So it's my ugly business with Noble that brought me out of lurker-ville on this board. I mostly write adult romances (erotic romances) but when I wanted to pub a YA series, I wanted a pub that also publishes adult content... thinking about making lasting relationships, blah, blah, blah. When i submitted my YA book to them, it was also accepted by two other publishers, but I chose Noble because they seemed to be the best fit.
*sigh* Where to start?? My book came out on their site at the beginning of December of last year and it took me until the end of January to get them to post it to other sites. My most recent royalty statement came in today and as of December of last year, I have made a grand total of $19.84... which means I still have $80.16 to make to earn out my $100 advance. To help put this into perspective... I'm an RWA PAN member. My last release earned me enough in three weeks to make PAN status (I was eligible before, this just FYI for comparison). I got great reviews, so I just chalked it up to YA not being as popular as erotic romance.
The thing is, I did everything I could to market the book and my emails to admin got ignored. I tried participating in YA blog hops... one even asked everybody to list their books at $1.99 or less. I emailed asking about this and I got ignored. This was all before Jill left. Since Book 2 (and book 3 for that matter) was already drafted and my original contract gives Noble ROFR, I had no choice to submit to them.
Then I hear nothing, then Jill leaves, then the authorized author loop gets shut down, then Jill starts calling people names. BIG f'n mess.
The authors that got left out in the cold created a new (private) author loop to help share whatever information we learned about what was going on at Noble. Several people (including myself) sent certified letters asking for our rights back. We were told that the new CEO was "ignoring" such requests and he was going to teach us to behave.
When still hadn't heard anything on my submission, I emailed for a status (I didn't want the new CEO to use an excuse that he didn't know about it to require me to wait another 90 days for them to decide). I was told he didn't even know I existed (which was proof that he hadn't acknowledged my certified letter). But that he would look into it.
Then, one of the other authors gets a letter from their attorney (not going to say who or why) but in the letter there was a screen shot of chat from our private author loop (a chat I had started by the way, so my name was on it). This means he had a mole in our private group (and apparently doesn't care about Yahoo's TOS).
To make a long story short. I finally got a contract offer for my sequel. I emailed him my issues with it, and then for three weeks I emailed for a status. He finally replied that we were so far apart in what they were offering that he didn't think we should bother. Um, really? Isn't contract negotiation a part of the process?? It was like pulling teeth to get him to try to talk about it. Oh, but he did make a point to tell me they had the right to my book, that my modifications to the contract were rejected, and that I was to sign the one provided. Oh, hell no. I told him if he wouldn't even try to negotiate with me, then I was tabling this series.
He is clueless. In fact, I even asked about offering the first book in the series for free when the second one releases. His words were, "I do not believe at all in the effectiveness or appeal of any free market, sales and marketing approach." Really? Then how come one of my other publishers listed the first book in my paranormal series as free on Amazon yesterday and it's already ranked at #14 in Erotica?
My advice... stay away from Noble. We can always hope things will improve... and nobody knows the future, but as of today, I would highly advise against signing anything with them.