Tickety Boo Press

Good reasons, every one. Thanks for the quick answer. We're focusing a couple of Big Five SFF imprints right now.

Ticketyboo Press

http://www.ticketyboopress.co.uk/

I did a search but found nothing on them on AW. Does anybody have any experience of this British publisher, good or bad? They seem very new, two years or so, and they've started a new romance imprint for space opera, which I'm intersted in submitting to.

Thanks, Amergina! I typed the publisher's name in the 'search' box and nothing came up. Sorry about that, and thanks for moving.

An update about Tickety Boo Press from Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware

Here is my response:

I thought I would take the opportunity to respond the your post about me. First of all me going bankrupt relates to my company that went bust in 2006 due mainly to the crash in the home improvement sector that was badly affected by the downturn. I am discharged from my bankruptcy now but can I make the point Tickety Boo press Ltd is an entity in its own right and bankrupts are still entitled to continue to work which is what I did. I was cover artist and acquiring editor.

Secondly, I have had a long run in for years with Ian Robson. He takes every opportunity to attack small businesses in the area while leaving the big-boys with even bigger lawyers alone. My business installed 800 kitchens and bathrooms per year and of course due to the use of contractors, there were complaints. We always tried to deal with them as quick as we could.

With regard to Spectral, I tried to help having been in a similar position as Spectral's owner who is a Tickety Boo author. God knows why I did as I have been subject to personal attacks, abusive behaviour from a small selection of former Spectral authors. I can fully understand their frustration but that should be aimed at the owner. Remember, I didn't create the problem, nor was I involved in any way.

I stepped in first week in January. I have successfully reduced the debt, (by getting rid of stock) fulfilled customer orders and paid several authors including Simon Bestwick. The work continues.

I have returned some of the abuse to attackers, rightly or wrongly. However, I work very professionally with TBP authors who in turn have been very supportive and professional. They are paid the day they are supposed to and info is always at hand.

The Tickety Boo contract which is negotiable was based on the contract negotiated by Molly Ker Hawn at the Bent agency for one of her clients and that's the same contract John Jarrold looked over for one of his clients and found nothing that jarred. I am not aware of any clause that is what you call iffy. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten me?

Gary Compton said:

Here is my response:

I thought I would take the opportunity to respond the your post about me. First of all me going bankrupt relates to my company that went bust in 2006 due mainly to the crash in the home improvement sector that was badly affected by the downturn. I am discharged from my bankruptcy now but can I make the point Tickety Boo press Ltd is an entity in its own right and bankrupts are still entitled to continue to work which is what I did. I was cover artist and acquiring editor.

Secondly, I have had a long run in for years with Ian Robson. He takes every opportunity to attack small businesses in the area while leaving the big-boys with even bigger lawyers alone. My business installed 800 kitchens and bathrooms per year and of course due to the use of contractors, there were complaints. We always tried to deal with them as quick as we could.

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The global financial crisis happened in 2009, but you went bankrupt because of it in 2006? You were really ahead of the game there.

With regard to Spectral, I tried to help having been in a similar position as Spectral's owner who is a Tickety Boo author. God knows why I did as I have been subject to personal attacks, abusive behaviour from a small selection of former Spectral authors. I can fully understand their frustration but that should be aimed at the owner. Remember, I didn't create the problem, nor was I involved in any way.

I stepped in first week in January. I have successfully reduced the debt, (by getting rid of stock) fulfilled customer orders and paid several authors including Simon Bestwick. The work continues.

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While it's true you didn't create those authors' problems, when you took over Spectral you took over their problems too--and the debts that Spectral owed them. What plan did you put in place to ensure they were paid the monies they were owed? Are they all aware that you're trying to work things out for them? Have you been approachable and helpful and positive?

I have returned some of the abuse to attackers, rightly or wrongly. However, I work very professionally with TBP authors who in turn have been very supportive and professional. They are paid the day they are supposed to and info is always at hand.

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Being abusive to people is not professional, and it's not going to help you sort anything out. Why is it you can be professional with the TBP writers, but not with the Spectral ones? And now you're running both companies, why are you paying one group but not the other?

The Tickety Boo contract which is negotiable was based on the contract negotiated by Molly Ker Hawn at the Bent agency for one of her clients and that's the same contract John Jarrold looked over for one of his clients and found nothing that jarred. I am not aware of any clause that is what you call iffy. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten me?

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I hope you got permission to use those contracts in the way that you have.

Do you have a copy of your contract on your website? If not, why don't you put it up there? That way we can take a look at it for ourselves, and see what it says.

First of all TBP didn't take over anything. It stepped in with a plan to save Spectral press. That involved bringing out new books, the profit from which would pay back the debt.

TBP are not responsible for the Spectral debt. Simon Marshall Jones was and still is. Any author who came to the new imprint in Jan had new contracts agreed and they get paid from that date by TBP, any profits from those books go towards Simon's debt. The author gets his full agreed royalty.

The finished contracts were a negotiation that ended up with the finished contract which we use as our standard starting point.

Old Hack said:

The global financial crisis happened in 2009, but you went bankrupt because of it in 2006? You were really ahead of the game there.

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I worked in construction lending starting in 2007, and the writing was already on the wall - we were already starting to see an uptick in foreclosures and problems, were already tightening up lending guidelines and closing offices, etc.. So it's not unreasonable to me that someone could be among the first victims in 2006. /two cents

It was back end of 2006 tiakall. The writing started to appear on the wall!

As it did for millions of people and as Old Hack states the culmination was 2009.

Global Financial Crisis 2007-2008

Gary Compton said:

With regard to Spectral, I tried to help having been in a similar position as Spectral's owner who is a Tickety Boo author. God knows why I did as I have been subject to personal attacks, abusive behaviour from a small selection of former Spectral authors. I can fully understand their frustration but that should be aimed at the owner. Remember, I didn't create the problem, nor was I involved in any way.

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You didn't create the mess, but you've taken on responsibility for it. The announcement you made wasn't doing a bit of work to help a friend. It was paying off the company's debts and then co-owning it. It was made clear that all problems should now be sent to you, not the owner. Blaming the authors and customers doesn't fly here, because they were told you were responsible and you were the contact person. If you didn't want to be responsible, linking it to your own company, to the point of wanting co-ownership, wasn't the way to avoid that responsibility.

"I'm doing it for free" and "I didn't create this mess" are not justifications for being abusive to people. Those things are irrelevant to how you're handling the situation now. When you swear at people wanting refunds, accuse them of being heartless for wanting to be paid, and block authors instead of paying them, that is all on you. That particular mess is one Spectral's owner didn't create. The way to sort it will be to make sure everyone is paid, including people you've blocked. Unblock them to get payment details if needed, keep professional, and pay them anyway. Because they're owed money/books whether you like them or not.

While it's possible, of course, that contracting is a perfectly good background from which to enter the publishing world, it's equally possible it might not be. Having been burned by a small "publisher" before, I'm inclined to doubt the credibility of those publishers who abuse their authors.

Haggis said:

While it's possible, of course, that contracting is a perfectly good background from which to enter the publishing world, it's equally possible it might not be. Having been burned by a small "publisher" before, I'm inclined to doubt the credibility of those publishers who abuse their authors.

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I agree, Haggis. But I note that Mr Compton's bankruptcy happened in 2006, and Tickety Boo didn't open until January 2014. It's possible he spent the intervening eight years working in publishing. I hope he'll let us know.

I am just going to focus on the positives.

50% of Spectral authors have been paid and the rest will be paid in full by May. The money to do that has come from the sale of stock and the profit from Spectral titles that came over to TBP. That was the plan.

There are 20-odd customers who need refunds. Hopefully that will happen by June/July.

Hopefully, that will be the end of the matter as all TBP authors (that includes the Spectral ones that came over) are paid on time and have access at all times to sales info.

Old Hack said:

I agree, Haggis. But I note that Mr Compton's bankruptcy happened in 2006, and Tickety Boo didn't open until January 2014. It's possible he spent the intervening eight years working in publishing. I hope he'll let us know.

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Gary Compton said:

I am just going to focus on the positives.

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One of the positives could have been, "I spent from 2006 to 2014 working in publishing." Did you have any experience in the business prior to opening Tickety Boo Press?

50% of Spectral authors have been paid and the rest will be paid in full by May. The money to do that has come from the sale of stock and the profit from Spectral titles that came over to TBP. That was the plan.

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That's really good. If you want to try to mend a few fences you could blog about that, and apologise to everyone you were rude to. I know it's uncomfortable, doing things like that: but it's the right thing to do, and it might set a few minds at rest.

How are you going to raise money to pay royalties on the sales of stock that you've used to fund these debts? Do you have a plan in place for that?

There are 20-odd customers who need refunds. Hopefully that will happen by June/July.

Hopefully, that will be the end of the matter as all TBP authors (that includes the Spectral ones that came over) are paid on time and have access at all times to sales info.

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I hope so too.

I had permission from the editor to use stock and revenue from the sale of paperbacks and ebooks of SBOH2 to fund payments to his authors who remained unpaid and were involved in the Spectral Book of Horrors 2. A few authors from the first edition are owed £30 each and they will be paid also.

This is what is funding the payments. There are no royalties due on this book at the moment but there may be in the future. Those royalties will be accounted for if the situation arises.

I asked Mr Compton if he had experience in publishing, here:

Old Hack said:

One of the positives could have been, "I spent from 2006 to 2014 working in publishing." Did you have any experience in the business prior to opening Tickety Boo Press?

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He has not responded to my question. So I had a quick look around the internet, and found nothing suggesting he has any publishing experience prior to founding TBP, although I did find a writing blog he started then abandoned within the last few years. Nor have I found anything relating to the bankruptcy he claimed he suffered in 2006, here:

Gary Compton said:

I thought I would take the opportunity to respond the your post about me. First of all me going bankrupt relates to my company that went bust in 2006 due mainly to the crash in the home improvement sector that was badly affected by the downturn. I am discharged from my bankruptcy now but can I make the point Tickety Boo press Ltd is an entity in its own right and bankrupts are still entitled to continue to work which is what I did. I was cover artist and acquiring editor.

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However, I did find that he's been director of a cascade of kitchen fitting and related companies, mostly now all dissolved, mostly operating from the same address (I won't link to the page as it provides contact information, home addresses, that sort of thing).

I found a bankruptcy order against him which was dated March 2015, but which was discharged in March of this year (again, no link: personal information given).

I found complaints against his kitchen and bathroom fitting companies in a consumer column titled Mr Justice.

This is the most recent, I think , dated May 2015 (although the search facility there isn't working well for me right now):

Mr Justice: Blyth trader Gary Compton goes bust

A trader who has appeared in Mr Justice several times has gone bust.

Gary Compton, of Blyth, Northumberland, filed for bankruptcy at Newcastle County Court in March.

The bankruptcy order was made on his own petition and was published in the London Gazette.
[...]

Mr Compton has been mentioned several times on this page over complaints from customers of his furniture businesses.
[...]

When asked to comment Mr Compton said: “I am not prepared to comment.”

But he went on to comment a great deal when he later added by email: “So nice to hear your snivelling little voice again. So we have went bankrupt, it has happened to 1000’s of people and we move on.”

Gary Compton first came to my attention in 2003 when I received angry calls from several customers about his former business [redacted], based in Cramlington, which dealt in kitchens and bathrooms.

At the time he blamed contractors for letting him down and the company eventually went out of business.

Last year he turned up in our pages again after setting up internet company Regency Chic to sell furniture to customers all over the country.

When I investigated why he had failed to deliver a table which had been paid for he sent a series of foul-mouthed emails.

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If you read the full article it refers to the 2015 bankruptcy I mentioned earlier, which is now discharged: this was, I assume, a personal charge and not a business-related one.

Then there's this, in which he explains why he shut down his bathroom fitting adventure: it's dated September 2004, and was updated in February 2013. Note that the financial crisis was not given as an excuse in this case: instead, he blamed his subcontractors and Mr Justice for his failures.

Driven round the U-bend

Unlucky Gary Compton wanted to be flushed with success after expanding his kitchen business into bathrooms.

But it ended in tears when he pulled the plug on his company's growth following a catalogue of complaints from Mr Justice readers.

Now Gary is closing down the bathroom side of his company after admitting that it all went down the pan.

He blames sub-contractors for letting several customers down before the new venture had a chance to become established.

And he also blamed bad publicity after I carried a story in this column about the complaints last month.

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I also found a site which it seems Mr Compton has set up in response to those Mr Justice columns. There are only two posts on that site, a greeting post, and a post which reads,

The “Cock of the North,” being nasty again.

Ian Robson: self-proclaimed Victor Meldrew is inventing old news. Probably because he has no talent so needs to do this.
A nasty excuse for a journalist who enjoys ruining people’s lives.

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I'll agree: none of this is directly pertinent to his publishing endeavours. I include it here because it indicates a pattern of unprofessionalism: closing businesses down when they fail to thrive, running up debts which cannot be repaid, letting customers down, and responding to challenges and criticism with anger and rudeness. And that might well be important information for authors who are considering signing with this press.

I don't have a horse in this race -- I haven't published with Tickety Boo, and I hadn't heard of Spectral Press before Tickety Boo took them over. However, in case this helps add to the picture, I do know several Tickety Boo authors and I also know several people who work for Tickety Boo.

So, first, for people considering submitting to the press: there are several Tickety Boo imprints run by people with experience in the publishing industry, and these operate largely independently of the central press (in that you interact solely with the imprint editor). I would certainly be *very* keen to publish with a couple of those, which are run by people I admire and have worked with before (so maybe I have a small pony in this race).

I think an issue with the car crash that was the Spectral Press take-over is that there was so much all at once -- lots of people asking for payment/books etc and it was presumably overwhelming. The rudeness was totally unjustified and bizarre, but... well, actually I can't find a way to excuse it. But partly it comes down to whether the Spectral authors etc will in fact be paid within the time frame set out above, when if Tickety Boo hadn't stepped in, they would not have been paid. Time will tell.

Finally, the main press -- ie not the Spectral Press imprint -- has been running separately from the take-over and debt settlement, and it seems justifiable that they've been honouring their existing contracts with authors while they've been trying to disentangle Spectral Press contracts and debts. Their first responsibility is to the authors they signed themselves, and if my memory serves, the initial announcement about Spectral did say that things were in train but might take some time.

I'm not looking for a disagreement, but I wanted to make the point that Tickety Boo is quite a diverse organisation and there are some excellent people working in it and that too might be helpful contextualising information for authors.

I don't have any contact with the press at the moment but in my case the publisher's ill health led to a rights reversion of all my books with them. This was carried out smoothly and I've since self published the trilogy with no problems - bar the usual Amazon asking for proof of reversion. I have no idea what's happened to all the rest of the authors.

I'm still with them but I don't think they are taking on any new authors.