Damnation Books unlawfully withholding my royalties, in breach of contract
This is going to be a long story. I have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of points I need to make. It starts in 2012, when I signed with Damnation Books, and runs all the way until this week, when Kim Richards continued to refuse to pay me royalties she owes me. Those are the basics. I want to break this down for you though, so that you can see how an author can do all the right things and still make bad decisions that end up hurting her in the long run.
The bottom line is that Kim Richards and Damnation Books are in breach of contract and she doesn’t give a damn. The author-publisher contract should be sacred. It is the only thing governing your relationship, and to flaunt it like Kim Richards has is the most despicable thing a small press like Damnation Books can do.
If you are a reader, I hope that you will learn just how badly some authors are treated. If you are an author, I hope you will learn from my mistakes.
Here goes.
The Beginning
It was late at night in August 2012. I was feeding my son and drifting off in the dark when my phone buzzed with an email. It was an acceptance from the submissions editor at Damnation Books. I was over the moon, not only was this my first acceptance for anything longer than a short story, but it had taken less than 24 hours from submission to acceptance.
I’d submitted on a whim, so I spent a lot of time the next day researching Damnation Books. They had a bit of a spotty reputation, but it seemed to me at the time that they had sorted all their problems out. When the contract arrived, it seemed solid and didn’t include any of the issues they’d been called out on in forums like AbsoluteWrite.
I decided to go with it. I had written A Taste of You for NaNoWriMo and this seemed like the best possible use I could make of the book. I was going to be published!
Everything up until publication went smoothly. I got a gorgeous cover. The editing was perfunctory but I worked well with the editor and I was pleased with the way things were going.
I tried to find out what kind of marketing would be available and the answers I got from Damnation Books were vague, with promises that Kim Richards would follow up – she never did. I did know that I would have a marketing budget of $100 for my book, and they would do really hard things like list it on Goodreads and Shelfari (things I could *never* do on my own… /sarcasm).
Publication
The book dropped in December 2012. There was very little marketing from Damnation Books, but I didn’t really know what to expect. I lined up a bunch of interviews and did as much as I could to get the word out there to my network.
I even made a book trailer for it (professional book trailers cost more than my $100 marketing budget).
Pretty much nothing happened. It was really disappointing, but I think the truth is that by December 2012 the zombie thing was already wearing out.
I had slow but steady sales, a few kind reviews, and I was still really excited about having my name on the cover of a book.
Royalties
Royalties started to trickle in. A few dollars every quarter. It was kinda lame but whatever. I was published! If I just kept working at it I could keep things growing, right? Slowly but surely?
My royalties were being paid into my PayPal account, as per our contract, until mid-2013 (I don’t remember the exact date, it could have been late 2013). That’s when everything started to go wrong. I received a cheque in the post. I thought it was cute, it was for $13.08. I planned to frame it with a copy of the book. Then I didn’t receive any royalties for a long time.
Admittedly, I was pregnant with my third child, working hard at a new job, and writing stories. I didn’t really think about it. The royalty reports weren’t arriving. The book wasn’t selling. I was busy and disheartened.
And then I got three more cheques in the post all in one go.
The Shit Hits The Fan
The only way I can show you what happened next is to show you the email conversation between myself and Kim Richards. This is the entire conversation to date, I haven’t left anything out or made any changes whatsoever. I have the full email thread, in tact, as you see it here.
Please Note, at NO POINT did we make any arrangement to pay my royalties by cheque instead of via PayPal. The fact that Damnation Books, and Kim Richards as the owner (or whatever she is), changed to paying my by cheque is absolutely in breach of contract. She should never have done this.
At this point I’m thinking: “fair enough, they made a mistake but she’ll rectify it.” Hahaha, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
At this point I’m starting to suspect that if I do mail those cheques back to Kim, I’ll lose what little leverage I may have in this situation. That was stupid of me. Those cheques didn’t give me any power. They were worthless scraps of paper I couldn’t cash. Kim Richards, on the other hand, could have cancelled them in a heartbeat. She could have done that on the 18th of June, but she didn’t. Why? What is she hiding?
OK, now I’m getting pissed off.
I tried to calm myself down and reel myself in at this point. I still thought, mistakenly, that Kim Richards might do the right thing and pay the money Damnation Books owes me. Then our local post office embarked on a strike that lasted six months. That’s the price you pay for living in South Africa.
I’m still trying to keep cool at this point. And I’m dealing with a heavy bout of post-natal depression.
The post office starts working again, and I post the cheques.
Nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. What was I expecting? Did I really think that Kim Richards would pay me? Damn stupid of me.
SECONDARY PAYMENT? SECONDARY PAYMENT? Am I hallucinating? Why doesn’t Kim Richards cancel the cheques and pay the royalties via PayPal as she should? What is she trying to do here?
That’s right! Kim Richards has just accused ME of cyber bullying because I’ve threatened to tell other people about her behaviour. That’s not how cyber bullying works. If I’m assaulted and I sue the person who assaulted me, does that make me a bully? NO!
Conclusion
As the existence of this post suggests, Kim Richards has not yet paid me the royalties she owes me. The really stupid thing it that it’s only $49.58 that she owes me. All of this for fifty dollars. She’s prepared to destroy contracts and relationships for fifty dollars.
I hate having to make this public, but I really feel as though I am out of options. There’s simply nothing else I can do for $50.
It sickens me that Kim Richards thinks that she can treat me like this. And I’m really not the only one. There are a LOT of other authors out there who have been treated like shit by Damnation Books in one way or another. You don’t have to look very far to see that this is a trend, not an anomaly.
If you are considering submitting to Damnation Books, please read all the way through this post, and the many others out there. A simple Google search will return bucket-loads of similar stories. Contracts are of no import to Kim Richards and Damnation Books.
I will post any response or updates on my blog:
Go To Hell