, and her doting fans when they wrote abuse on my page. It's what SJ told me to do. Told me to suck it up because that was what being an author was about.
So, unfortunately, I did. I continued on and wrote another book, this time for Hot Ink Press, which would be released the day after my first book. This time, I had a cover that was reasonably beautiful and completely forgot about my first book. Until the release day.
No, I didn't miss the all important thing that every author should go through at least three times before their book is published. Edits. I never got any. Didn't see one lick of anything to do with edits or anything. I hated that. My editor at my second publisher completely tore my book apart and I loved every single second of the gruelling three day editing I did for the first lot of edits. So I was definitely disappointed in that. But hey, I ignored it because it was release day and I had two events to run.
I did events for both books and put up the links too. No one brought my CHBB book, but a lot of people brought my HIP book. I know because they wrote the order number on the event page for a chance to win a HUGE SWAG bundle. I began to get super excited to receive my royalties and never once questioned anything that I'd begun to question when I first joined them. I was happy, ranking and had others promoting me happily.
Pay day came and I received a whopping amount of...nothing. Yep, you read right. I got nothing. Not a penny. But I put it off as people returning my work and felt disappointed that people would stoop that low to win a big bundle of goodies. The book had released at just 99 cents.
So I carried on. Promoted the hell out of both books, but my CHBB one still made no sales. My second one continued to rank and all was good with that one. I waited patiently again for my royalties...and they never came. Once more, I got nothing.
I gave up after that. Six months of being in the top hundred in erotic and I had nothing to show for it. I stopped promoting, and my rank went down. I found myself not caring in the slightest.
That's when I noticed posts from authors who had been with the publisher, going as far as to call SJ and some others a colt. Not only that, but since my rank fell, the authors of CHBB/ HIP and Vamptasy had stopped promoting me. Instead, they began to promote Rue Volley and her Hellhound series.
That's when I found out that SJ doesn't pay for short stories. It hit me then. I had a lot of readers assuring me they never returned my book, and I still didn't receive a payment. I asked the authors who had left what happened, and they replied honestly. SJ had been abusive to them, and they were never paid for their stories. She even told them that she didn't want their work because it wasn't selling. She told them that unless they rank, they wouldn't get any help and if they didn't sell, she would make it hard for them. She drove them away and then had her merry band of loyal, ass kissing authors give them hell.
I decided to listen to my head then and messaged her asking if she could pull both of my books. I had a complete valid reason. I was, after all, with four publishers at the time. I wanted to leave without trouble. She pulled my books within a second of me asking. She didn't even fight to keep me there, where as my editor at another publishing company fought to stop me from pulling one of my books because I had blanked with the second one. I didn't get that same treatment from SJ. I decided I'd made the right choice. I was glad I did it without causing trouble.
Yeah...I wish. She wouldn't give me my rights back, told me I had to wait three years before the contract was up. And then she began to make my life hell. She continued to sell my work, keep my money and all the while, I had no idea what to do. I contacted my editor at my first publisher out of sheer desperation, and she, alongside my publisher, talked me through what to do. But that only poked the dragon in the side and made her angry. SJ ignored all my emails, my messages and blocked every post I made. But little did she know, I could be a bitch when the time called for it too. I found a loophole in the contract. She didn't sign it! Therefore, the contract was null and void.
Happy days! I gave my books to my first publisher. She had helped me through it after all. And received a contract within minutes. A proper one! I happily posted on Facebook that I was republishing my work.
And so I'd stabbed the dragon in the eye. She contacted me and told me I was lucky she wasn't taking me to court and I'd made a big mistake. Soon, I found book pages that happily promoted for me, blocked me from their page. Groups had banned me, and the ones that hadn't, deleted my posts whenever I posted.
Also, a lot of people went onto my author page and wrote some horrible stuff. And I mean horrible. No matter how many times I deleted them, more popped up. And what hurt most was that most of it was from my readers who I thought supported me. I contacted them and they all said the same thing. SJ told us...
So then I knew. I unfortunately deleted my page, lost all my readers and most of the places I promoted. All because of SJ.
I'm slowly bouncing back but it's like starting all over again, only this time, everyone knows who you are, and they want nothing to do with you. It's such a low blow but I'm stronger than that and I'm not letting that woman pull me under the water.
I just hope my horrible experience can come to some use at least, by me getting it out there and warning others.