It's more than ruffled feathers.
The second book (The Agent and the Outlaw) in my 18th-century vampire series just won a Readers’ Choice Award from the Paranormal Romance Guild. Additionally, the series itself (Les Dames Dangereuses) took second place in Best Series. I should be incandescent with happiness and pride, but the news is bittersweet at best.
As some of you may know, I took my rights back from City Owl Press back in January. My story is hardly as gut-wrenching as many of the other brave authors who’ve spoken out, but perhaps it will help establish a pattern of behavior from a publisher that—at best—needs an overhaul, and explain why I left and my beloved books are not currently on Amazon. (They will be in the future, just…bear with me.)
Last year, I was hard at work on the third book in my Les Dames Dangereuses series. I had to push my release back a couple times because of life stuff (I have a toddler and a demanding day job) and I wanted to make sure the final book in my series was the best it could possibly be. My new launch date aligned perfectly with AwesomeCon ’23 in Washington DC, which would be my first in-person author event.
Shortly before I was supposed to fly out to DC, I reached out to City Owl publisher Tina Moss about making sure paperbacks would be ready in time for my event. When she wrote back, she admitted that book 3 had "fallen through the cracks" because it hadn’t been on my original contract. I went back to check, and sure enough, my initial contract (which I’d assumed covered the full LDD series) in fact, only covered the first two books.
This came to light 2 weeks before my release date.
I understand mistakes happen, but…ouch. That whisked the wind from my sails. No one wants to be the project that falls through the cracks! Tina told me that she wanted to push the launch date out so we could do ARCs and reviews, but I was over a barrel at that point. I wanted to have the books in hand for DC so I could sell a completed trilogy. I signed a new contract for my third book, and Tina agreed to have print copies sent to DC.
Fortunately, the books arrived in DC in time and I did fairly well selling my series in person. I consider it a success! I was hoping to use some of the momentum to capitalize on any City Owl marketing efforts for the completed trilogy. But CO's efforts never really materialized. As the weeks and months ticked by, I watched City Owl's social media feature a handful of books (including Tina's rather frequently) but never once saw my books mentioned. At that point, my frustration and disappointment had mounted, and I stepped away from social media and stopped trying to sell my own books. I needed a break. I wanted to figure out what to do with my books, because my feeling was that City Owl didn't really want them.
Then, in an effort to be transparent, I think: Tina posted some “hard truths” about publishing on the City Owl Facebook page (a page which has since been deleted), namely: there would be little marketing support for backlist authors (this directly contradicted earlier statements that marketing efforts were supposed to take off after authors published a completed series) and less support for authors writing in less-popular genres (which begs the question: why acquire what isn't going to receive support?). I fall into both of those categories, which cemented my earlier suspicions: City Owl wasn’t interested in supporting me.
I know I'm new to this game. And there are a lot of things that I understand about the luck aspect of writing and publishing. Trends move fast. What's hot today might not be tomorrow, etc. But my career is in marketing and I work at a PR agency, and I understand a lot about that, too. Maybe it's different in publishing, but in my experience, the most fruitful way to grow as a company is to cultivate your relationships with a long-term focus. What incentive would a backlist author have to continue publishing with City Owl with future series or projects? What incentive would an author not writing romantasy have to query City Owl? And why would existing contracted authors stay and provide more than half of their royalties for a company that has admitted they wouldn't be spending the effort to sell their products?
I didn't sign with City Owl because I saw it as a pipeline to self publish. I signed because I felt like I'd be getting another champion for my books. I felt I had that in the beginning...but as things wore on, it felt more like death by a thousand disappointments. Granted, any monetized creative endeavor is studded with little disappointments: screaming into the void that is social media, dealing with tough reviews, getting over hurdles to build a reader following, and maintaining engagement in between releases. I'm prepared to weather those. But I think I wasn't prepared to feel like a diseased literary appendix for a small press.
I understand Tina's perspective: this is a business. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. And at the end of the day, we're selling a product. But I think it's time for City Owl to take a long, hard look at what they're providing to authors and how they can support them in the future. The barriers to entry for self publishing have dropped over the last several years, which is great for authors who don't want to go the traditional route. Small presses are somewhere in the middle, and the companies that can't figure out how to add value to an author's publishing journey beyond what authors can do for themselves will likely flounder. That's not what I want for City Owl, or any of the authors who remain.
When things escalated in January and authors flew the coop in droves (yes, that IS a bird pun and no, I will not apologize) I took advantage of the opportunity to request my rights back. I was one of the fortunate few who didn’t have to fight very hard to get them. Others—bigger, better authors—have not been so lucky.
(If you’re the type of person who wants receipts, I encourage you to read Erin Fulmer’s blog, Lisa Edmonds’s statement, or Megan van Dyke’s thread about her experience (CW for traumatic pregnancy/birth). Or, give City Owl a search on social media and mind what pops up.)
So, here I sit. Unformatted, coverless, award-winning manuscripts in hand and the herculean task of self-publishing a previously published series ahead of me. I won’t be able to recapture the excitement of a debut release when I republish Les Dames Dangereuses this coming summer/fall, but I can guarantee this time it won’t fall through the cracks.
