SWINE HOUSE

It isn’t always fun in the office. Sometimes I have to take a break from chair races with the cat to do some real work. For a long time now, I’ve had a right hassle with the ‘sales’ company I took on earlier in the year, so that’s the thorn in my side at the moment (and becomes a shameless plug as the new title for Sheila’s next book).

I went to the London Book Fair specifically to sign up with a sales company who could also handle distribution. One company I met with really impressed me and I signed up with them after promises of what they would do and how they would do it. Knowing I was releasing three big titles this year, I needed all that side of the business in place well ahead of the releases.

With the network in place, I even took out a front and inside cover advert in the Bookseller Buyer’s Guide. These things are not cheap. Sheila Quigley was on the front cover, with her and Dirty Leeds and Slimmer Charlie on the inside, proudly announcing I had a sales company to handle all the logistics from now on. I was really chuffed. People phoned me to congratulate me on how good it all looked.

In July, I went on holiday to relax in the sun for a bit before the releases and chaos. While I was there, one of the big wholesalers phoned me to say ‘Looks like we’ll be back on consignment then, eh?’ Without knowing what she was on about, I was told that the sales company had went belly up. I phoned them from Cyprus asking to know what was going on. ‘We sent letters out’ was the reply – ‘Not to me, you didn’t’ was mine. I was assured that although the sales company had ‘ceased trading’ there would be a seamless crossover to freelance sales staff.

I still didn’t relax for the rest of my holiday. I had the laptop with me and tried getting online in a few bars that had wireless there… it didn’t work and, to be polite, I had a beer in each one.  It didn’t help much. I had to wait until I got home to see what was really going on.

So, cutting an ongoing saga short, the sales company were anything but. With days to go before my first release, I ended up phoning stores, head offices and sending out advance information sheets to limit the damage and loss of sales created by ‘the sales company’. I terminated the contract. I told them to pay what they owe and we’d be done, go our separate ways, yadda, yadda. I’d have to get another sales company in place, but could move on learning a lesson in publishing. Although they haven’t paid me a penny since signing the contract in June. They’ve been selling my books, paying their sales people their commission – but somehow forgot to pay the person who owns the books.

The emails have got to ‘silly point’.

If anyone is considering setting up in publishing, or anything similar – BE CAREFUL. I thought I’d been careful. You have to trust the people you work with and on such a thing like this, it’s a difficult call. You could take forever trying to decide who to go with and who not to. There are sales and distribution companies who only take you on if you turn over more than a million quid a year … and I’m not quite there yet. In contracts like this, there is a clause saying that they are due X percentage for dues on books they sold prior to termination of contract. OK, if they did the work, then fair enough. I’ve been a freelancer all my life and as one you need to rely on people paying you. Same goes if you set up a publishing company – I’m also an honest businessman with a conscience (probably my downfall) and will always pay anyone fairly for the work they do for me.

I got this back from them last night: “I am sorry but I do not understand your logic here since you owe  [insert name of incompetent sales and distribution company here] more money than we owe you and I still have to pay the reps commission for the dues they subscribed.   What guarantee do I have that you will pay what is owed to us?   It seems to me that I have none whatsoever.”

This coming from a company who didn’t honour the contract, didn’t sell my books properly – eg, bookstores in Yorkshire didn’t know about Dirty Leeds days before release, until I sold it myself – and have never paid me anything since selling my books from June to September. You can imagine my response, I’m sure. The upshot is that they’ve owed me money for a while, and now are using it as a ransom. They don’t realise that there are honest people working in business. All they need to do to avoid further action is pay me what is owed and send me an invoice for the money I owe them. That’s how normal people work, or so I thought.

There isn’t a happy ending to this one yet. I did employ a new sales company who have been selling my books and have been helpful in offering advice, meeting up with me and phoning me – pretty much doing what they said they would. I’m with the same distributor that the incompetent company were using and they are in touch regularly and send weekly reports of sales. So, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Annoyingly, there are so many companies around like the unnamed one above. What does it mean for small publishers? Well, the basics are the knock-on-affect … if people don’t pay me, I can’t pay other people. That’s how cash flow problems start and that’s how people go out of business. It’s simple mathematics (I’m OK with simple maths). I’ve always said that the more you try to grow as a company, the more people become part of the ‘chain’ and the more people there are to mess it up for you. As we know, it isn’t just in publishing – this is happening all over the place. It’s sad that it has to happen and just adds to the stress of a one-man-band trying to make a living. Maybe I could have done more research, maybe I was naive. I certainly regret signing up with such a company because if I hadn’t started digging around before the books were out, there would have been no sales made and I’d be living on the streets. Seriously. That’s the result when you plough tens of thousands into printing books and no one sells them for you. And they came out with “What guarantee do I have that you will pay what is owed to us?” It certainly is infuriating.

After my final email to them last night, I said I wanted to know their intentions within 48 hours. I don’t mind going to court to get what is rightfully mine. In fact, I’d look forward to exposing them as much as I can whether it puts me further out of pocket or not. I’ll probably have to delete this post when that happens, but I’m sure it will be worked out eventually.

A positive note to end on … I’m hoping to announce a couple of exciting non-fiction titles for 2010 and 2011 very soon. And Even More Tonto Short Stories is still in pre-production stages. We’re looking to get it out in December, but because of printing schedules, it may not be possible. It should be listed on Amazon very soon for pre-ordering and we’ll keep you updated on progress.

Right, now I’m off for an office chair race…