I don’t think I’ve ever bought any books from New Concepts, so they’ve pretty much always sailed under my radar, however, I did receive an e-mail from one of their authors yesterday, with “concerns” over the running of the company, and the way they are currently treating their authors.

Her e-mail starts:

“I am an author with New Concepts Publishing. In fact, I’m a very unhappy author with them, along with numerous other authors. I’ve come to you to ask if you were aware of the fact that NCP is a vanity press for the publishers/owners? If I had known this before submitting to them, I never would have done so. But now that I am, I realize how huge a mistake it was.”

She continues:

“I have yet to be paid for my 4th qtr sales. But at least this is not as bad as some of the treatment other authors have faced, or are currently facing.”

My source then goes on to list a number of things that have been happening at NCP of late:

“Repeatedly ignoring or not answering questions and queries by their authors
Questions and queries by authors on the authors’ email loop being slammed by a select handful of “friends” (in both private emails and loop mail)
Publisher’s Liaison slamming questioning authors in email (since authors are not allowed to write directly to the publisher/owners)
Authors never given release dates, or told when their book is out (or if they are given a release date, not releasing it at that time — example in point, one author was told her book would release in Aug., ’07. It was finally released this month.)
Late or no payment (ditto for 1099s)
Misspelled name on the cover, and not correcting it
Wrong cover on the book, and not correcting it
No edits before releasing the book (or extremely poor editing, if any)
Author not given a chance to see final version of book before its release
Not giving the author an ARC, and forcing them to buy their own personal copies once book is out
Limiting an author on the number of copies they can buy of their own books
Denying authors release from their contracts (no buy-out clause in contracts, either)
Publisher/owners using up to 12 pseudonyms (5 known and documented) for their own books, of which 80-90% of all books released are their own
90% of books released onto Fictionwise belonging to publisher/owners, and a very select handful of “inner circle” friends
90% of books being released to paperback being those of the publisher/owners, and that same handful of friends
AUTHOR’S BOOK(S) REMOVED FROM WEBSITE, AND WHEN QUESTIONED, WAS TOLD THAT NOWHERE IN THE CONTRACT DOES IT STATE NCP HAS TO POST THAT BOOK FOR SALE, THAT THERE IS NO “REQUIREMENT” THAT THEY HAVE TO.”

Whew! Well there’s a lot to consider there, how true these issues are, I don’t know, but for those of you who do know, you know the drill. E-mail me at hairylemony @ gmail . com, with your version of events.

The author mentioned that they were a vanity press for the owners/publishers which I must admit I found a tad confusing. I think she’s misunderstood what a vanity press is, and I’m assuming that she means that the owners/publishers are publishing a huge percentage of their own work, which strictly speaking seems to be par for the course for a lot of e-book publishers out there, but this alone doesn’t actually make them a VP house.

Anyway, if anybody else has a beef with the way things are going with the company, or maybe you haven’t been paid for your work in a while (which is usually a good indication that the company is on a slippery slope to bankruptcy) or if anybody has any inside knowledge, please e-mail me.  As usual, I promise total confidentiality.