Lmst

@romancelandia @bookstodon #Romancelandia #IndieAuthors #Readers

Royalties are not operating capital. Royalties should never be touched.

Every small/indie press implosion I've witnessed in the last twenty years (far too fucking many) has stemmed from publishers using royalties as operating capital, then defaulting on royalties and defrauding the authors.

Definitely not behavior to encourage.

Olivia Waite @oliviawaite.com on Bluesky (timestamp March 21, 2025 at 12:51am):

I'm going to be very blunt and say: do not send Atthis Arts any money or manuscripts. The four-alarms red-flag phrase here is "borrow to pay due royalties".

Let me explain for those who don't already know roughly how money works in small presses.

Posted in response to E.D.E. Bell @edebell.com on Bluesky saying:
Can I ask people something? Before I post over there? Atthis Arts is struggling hard. I promised no more GoFundMe and I won't do another. We have an empty account and almost not sales. Our Patreon keeps dropping. I can't pay A.J. We'll have to personally borrow somehow to pay due royalties.
Timestamp for E.D.E. Bell's post March 20, 2025 @3:27pm

Olivia Waite @oliviawaite.com on Bluesky:

A copy of a book is sold, the money goes to the publisher. If they paid the author an advance, they keep any royalties until the advance amount is reached (also known as "earning out"). If the book never earns out, the publisher loses money on the deal (clawing back an advance is super, super rare).

If the book earns out or there was no advance, royalties go to the author. The publisher does not get to use them for, say, office supplies and then pay the author later--they can only go to the author.

Or they should. This is 101-level publishing. Writers might not know it, presses must.

Olivia Waite @oliviawaite.com on Bluesky:

When you say royalties are due, that means there have been books sold. So where did the money from those sales go? Why is ti not available to pay the authors it's owed to?

It reveals you have been shorting your authors to keep the press afloat.

Ahd here's the real kicker: if people are urging you to support Ahhis Arts because they publish bold, risky trans writing and trans author need support...that means Atthis Arts has been shorting trans authors to protect Atthis Arts.

That's not behavior to encourage.

Atthis Arts, a family owned and operated press, is doing a fund drive to cover unsexy things like operating costs, and sexier things like publicity and new projects.

Atthis Arts has published a lot of great work.1 Last year’s lineup included Embroidered Worlds: Fantastic Fiction From Ukraine and the Diaspora, Rosalind’s Siblings, and Pluralities. Coming soon is work like Heretic, the conclusion of Gregory A. Wilson’s Gray Assassin trilogy, and a translation of The Factory, a novel by Igor Mysiak, who was killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Independent presses like Atthis Arts do a lot with very little. Take them away and the literary space becomes much less varied and vital.

Atthis Arts is trying to get to $15,000 on a GoFundMe campaign. Check out the April Rally page for more information on other ways to help.

I’m personally grateful for the existence of Community of Magic Pens, a delightful anthology that gave me one of my first pro-rate sales. ↩︎

https://aphowell.com/2024/04/22/small-press-fund-drive/

#atthisArts #eDEBell #embroideredWorlds #fantasy #fiction #fundDrive #fundraiser #gregoryAWilson #igorMysiak #inclusiveFiction #indiePress #pluralities #queerFiction #rosalindSSiblings #scienceFiction #smallPress #translation

Look what arrived!

Love the cover design. And the cover has an interesting almost soft touch feel to it - maybe from the independent printers?

Very good work, so happy to have backed this project and with what I've received. Thanks to everyone at Atthis Arts and all who worked on bringing this to life.

And of course, thanks to all the writers for providing their works!

Слава Україні!

@bookstodon @atthisarts @edebell @Valya

#EmbroideredWorlds #AtthisArts #Ukraine #Bookstodon