Silver Shamrock Publishing

[PeteMC]

It seems indie horror publisher Silver Shamrock Publishing effectively closed down over the weekend (https://locusmag.com/2022/04/silver-shamrock-closes/) under what can only charitably be described as unfortunate circumstances - https://everything2.com/title/The+F...+Silver+Shamrock+Publishing?author_id=2021853

 

[Maryn]

Thanks for the link. I saw horror writers discussing the abrupt closing and a troublesome book on Twitter but couldn't quite figure out what had happened, just that they were uniformly dismayed.

As they should be.

It's also worth noting that in the 1950s, I read a scifi story with the same premise as the problematic new release (IIRC, a disease that kills those with yellow pigments)--but its point was that racism was a two-way street and anything that targeted by skin color could probably be modified to target other skin colors. I've looked for that story again but never identified its title or author.

Maryn, enlarging the teensy text at the link and glad she can

 

[ChaseJxyz]

Hoo boy that was a read

 

[RedRajah]

Holy mother of unknown cats...

 

[Unimportant]

Well, gosh golly wow.

 

[Helix]

Good grief.

Also

to the scorching desert outback of Tasmania

This must be the other Tasmania, not the famously wet and mountainous one in Australia.

 

[frimble3]

And, in 1982 Frank Herbert had a similar title 'The White Plague', about a man taking revenge on the terrorists who killed his family by releasing a plague that killed women.
(It was no 'Dune'.)
So, Silver Shamrock isn't even original.
And, yeah, there's something odd about the whole thing, as expressed in the links.
Why put out a controversial book, then shut down completely before there was even a big fuss?

 

[PeteMC]

Why put out a controversial book, then shut down completely before there was even a big fuss?

Yeah absolutely. I think there must have been other things Going On somewhere behind the scenes.

 

[eqb]

So the author has written problematic books before AND he sicced his followers onto anyone making negative comments on Twitter.

The Midnight Society has weighed in:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1510291430186446849

 

[AnneMarble]

Silver Shamrock Publishing is still making the news -- in a bad way. Some authors are reporting that they have not been paid their royalties. See this tweet as an example.

 

[williemeikle]

I had a three-book deal with Silver Shamrock that I pulled out of last year when a rant the publisher had on Twitter made my spidey-sense twitch that all was not well in their wee world and that their world view and mine were a long way from being aligned. I'm glad now that I got out when I did