Reality Blows

           All right, so remember how in October 2019 I posted a jubilant announcement that my short story "Unreality," while not accepted for the anthology I'd originally submitted it to, had been accepted by Karen Otto of Alban Lake Press in another capacity and would be published as a standalone ebook in their Infinite Realms Bookstore? If not, you can find the post here (unfortunately, you won't be able to go back in time and warn my sweet, younger, optimistic, doomed self about the absolute hell she's about to go through. Believe me, I've tried.).

          This wasn't my first rodeo with Alban Lake; my short story "Gator Girl" had appeared in the Midnight in the Witch's Kitchen anthology edited by L.A. Story (and I still don't have enough nice things to say about her, or that experience overall; I'm never gonna regret that one, at least), and I've been publishing with other companies for a while now, so I figured I was in a good place here and could celebrate what looked like my latest success. It was also to be my first experience with royalties, to be paid, according to the contract, in a lump sum at the end of the year-long publishing period; fifty percent of every "Unreality" sale would go to me—granted, it was a short-story ebook, so it was being sold for 99 cents, so it wasn't like I was going to be rolling in Stephen King money by October 2020, but it was still something, which as a broke-ass struggling writer I sure was looking forward to.

          But the course of publishing never did run smooth, and there were some setbacks from the get-go. Looking back now I can see them as major red flags I should've paid attention to, and I won't lie, I was concerned about them at the time, too. But as I'd said, I'd worked with this company, if not this specific editor or in this capacity, before, so I granted them a far higher benefit of the doubt than I would've had it been any stranger off the street, and hence the next year unfolded as it did.

          The publication date in the contract was originally set as September first, 2019. For those of you who don't know the ins and outs of the publishing business that well, usually before a project goes to print the publishers will send the author a copy of said work for them to preview any changes the editors might've made, or make any last edits of their own, to make sure it's an approved version of the work that goes out into the world (and boy, do I have a doozy of a story for another day about times when the authors don't get that critical preview proof). This had been the case for "Gator Girl," and I assumed it would be the same with "Unreality." I checked my inbox religiously, waiting for both the preview copy and any information regarding the actual publication—cover images, links, info about where it would be found so I could start promoting the story and start earning those sweet sweet fifty percent royalties. Not only did I never get any of those, September first came and went with no publication and no response to the multiple emails I sent to multiple figures at the company regarding this delay, until finally on October fourth of that year Karen got back to me and finally explained that there was a miscommunication between herself and the ebook editor that resulted in the delay and that "Unreality" was in fact up on the site. As further compensation she offered to keep "Unreality" up for an extra month to make up for the sales time lost to delay and update our contract accordingly. As you can imagine, I was a panic-stricken mess that whole month before I got her response and still more than a little frustrated once I got it, both because of the publishing delay and the struggle it was to get in contact with someone about it—once Alban Lake found out about the miscommunication, which I believe happened with a few works on the site, not just mine, would it really have been so hard to shoot even just a generic email to the authors affected just to let them know what was going on? (And in case you were wondering if I ever got a preview proof, no, I didn't; Karen assured me the only edits made were minor punctuation corrections and therefore no proof was sent, which isn't an uncommon practice in the publishing world.)

          But despite the frustration I agreed to the new terms, understanding the occasionally-unstable nature of the publishing business and that mistakes and miscommunications can happen, and issues can pile up and slow work down, and really, really wanting those royalties, since no form of advance had been paid at all, and so whatever I made through sales would be all I had sold my work for.

          You'd think that once "Unreality" was safely up and running in the Infinite Realms Bookstore the problems would be at an end. God knows I did. After the initial issues I kept posting the link to the ebook in order to promote it, and I thought things had been running smoothly. BUT THEN (God, I hope you read that in a big booming early-2000s movie-announcer voice) in early October of this year, which had given me enough problems without needing an assist from Alban Lake, when I attempted to follow the link to my story, I was directed instead to a message from Wix telling me the page was not attached to a domain yet. Since I knew the year-long publication period was due to expire around then, I thought that was all it was, but was still concerned because my contract stated that if I wished, at the end of the publication year I could opt to renew my contract with Alban Lake or take the story down, and I figured that Karen or someone else from Alban Lake would have gotten in contact with me before the expiration of the publication period to see what I would like to do and discuss when the accumulated royalties would be paid out. When I tried to contact her or her partner myself, however, the emails bounced back to me, saying the addresses were now unable to receive emails or no longer existed, and no other link I had for Alban Lake or any of its properties worked, either, all sending me to the same sort of page I got when I tried to access my ebook. I tried to research what had happened but found no online announcements or news about the publisher folding, and when in a last attempt to make some sort of contact with Karen I checked her Twitter page I found it had been inactive for months, every link included on that page not working as well. I finally managed to, through Twitter, message someone else formerly connected with Alban Lake, who told me over DM that the company no longer existed and that both Karen and her partner at Alban Lake had started new publishing companies, and who gave me an updated email address for her. 

          I can honestly say that even in the depths of my worst what-might-go-wrong panic attacks "The company that's supposed to publish and pay me folds overnight and nobody bothers to tell me" was never one of the scenarios I envisioned. When I finally, finally got a hold of Karen, she was apologetic and told me she'd thought she'd gotten everyone in the initial email, where she announced that Covid and "everything else that's happened this year" had caused the end of the company (she named her newer company in the email, making me wonder just when the hell the one that'd published me went under, but whatever, I guess) and the rights to my story had reverted back to me. That might've been more helpful had I known they reverted back to me before, not just after they were supposed to have anyway, so that I could've done something with the story instead of letting it sit around gathering dust for God knows how long. 

          I know it's probably not my place to tell people how to run their own companies, or deal with said companies' demise, but I wish that she'd posted a more formal announcement somewhere else, like on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, somewhere, announcing the end of the company when it folded, so that at least when I began my frantic Google quest to find out why my story was no longer anywhere I would have found something, even if I did get left off the actual notification email. You know, so that I would know that I'd be earning exactly zero for the story I'd put out into the world, no matter how long it was actually out there and no matter how many copies of it were downloaded (if you bought it, feel free to drop a line below or let me know on Twitter. Not because I'm gonna hunt you down to extract my fifty-percent royalties from you, but because I'm genuinely curious to know how many people out there at least got to enjoy this beautifully bizarre escapade of Jake, John, and Becky's aside from my friend Abby, who does exist). 

          I know everything from daily life to work to financial matters has been out of balance this past year, to put it mildly, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and all the resultant changes it's brought into our lives, and I understand that in a time like this it's easy for things to slip through the cracks or pile up far faster than someone can deal with them, especially when that person's in charge of a company and dealing with multiple projects and people, et cetera. But Jesus Christ, the line has to be drawn somewhere, right? I don't even know how long my ebook was down before I happened to discover this and it could very well have been down during the year-long publication period in violation of my contract, both original and extended. And call me crazy, call me fucking nuts, but I believe an author shouldn't have to find out about anything like this through a Twitter conversation with a former member of the company who wasn't even the one that author had dealt with during the publishing process. I know I'm not getting anything from this deal; you can't get blood from a stone, after all, or royalties from a folded publishing company. And I also know that all of this happened, whether it should've or not, and dwelling on it or bitching about it won't change any of it. That's not what this is. This is an explanation, the explanation that I finally received and am sharing with you now, whether you care or not. I'm sure Karen meant well in all that she did; I'm not trying to put her up against the wall here. But again, this is an explanation of what happened, after it happened, and I'm just putting it all out there, for whatever it's worth.

          That wasn't the last you'll see of "Unreality," or Jake, John, and Becky. There are other venues out there, and I'm exploring my options with them right now. I don't want to put the cart ahead of the horse, but barring an apocalypse (and who the hell knows at this point, right?) I feel somewhat safe in saying this oddball little adventure will be making its way back into our world very soon, and I hope you'll check it out when it gets here. If you did the first time around, thank you; I appreciate it, and you can be certain it's not because I got paid to say that. I hope you enjoyed it, and that you'll stick around to see what weirdness I toss your way next, whether it involves Jake and the Renards or not. I'll be back, and so will they. Until then, stay strange, and keep reading. It'll help you deal with the monstrosity known as reality.