Booktopia Collapse and New book News!

[sister_raphael]

My goodness I've been so busy writing but there's been a distribution issue with first book!



As you know, my next book was planned to be Bathing, Hygiene and Beauty for Medieval Women, but the other day I was joking around with a friend about an idea I have for a book and then I decided it wasn't so sill and over the last four weeks I've almost completely written it. To be fair, I had a lot of the sources bookmarked as they were very cool and interesting, and it's a topic I get asked about a lot, so I really could talk about it forever.

I've made a very cool cover, which I'll post up under a friend's only post for a sneak peek of that and some feedback, and hopefully the publisher will like it enough to run with it.

In other book news, the collapse and restart of Booktopia, my Australian distributor has been a source of frustration. They owe me 40 books which I have paid for, and won't be reimbursing me for those. I'm applying through my credit card company for a refund as "stock not received" but it's not looking good. I tried to order more stock through my actual publisher in the States. I had to email them as they've updated their website and now there doesn't seem to be an author login section. So I contacted them and the guy I emailled said he couldn't find me, was I sure it was them who published my book, so I sent him a link to my book in his shop on his website. Haven't heard back from him again yet.

The problem is that I literally have no physical stock for book signings or events or selling to the museum, which is how I make most of my money. Buying from the States, paying VAT and shipping won't give me the best resale price either, but I need to have something.

Anyway, much to sort out there, but oh boy.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

That sounds so annoying, I hope you manage to get it sorted out!

[sister_raphael]

Me too. It's a lot of money to me.

[siglinde999]

I don’t understand how they could get back into business and refuse to refund the money you paid. I could understand wanting to put a payment plan in place, but flat-out refusal is completely unacceptable. OTOH, complete incompetence from your American publisher sounds par for the course. Good luck getting both sorted!

[sister_raphael]

It's because it actually went into receivership before it was bought out. The receivership meant there was a set of proceedires given to the stakeholders and people with outstanding orders. Then I guess part of the buy out deal is that the new guys bought it without obligation, since the company essentially collapsed.

My credit card company is looking too encouraging about getting money back. Paypal seens to be honouring their goods not received policy.

[siglinde999]

That makes more sense. I couldn’t understand how they would have been allowed to return from receivership without settling outstanding claims.

[sister_raphael]

It's not incompetence from the publisher. It's not their fault that I have to pay shipping if I want books senr from overseas. As it turns out, when I got my invoice from them, my individual book price was less than quoted, so I WILL be able to have book specials, which is great! The museum buys 30 at a time from me, so it's worth me having them if I can get a few dollars a book. Plus book signings, of course!

[siglinde999]

I didn’t mean incompetence on the shipping costs part. The losing you in their catalogue system and the inability to log in? Totally an IT incompetence problem. Glad you got it sorted, finally.

[sister_raphael]

I've got books coming from the States now, but the shipping is $600 because books are so heavy, so added to the cost of the books themselves, I won't be able to have much in the way of specials, but at least I will have stock.

[sister_raphael]

Shipping turned out to be half that, but still in USD.