I agree, Quinny. I think J-J freaked at their huge returns, as most new publishers do, and realized they are now in serious arrears and are looking for someone to blame rather than looking in the mirror. The lawsuit is BS, but that isn't going to help their bottom line. They're going to need a bailout in order to pay their distributor back.
The problem is that e-publishing is way different from the print world and operates under a different business and promotional plan. I've seen a number of small publishers storm to get a gazillion books on the shelves and forget that every one of those books are dependent upon strong marketing and author promotion that will create demand. Frankly, tho I can't prove it, I suspect this is exactly what is plaguing Kunati as well, given the plethora of insider info I've received.
Oh, absolutely.
I do want to make clear I wasn't saying this wasn't a situation to watch or that it doesn't concern me, or being an "EC is great and you don't know what you're talking about" cheerleader. I don't know what the situation is, at all.
All I do know is my October release (which was technically November as it came out after the royalty period had ended) was my most successful solo release ever, and my December sales were quite good too. So there is money coming in still on the ebook side.
That was not really the case with Trisk; their ebook side had--according to anecdotal evidence and my own experience, at least--not been doing well for at least six months before they declared bankruptcy. And when I say "Not well" I'm talking about books not selling more than five or six copies in that six months. MANY books. Like, over half of their releases. Nobody was buying Trisk ebooks and not many people were buying their print books; part of the reason they were disinvited to RWA was because of their habit of strongly encouraging authors to buy their own books and encouraging authors without print books to "support Trisk" by buying any Trisk print books they found in stores. And by "encouraging" I mean "informing them it was their duty".
And while the DA thread is interesting, to me it's really only "news" if you weren't already aware that EC's print program stinks and has for some time.
I've always been generally happy at EC and been treated well, but I've always thought their print program blows.
Unless you're one of the authors involved in the deal with Pocket, at least. The EC/Pocket program is still going strong afaik.
Oh, and again, my comment re the suit was just conjecture. I don't know anything about it, at all. If I made a mistake about how the system works, it was MY mistake, so please don't attribute it to EC.