A site of which I’d never heard linked to my original Blu Phi’er entry.
The saga continues, as does getting the word out to folks who might be tempted to work with them. Let’s just say that I can’t be disappointed.
July 24, 2008 by Rusty
A site of which I’d never heard linked to my original Blu Phi’er entry.
The saga continues, as does getting the word out to folks who might be tempted to work with them. Let’s just say that I can’t be disappointed.
I know veinglory from over at Absolute Write. I was over there updating the Lachesis thread the other day, and I noticed the Blu Phi-er thread had heated up, sadly, it looked like nothing positive was coming in. I really feel for their authors.
I read the EREC blog all the time. They’re good people. Veinglory tries to be a one person infoline on the epublishers out there. She maintains a site like P&E where publishers are rated with “Recommend”, nothing, “Smoke”, “Fire” and “shut down”.
She also tracks sales given to her by the epublishers so writers can see who seems to be making the strongest sales and make choices according to that. Not to mention she can be a bit of a snark herself 🙂
Every phone number I could locate for Blu Phier was turned off. My demand, on behalf of a friend, for the return of the rights to her novel had to be put through their inquiry email. All I got was “we decline’ and then no further communication at all.
This is a sick situation.
I have no reason to doubt the people who run EREC. I’ve simply never before heard of them. Most of my contacts within the publishing industry work for companies covered in E&P.
Good luck to you, Janrae, and your friend. Sheesh, what a mess. I’ve talked with one of their authors over at My Space, a Kimberly. Seeing this kind of fallout just makes me feel a bit ill, thinking how they (the authors) must feel.
If they won’t release the work of their authors, their authors should go get their works republished somewhere else anyway.
I seriously doubt Blu Phier have the money and resources to launch a legal campaign against them. In fact, it may put Blu Phier out of business.
If they declared bankruptcy, the ownership of those books could pass to another company who buys out their debt. Or they could be auctioned off.
Blu Phier going out of business will not solve the problem.
And Philbin’s disgusting interview is now up at Silverthought.
http://www.silverthought.com/interview.philbin01.html
The attitude of the Blu Phi’er owner in the FAQ on the site leads me to believe that he wants to hold viciously onto rights in the hopes that one of the authors will hit it big and he can “sell” them to a bigger company. I bet if anyone offered to buy their rights back he would be quite willing to talk, cuss.
I’ll inquire about it.
I have emailed them asking for how much the ransom is to get her rights back.
Seems to me he figures he’d make more money selling the rights than publishing the books.
Yes, Captain Obvious visited this morning… 😛
Yes, that appears to be it. I’m expecting him to demand a huge sum for the ‘subrights’ thinking I’m trying to buy them. When I just want to ransom the book.
If they won’t release the work of their authors, their authors should go get their works republished somewhere else anyway.
Don’t do this!
No other publisher will touch the work unless the rights are free and clear, and if you lie about that, you’ll earn yourself a very bad name.
Shit like that have a way of coming out, and you’ll be considered more trouble than you’re worth.
Who else besides Bernoudy holds some responsibility for the Blu Phi’er fiasco’s? Even though it is says Bernoudy on the bottom line, most of the daily business was handled by the Marketing Directors on his behalf.
My experience with them started in January. I had a book enthusiastically accepted by Bernoudy’s marketing director Nathan Andrews, who wrote to me: “I personally love the idea, the look and the motivation for it. The Editorial department was very enthused by it.”
In February I received my contract via Marketing Director Eric Enck; not Bernoudy and not Andrews. It seemed a little jacked with alternating fonts and a few spelling/grammar errors, but over all was fair. It was a three year contract which included my requested 40 contributor copies, a royalty of 25% of the cover price, and a release date of November ‘08. I took it to my lawyer for review, signed it, had it notarized, and then mailed it to Bernoudy.
Here are some direct quotes from Blu Phi’ers June newsletter, all written by Eric Enck,
“Nathan is no longer with us do to reasons I can not absolve here. His lack of motivation was apparent.”
“Up until recently, I worked two jobs… Now, I don’t work. I’m all about Blu Phier!”
“Also, some authors have not received contracts back. There are a few reasons for this. Mr. Bernoudy wants to make way for some diversity… We have 19 novels coming out next year. 16 of them are horror. This can no longer be. We need to split the bracket. So in closing, those contracts are still being honored, but they are being put on hold for other genres.”
That didn’t sound good since my book fell into that bracket. I wondered how they could have contracted so many titles without Bernoudy’s consent?
On July 4, Eric Enck sent another Blu Phi’er newsletter announcing his resignation: “I am no longer involved with this company. For reasons I cannot disclose here, all I can say is that I have moved onto much bigger things.”
I asked Eric what happened. His reply: “to make a long story short, Michael was selling my intellectual property rights to SNUFF without my/our (Adam) approval. We got that cleared up but then he starts eliminating horror titles for future publications. So I asked him ” What the fuck do you really want me to tell these people that have signed contracts?” And he said: “Tell them whatever you want.””
I asked Bernoudy about the status of my book. He wrote:
“I regret that you are displeased with the status of your work. Yours is not a project that we have under contract. Like many other projects we were unaware of, yours was a side project by our former marketing director.”
I then asked Eric: “Was this a side project of yours? Not something approved of by Bernoudy? I really want to know who was supposed to be responsible for informing me of this. You did after all tell me that you’d asked Bernoudy: ”What the fuck do you really want me to tell these people that have contracts?” And he said: “Tell them whatever you want.””
To which Eric replied to me:
“I was told to indicate that the company was moving towards non-horror titles in the forseeable future… I was screwed over just like everyone else. Since then, I’ve moved on to better things.”
At this point I am happy to not have Blu Phi’er as a publisher. Also, I’m definitely going to avoid working with any of those previous “marketing directors””.
You are free to shop your work elsewhere. Consider yourself lucky.