Just got this press release in email, as I imagine others have:

First and foremost, we at Night Shade Books would like to apologize for any problems we’ve caused any of our authors. The last three years have been brutal on us, although not in any way we could have expected. While we’ve faced the same difficulties every small and independent press has suffered in this age of sales downturns, higher-than-expected returns, and other challenges, what has caused us the most trouble have been our successes. Night Shade has grown faster and more uncontrollably than we had any idea how to handle. What started as two guys shipping books out of a garage now consists of a full staff working out of an office in San Francisco. We’ve shuffled around a lot of our responsibilities, but in many ways, we’re still figuring this out as we go.

This has led to some major miscommunication, and sometimes flat-out lack of communication, with our authors, sometimes, even amongst ourselves. We screwed up: Details were missed, one of us assumed another was handling a situation, or a reluctance to deliver bad news turned into an unprofessional excuse to procrastinate. The issues that have come up today, at their core, are really ones of communication. All this could have been avoided through simple phone calls and emails, through us letting people know what was happening.

That said, this has been a wakeup call for us. We have been working hard to improve all areas of Night Shade Books. Perhaps not fast enough, nor in the places that needed the most work. Doing royalty statements by hand was fine when we were doing five books a year, but now, with over 150 books in print, it has become a cumbersome, time-consuming, painful process that too often has been put off until later. And, as evidenced by the two books we sold as ebooks without the proper permissions, clearly we need a better contract/rights management system.  We are already working on this: Last month we hired a new employee, whose primary responsibility will be managing our contracts and subrights, as well as developing and implementing a royalty system that won’t take two people a month to run royalties. We have already addressed the issues currently at hand involving Elizabeth Moon, Brendan Halpin, and Liz Williams.  We have also contacted SFWA, and will be working hand-in-hand with them to find out if any other authors have issues with us, but haven’t come forward yet, and get those problems resolved.

At this time, we would very much like any of our authors, past or present, who have or have had issues with our conduct or business practices, to step forward either to us or to SFWA, so that we can attempt to resolve any hardships we have may have caused.

I admire their willingness to say “We screwed up” (and to acknowledge contract breaches in public, which could be interesting if any of this ever leads to legal action). I hope they make good on their promises of improvement; only time will tell on that front. And I especially hope to see happy relieved “everything’s settled” posts from Williams, Halpin, and Moon in short order.

Liz Williams has made her complaints about Night Shade Books very public: “I’ve been told by Night Shade that they are unlikely to be publishing any more of my novels. I don’t know whether this includes Iron Khan, or whether they’ll be pulling it from publication. The reason why I do not know is that my publishers have not communicated with me directly for some considerable time, despite repeated phone calls from both my agent and myself, and numerous emails asking for clarification on current and future books, and royalty statements. My agent eventually got a response by calling from an unlisted number and has confirmed that this silence appears to have been a tactic of deliberate avoidance. I have had emails from readers, and a couple of meetings with fans at E’con, who say they have tried to buy my books directly from my publishers – one guy paid about a year ago for a pre-order – and have had no reply.”

Now Brendan Halpin, a.k.a. Seamus Cooper, is doing the same: “Night Shade has stolen the eBook rights to The Mall of Cthulhu. They do not own them and are offering an electronic edition for sale through webscription.net, which is affiliated with Baen Books, a real publisher who should know better. Nine months ago, Night Shade made a verbal offer to pay me a small sum for the rights. I agreed. They’ve never paid me. …I was due a royalty statement from Night Shade Books on March 1.  Some time in April, they sent an inaccurate royalty statement. It listed a smaller advance and a higher cover price than was accurate.  My agent told them they had made errors in my favor, and they agreed to send a corrected statement.  We’re now staring down June, and I have no idea how many copies The Mall of Cthulhu has sold or if I’m owed any money.”

(Many thanks to J. at Me and My Red Stapler for bringing Halpin’s post to my attention.)

Both say they know other authors who feel similarly about how they’ve been treated by Night Shade but aren’t willing to speak up for fear of damaging their careers. This is causing a lot of shock among people who have long seen Night Shade as an exemplary small genre press.

I am of course reminded of Michael Cisco‘s complaints about Prime Books, echoed by Ben Peek and others commenting on his blog. When that blew up, I heard a lot about authors who had similar concerns about Prime but didn’t feel safe airing them in public. On the other hand, Prime was below the radar for a lot of people. Night Shade gets more attention and has (or had) a better rep.

So–assuming the complaints are legitimate, which I think is likely given their similarity, and Williams and Halpin aren’t the only ones affected, which is possible but currently unknown–will more people speak up this time, or fewer? And will there be as many authors declaring that they have never sold books to Night Shade and now have no interest in doing so? I’ll be keeping my ears open for follow-ups; if you see any, send them my way.

EDIT: Elizabeth Moon chimes in on Liz Williams’s blog: “We’ve had trouble with [Night Shade] not responding to my agent, not paying royalties, and they did the same thing with e-books to me, when they didn’t have e-rights. My agent suggested dealing with Baen as I have other books in Webscription, and when they realized that NightShade hadn’t had the e-rights, they started sending the royalties my way. But they’re way overdue on royalties again, and my agent has BookScan evidence that the book is selling (not wildly, but enough that there should be royalties again this year.) …It’s really sad, as they were a good small press and I was so happy to have that collection coming out from them.”

Really sad, indeed.