Pear Jam Books (NZ)

[ULTRAGOTHA]

I didn't find another thread for this publisher.

It started so promisingly and ended so horribly. Twenty months ago Jill Marshall was a local hero, albeit an adopted one. In 2011, Next magazine chose her as its Woman of the Year (arts and culture), an honour still listed on her profile on internet site LinkedIn.

Marshall is now back in England, having left behind a posse of irate and disillusioned authors, a trail of debt and no forwarding address. A "desperately-seeking-Jill" message by one of the authors on Marshall's Facebook page has gone unanswered, attempts to contact her by email and via the two vice-presidents appointed to her company have proved equally fruitless.

Story here.

 

[Alessandra Kelley]

Aw man, those poor authors.

And illustrators.

And printers.

Ugh.

 

[James D. Macdonald]

http://www.pubmatch.com/profile/12002/pear-jam-books.html

We don't often start threads for already-defunct publishers, but, in this case, I think it's instructive.

Note the time-frame: Under 24 months from hopeful beginning to crash-and-burn with the publisher leaving the country, but leaving no forwarding address.

Note too this Huge Whopping Neon-Glowing Red Flag:

Problems began to appear later, with a second group made up mostly of first-time authors, who each paid $10,000 for a "partner-publishing programme", whereby Marshall's company contracted to provide coaching, marketing materials and book production in various formats including a printed book "to industry standard".

My emphasis. "...who each paid $10,000...." Whose law does this break? Yog's Law! What's Yog's Law? Money flows toward the author.

Right now this publisher has eighteen books listed at Amazon UK, of which ten are by Jill Marshall, and seven of the eight others are "Currently unavailable." Using the Look Inside feature for the printed versions, the typesetting is dreadful: it looks like a straight dump from a word processor.

It isn't often that you find the interiors looking better in the Kindle version of a commercially-published book.

Read the story in the New Zealand Herald, and compare what you see there with what you read here in Why Publishers Fail.

 

[Alessandra Kelley]

This is weird.

Some time between Google's last cached search and right now, Pear Jam Books' Smashwords page vanished. If you follow the link Google's search provides (https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jillmarshall ), you get a "Sorry, We're Closed" page and, interestingly enough, a large list of Ms. Marshall's (and one other authors) books, all represented by someone called "J M" whose profile page says her name is Judy Doggett and that she is in the US.

I wonder if Ms. Doggett has been contacted by the New Zealanders trying to find Ms. Marshall.

 

[LeslieB]

My emphasis. "...who each paid $10,000...." Whose law does this break? Yog's Law! What's Yog's Law? Money flows toward the author.

With the connection to MLM, I would assume the second group was supposed to pay for the bills piling up from the first group's books. That's dancing on the edge of a Ponzi scheme.

Read the story in the New Zealand Herald, and compare what you see there with what you read here in Why Publishers Fail.

Judging by past threads, I fully expect to see someone pop up and say that we all need to shut up, otherwise none of the authors will get paid. Oh, and if there are any signs of life in the future, someone will post in this thread, "I know they have a bad history, but I'm thinking of submitting to them..."

 

[ULTRAGOTHA]

http://www.pubmatch.com/profile/12002/pear-jam-books.html

We don't often start threads for already-defunct publishers, but, in this case, I think it's instructive.

I did dither. But this bit from further down in the article made me fall on this side of the fence.

However, it is currently listed by the New Zealand Companies Office as a going concern. The same might be inferred from Pear Jam's page on the website of global rights network PubMatch, where it states it is in the business of "buying and selling rights" and is "seeking new authors".