According to several sources via email, Quartet Press has ceased operations and authors who were part of the debut launch have had their rights returned. I have no details as to why but this is massive stinky pile of crap for digital publishing, and for the individuals involved.
Update: the Quartet Press blog has been updated with an unbelievably treacly announcement: they are indeed done.
I am absolutely fucking stunned, and so sad about this, but most of all, I’m mother fucking pissed off. One of my biggest complaints about digital publishing and romance publishing on the internet is that people forget that this is a business. It’s a business, which means that while it’s art and stories and words and craft, it’s also people’s livelihoods. It’s bad fucking business to hire someone away and close up three weeks later. I’m so angry I can’t even speak.
Argh. No idea what happened to my post. Only the first are supposed to be a quote… sigh.
Sorry, I wasn’t very clear, there. All I’m saying is that they would have had a larger cash outlay for upper management than most epubs, and that demand probably played a part in the net/gross royalty payout rate. If it didn’t, it should have.
It’s hard to get profitable, and starting small might not be glamorous, but it’s sure looking like the only financially viable way to go these days.
Maybe I’m badly informed, but I had never heard of 3 of those ‘five very large names’ and herein may lie one of the issues. Over-confidence.
Over-confidence – could very well be. Kassia K’s name rang a bell but I hadn’t heard of any of the other owners. I knew Angela James had a good reputation. To be honest, I just rolled with what others were saying about the respective experience of the four owners and assumed they were better informed than I was.
Apologies. The first paragraph of my post is a quote from GrowlyCub. Don’t know what happened there.
It’s all the snarky bloggers’ fault, according to Jamaica Layne of that *really* respectable and successful start up ::cough:: Ravenous Romance.
We can always count on Jamaica Layne for real class, can’t we?
Pure speculation: It sounds like either they had a private investor who suddenly pulled the plug or they committed one of the largest sins in the small business: they didn’t know what their costs were going to be. Before you go and open your big gator mouth, you have to make sure your humming bird ass can cover the check.
What, they didn’t know how much their distributors would charge? Really? That’s the first thing you have to work out in any business plan: what are the operating costs, what is the projected first year turn over, what is the gross, what is the net, how much financing is needed to stay afloat for at least six months and so on.
Before blog posts, before the hype, there should have been a business plan and rock solid financing. Let’s review the damage here:
– Angela James left a successful career at Samhain. Yes it was her choice, but it was a choice based on promises by QP.
– At least seven authors have had the rug pulled out from under them. They took a professional hit: someone stole their time, but more importantly, emotionally this is completely devastating. You work for months and months and finally get a contract, and then oops, just kidding, you don’t.
– They pretty much took their agenda of promoting digital publishing and shot it with a sawed off shotgun out in their back yard. Because DP doesn’t have enough bad publicity associated with it. Apparently it needed another black eye. People point out that one start up going out of business doesn’t tar the entire industry. This would be true if it was not an entertainment industry, where a great deal of your profit depends on your image and public’s perception of your product. QP made it that much harder for the next start-up, because both authors and editors now will be extremely cautious about signing with a new publishing house.
That’s eight people whose careers suffered a serious set-back because QP decided to play at being a publisher. And then they post an announcement consisting of so sorry, thank you for not being mean to us. This is not a game. This is people’s livelihoods. The arrogance of the principals involved is staggering.
That right there is seriously fucked up.
What’s baffling me is that Angela James, at least, must have known the costs of distributors. I don’t know about the others, but that seriously is something you look at early on. At least one of the others had experience in print publishing, were distribution’s a fairly major overhead, so I can’t imagine it was completely overlooked.
Okay, so maybe it was overlooked. Maybe it didn’t get flagged up until someone with ePub experience came on board. Maybe it took them a month to go through all the numbers and realise it just wasn’t possible… But why on earth were they hiring and taking submissions in that time? You don’t keep plowing on regardless when someone spots a flaw like that. Even if it was only spotted last week, they were still taking on editors then.
(and I’m curious too why it’s an issue for them, and not for other ePubs with similar business structures – were they really just too top heavy for a start-up?)
mina kelly, just to be clear: Angela James was not involved when QP started.
Angela James was not one of the principals at QP.
Angela James was hired as executive editor well after QP had been formed.
Whatever Angela James knows or doesn’t know about distribution costs—and I’m ignorant as to whether an editor, executive or otherwise, has to know about that part of publishing—was irrelevant.
Oh, and just in case: I’ve met Angela James four times total, each time for a few minutes. We are not bosom buddies or bff. My knowledge of her, such as it is, comes from reading her blog for a couple of years and from interacting with her (and watching her interact with others) online.
RE: the Rogue Digital Conference—
Red Sage was a co-sponsor of this conference, and I handled most of the arrangements for our small share of it. I can assure you that we didn’t spend minutes, let alone months, discussing Quartet Press’s startup efforts or their staffing needs while making those arrangements.
To me, that sounds like their main (only?) investor pulled out. Whether that’s a result of getting spooked by higher-than-expected costs, no longer having money to invest, or a melodramatic power play straight out of Dynasty, I have no idea.
My spamword is england43, which… wow.
While I feel sorry for those hurt by this turn of events, this is hardly a unique case. As several people have pointed out, start ups are always risky. And although one might abstractly expect that people involved in a business would know what they were doing, my experience is that this is often not the case, especially with types of endeavors that people may undertake out of love rather than purely for profit (eg restaurants, publishing, wineries, art galleries etc). Sometimes people have a dream without the necessary business know-how. And people do not always hold the good of their employees as a primary concern. When I was hired at my last position the owner did not disclose that he was already in bankruptcy, even though that is a legal requirement in California. He subsequently hired more people even though he knew 1) that the positions would soon disappear, and 2) that he wouldn’t be able to cover their paychecks. We could have gone to the Labor Board. AK probably has grounds for a suit as well. However, the chance of actually getting anything out of a defunct business is minimal and the effort better expended in finding a new job.
Ann Somerville, as usual you can be counted upon to bring a world of class to a discussion by attempting to start a cross-blog flame war.
Jessie, the evergracious Ms Layne wanted people to go to her blog to read her sparkling and charitable views:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150769&highlight=Quartet+Press&page=2
As usual, I can count on certain people to shoot the messenger rather than look at the message – which is that Jamaica Layne is once again conducting herself with all the grace and modesty of a dead porcupine.
Ann, I read Jamaica’s post before you linked it, thank you, and I cannot still see how posting a link to it here possibly contributes to the discussion about QP’s demise. You’re just trying to start another battle and using SBTB to do it. This is your third in a month – give it a rest, already. Everyone is tired of hearing it.
Jessie, I think you’ll find the people ‘starting’ battles aren’t me (in fact, these people have assiduously dragged my name into debates in which I have played no role and have no interest, purely to distract from their own misbehaviour). In any event, I put the link here because it’s relevant. If Ms Layne – or you – object, that’s totally tough titty. Since RR authors and editors and supporters are endlessly lecturing the world and their aunt about how to manage themselves ‘professionally’, and purport to be experts on romance epublishing, when they are no such thing, they can hardly complain when yet another ill-judged post on the subject is linked.
In other words, bite me.
Hopefully we can agree it’s some RR authors not all RR authors whose comments and conduct could be better thought out.
I am new and was reading through. Normally I stay out of stuff.
But, I am sorry. I have to agree with Jessie.
Ann, regardless of what that woman posted on her own blog, it is quite obvious you are just using this to create a flame war. But, I can also understand that you may not want to admit to this. I am sure that there are more mature things to do and better uses for your time.
Such statements from a different blog are not relevant to what this post was about. No one will bite you because that is far more attention than you deserve. By posting this, you have sunk to the level that you have attributed to the blog poster.
On another note.
I am sorry that the Quartet Press did not work out. I feel bad for all who were involved.
Many seem to have used this venture as a symbol for an optimistic future in epublishing. I am also sure that this new medium will keep forging ahead and that growing pains are to be expected. It is a nascent and inchoate media at the moment but is rapidly becoming something more.
I know I’m late to the discussion, which seems to have devolved away from the original point, but since I’m one of the 7 authors “destroyed” by this development, I thought I’d weigh in.
I obviously can’t speak for anyone else, but my career really is not affected by Quartet Press’s closing. I had my eyes wide open when I submitted to them. ANY startup company in ANY business—yes, ANY business—is a risk. A huge percentage of them fail, even when the entrepreneurs and professionals launching them do everything “right.” So while this came as a complete shock, it wasn’t at all a surprise.
It’s not possible for any small publisher to get a business entirely set up with no publicity whatsoever and launch with no content. I’m not personally prepared to condemn them for not being foresighted enough to know something they hadn’t learned or predict something they didn’t expect.
Far, far better, IMO, for them to make this decision now than to try to work through the obstacles and fail on the other side of the launch. I’m not harmed in the least, except for having a much better book than I had a month ago! 🙂
I feel worse for Angela James, of course, than I do for myself, and also for the people whose hard work and passion has ended in this disappointment.
“Ann, regardless of what that woman posted on her own blog, it is quite obvious you are just using this to create a flame war. “
No, not at all true. I *am* trying to draw attention to the shameful behaviour, and I make no apology for that. ‘That woman’, Jamaica Layne/Jill Elaine Hughes, is pedalling blatant falsehoods and slurs in at four different locations – her blog, Absolute Write, the EREC blog, and on Publisher’s Weekly – claiming that the SBs and Dear Author gave QP bad advice which led to QP’s failure, and that DA trashed RR and praised QP because Jane Litte had supposedly signed a contract for a novel with QP. That is a complete and utter falsehood, which Layne knows to be the case. She is busily whipping up attention for this lie and her views, but god forbid it be reported for the garbage it is. She’s jumping up and down with glee on the misfortune of QP, its authors and Angela James, but shhh, don’t tell anyone about it? For fuck’s sake.
You want to smack me for some infraction of manners? We have a prominent spokeswoman, author and editor trashing a fallen rival in the most loathsome manner, and this is okay with people? Is this the same Romance community that regularly gets itself into a lather over ‘mean reviews’ and lack of professionalism?
I give up, seriously. Ethics isn’t just a county in England. Professionalism isn’t just keeping the vicious slander to your private IMs. Ravenous Romance, and Jamaica Layne, wants to be part of – represent even – the Romance community, and the epublishing industry. I tell you, RR and that woman have done the reputation of both far more harm than the failure of one company before it opened its doors, and what Layne is doing now is disgusting, unethical, and deserves to be censured for the loathsome act it is.
I think what Anne is saying and what she posted is quite relevant to this situation. Did it ever occur to anyone that one of the reasons for QPs start up was due to the fact we were all looking for good solid e-pubs that published quality work? Ravenous came out with all the experts too, and claimed to be heading in that direction. Then we discovered just the opposite was true. It looked more like they were in it for a fast buck. When pointed out to them, they screamed mean-girl mentality. Wrong. Readers and writers all have a stake in the future of DP. And DP will never be recognized as anything more than some books thrown together and shoddy editing if we don’t hold the people within this industry up to some kind of reasonable standards.
And once all this was pointed out to RR and they screamed mean-girl, did they do anything to redeem themselves after it was proven the editing was shoddy, etc.? No. More of the same. And there are a lot of authors I know who are with RR and tell me just how bad things are there. No contact for months in addition to the editing issues. And these authors are nice people just trying to make it in this industry like everyone else. But it seems to them that if you don’t play the RR game, that you get left out. As in if you don’t come out and publicly scream mean-girl just like JLayne does.
And no, I don’t want to rehash the whole “what’s wrong with RR” issue. Just trying to point out why it’s important to remember all of that. It’s wrong of JLayne to blame the failure of QP on SB and DA. It’s obvious where her thinking comes from. She is still livid over the obvious. And since it is being tossed around that we—the readers and authors who bought into QP—did so because certain blogs heralded the hype for QP, then JLayne’s post becomes pertinent. While bloggers can have opinions, it’s up to each of us to make our own decisions.
To say that SB or DA single-handedly closed down a pub with bad advice as JLayne said, or to say that readers and authors just blindly followed a blog’s advice as I’ve seen it said other places (maybe even here—not sure as I’ve read so much about it everywhere now that which blog and which commenter said what is getting really fuzzy, lol), but to say readers and authors just follow along as if we don’t have a brain is insulting as hell.
I for one watched QPs entry to e publishing with great interest. Their hiring of Angela James seemed to be a good direction and lent them a great deal of credibility in my opinion. You can’t argue with Angela James’ business sense, editorial skills, and knowledge of this industry can you? But here we go! The inference in JLayne’s blog is that Angela James somehow deserved this and that DA and SB somehow deserve some kind of blame too. Why”? Because they stood up for this industry and dared to demand quality? Come on people. It’s trash and you know it. Instead of saying that Anne is starting something she shouldn’t, you should be pissed as hell that once again, someone within this industry is spreading crap like that and you should call them on it. It’s a matter of standing up for what is right and what is just plain wrong. Holding the people within this industry to higher standards.
In this instance, I think people are focusing on Ann Sommervilles’s name and not the content of her comments. The Jamaica Layne link was of interest to me and I find its discussion relevant to the Quartet Press issue in general.
OT, but could we please please please stop referring to digital publishing by the same acronym used for double penetration? I don’t know about you guys, but every time I see “DP” all I can think about is getting fucked in two directions at once. Maybe if that were one of my fantasies, the positive connotations would outweigh the negative, but as it is, I can’t see it without wanting to giggle.
If we must use a shortened form for digital publishing, might I suggest “digipub”? Sure, it makes me think of kids’ cartoon monsters from Japan, but at least it isn’t synonymous with being anally violated.
I sat on the panel at the Rogue Workshop at National too and I don’t work with Quartet, never did. I quite like Kassia and I’ve read Booksquare a long time, still doesn’t mean I’m part of a cabal. It was a workshop on the medium – and many people were part of it. I don’t work with any of them but Angie when she was my editor at Samhain. Just because you work with people on a workshop doesn’t mean you’re doing a damned thing more than working on a workshop.
All this stuff about how Angie was secretly working for QP because she was friendly with them or because she likes Jane or Sarah or whatever boggles my mind. First because it’s hugely presumptuous and second because I know Angela James and while she’s not perfect, she’s up front with her intentions and she’s not deceptive that way.
It’s a shame QP is gone. It’s a shame people lost contracts and it’s a damned shame someone like Angie was wooed and then lost her job over something already known at the time. THAT angers me a lot and yes, it angers me a lot because Angie is a friend and I respect her skills as an editor and a spokesperson for the medium.
As for the other stuff, people who like to talk about karma will hopefully know the pleasure of experiencing it.
Thank you.
I used to find these assertions amusing; I mean how could anyone seriously believe that anything like this?! Now I find them ridiculous, and at best a reflection of some strange sense of powerlessness that leads to truly unbelievable blame scenarios. And I think there is a larger significance to this sense of powerlessness, but that’s another issue for another day.
I have come to accept that what I see as appalling beyond explanation—authors stalking/threatening other authors, authors stalking/threatening readers, readers stalking/threatening readers, authors stalking/threatening bloggers, etc.—is deemed acceptable amongst certain groups of people. And like political extremists who try to distract average voters from relevant issues through whacko grandstanding, the folks who think it’s okay to threaten other authors or stalk bloggers or make up things to justify their appalling behavior are probably not capable of being reasoned with. IMO there’s something fundamentally wrong with so many things that go on within these online communities—and I mean wrong like, ‘what the hell is wrong with these people?’ as well as, ‘I cannot think of a situation in which this would be even vaguely okay.’ And it’s so obviously wrong that if someone can’t see that, I don’t think any amount of rational, well-constructed argument is going to convince her/him otherwise, because at that point something other than reason is driving the conviction.
Nor do I think doing the jig on QP’s grave is ever, EVER, going to vindicate an outfit like Ravenous Romance’s bad reception in some quarters of the Rom community. Because IMO they earned that bad reception independently and repeatedly. So folks like Layne/Hughes can talk all they want about karma, but it will not wipe away the memory of those infamous Romance as “porn” and “smut” comments, the promises to “blow the competition out of the water,” or the IMO intentional exploitation of the Romance label in order to gain market legitimacy and $$ for many books that have absolutely no aspirations to the genre.
No 100 deaths, even, of 100 Quartet Presses could make a press like RR look better. The only thing that would accomplish that is professional behavior of its public representatives (publishers and editors, and to a lesser degree, authors), solid writing and editing, prompt payment for authors, and respect for the Romance genre and readership. And if those doing the jig on QP’s grave can’t see that, IMO no amount of arguing is going to catalyze the epiphany. All you have to do is follow the public responses on the part of the QP principals (and it’s this type of classy and intelligent presence and self-awareness that makes me so sad they could not make a go of it under current conditions) to see how seriously, fundamentally, unambiguously wrong all that other shit is. And I am trying to remain in a place where I trust that most people can see that.
At the very least, I really hope that as the digital marketplace continues to evolve there will be more room for new ventures, for more competition, and for greater diversity of books and sub-genres. We’ve seen how digital publishing can serve as an alternative to an increasingly consolidated NY pub environment, so hopefully that independent spirit will continue to grow and more healthy competition will push the bar higher and higher.
I have to agree with Natalie, above. I think to have a chance of this venture working, QP needed to leverage the reputations and connections of the founding partners as they did, with a big PR splash. The decision to stop short of their actual launch must have been a difficult one. It may be easy to MMQB this from our armchairs and say they should have done better, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make the best they could of what happened. Publishing ventures have failed with a lot more collateral damage.
As for the RR response (the JLayne one, and not meaning to suggest that she speaks for all, or even most, RR authors), it’s really par for the course, isn’t it? Personally, I love the way Jane has responded—must remember to write a “review” of her “book” later. I don’t think Ann was wrong to post that here at all; I had already seen it, but if I hadn’t, I would have appreciated the link.
Here’s another link to a related blog and set of comments, courtesy of the smart and no-nonsense Ann Aguirre.
@Natalie Damschroder
>>>Far, far better, IMO, for them to make this decision now than to try to work through the obstacles and fail on the other side of the launch. <<<
<
I’ll keep an eye out for your book. Sounds like it will be a class act.
@Joanna Bourne:
Thank you! 🙂
Hear, hear! There’s no amount of logic or evidence that will change the minds of some folks.
@SonomaLass: I think there’s a lot of truth in Ann Aguirre’s post, but I also think the problem is much more generalized in (at least) the Romance community. In fact, I think personalization (indeed, overpersonalization) has been the currency of publisher and author branding, bookselling, and reader loyalty. Readers often refer to authors by their first names, authors are sometimes required to put “Dear Reader” letters in their books (some of the Harlequin lines, for example), and the model of reader/author interaction is, I think, often intended to build personal identification between an author and her books, and thus, for the reader, between the reader and the author. I think that with generational shifts in the industry and the reader/authorship this is changing, but I do think it’s still a significant issue.
And having thought a little bit about how, for example, someone can equate a snarky review or book razzing with a deep personal violation, and answer such with a clearly personal attack, I think that the personalization paradigm is a large part of the answer. So a negative review, especially if, say, it’s posted by an author (aspiring to be pubbed or already pubbed), can be met with the equivalent of “I’m gonna cut you for that, bitch” as if that’s a perfectly reasonable and natural response. Because *everything* is taken as personal, so even the most out of whack responses can be justified in some quasi moral or ethical terms.
This is one of the reasons I think it’s so very important to keep discussion alive over the determination of what is and isn’t personal, and what should and shouldn’t be directed/received that way.
@ Teresa
As a RR author, I completely agree with these comments. I do not engage in the “mean girl” screamfest, nor do I jump on every blog that calls RR on its business practices. And I have been left behind to a certain extent.
Please, do not judge us all by the JLs. I am in this business to write, to create and share stories. I am a writer of romance, not smut or porn. I write romance because I love romance.