Cobblestone Press

[Ann_Mayburn]

Hey ladies and gents,

I posted this in the Beware section, but not everyone stops by there and I'd hate to see anyone here get burned. Cobblestone Press appears to be having some issues at the moment. You are, of course, free to do your own research and background checks, but if you were thinking of subbing to them, you might want to check out what their current authors are saying...that is, what they can say.

Cobblestone has a nifty little 'no slander' clause in their contract and have threatened to sue an author that spoke about her bad editing experience. So, you'll see a lot of authors speaking as anonymous etc.

So, if you would like to respond, please do it in the Bewares section. I just posted this here as Cobblestone is most for romance/erotic romance and you're my peeps. I'd sure as hell want to know if this(alleged) stuff was going on with a pub I was considering subbing too.

[Stacia Kane]

Thanks, Ann!


As always, if you're a Cobblestone author (or with any other house) and wish to share information but don't want to do it under your own name, feel free to PM or email me the info, and I will post it for you (as will any mod here, afaik).

[mlhernandez]

Originally Posted by Ann_Mayburn

Cobblestone has a nifty little 'no slander' clause in their contract and have threatened to sue an author that spoke about her bad editing experience. So, you'll see a lot of authors speaking as anonymous etc.

.

Is this new? I'm looking at my 2009 contracts for a couple of short stories I tossed their way and there's no slander/libel clause. Well. There's a mention of Cobblestone using slander/libel to terminate contract but that's not the same as suing if we speak publicly.

FWIW I'm not impressed with the accounting at Cobblestone. It seems as if every other pay period, we're told there's a computer problem or power outage or whatever that makes it impossible to run royalties or make payments. My sales there trickled off to nothing after a year and I'm currently preparing a couple of rights reversion letters so I've let it go.

Third party distribution is a mess. My shorts came out in 2009/early 2010...and they're still not up on Amazon! All of my other publishers (EC, Samhain, etc) get those puppies up fast because that's where the real $ is. And I had a story earn a bestseller star at ARe but the # of copies reported as sold seemed a bit off to me, especially once I self-published a short story of my own that sold a similar number of copies as those reported to me on my royalty statement but didn't earn bestseller status. So...yeah.