I, too, hope that Night Shade shape up. I appreciate the private apology I have received from them, and the current press release. They are reverting the rights of my books to me, and have come through with documentation and royalty statements. This is all good stuff.

I may, however, be a touch cynical and note that people have been pointing out difficulties with communication as far back as 2007: my agent has had to read the riot act on numerous occasions and we seriously considered pulling the novels in 08, because of a total breakdown in communication. I still don’t understand the reason for this – there must be plenty of potential interns in the region who could at least be issued with a template of a holding email and a list of contacts. So it’s impossible not to note that the press release has only come after the negative publicity from Brendan and myself.

And when, after years of dealing with someone, you get an email which spells your agent’s name wrong…. Jesus wept, guys.

I don’t see any reason to avoid buying the books your favorite authors who happen to be published by Night Shade, especially as Night Shade has publicly pledged to improve the way it handles royalties.

Jared:

Non-SFWA members who sell to Night Shade during the probation will have that work be eligible, if Night Shade takes the steps we’ve described over the next year.

Scott:

As far as we know at the moment, only a few Night Shade books offered on Webscriptions were unauthorized — and in the cases we know about both Baen and Night Shade appear to be working to fully compensate the authors and/or remove the unauthorized material. There may be more than we know about now; we’ll be asking our own members with Night Shade contracts to let us know.

Critter42:

Yup, we’ll be updating.

My greatest concern is that, though Nightshade did the crime and does the time, they will be damaged in a way that will make the unable – or give themselves an excuse to say they are unable to continue publishing or promoting the authors (Williams and Moon in particular) who have books in Night Shade hands.

So non-SFWA members who sell work to Night Shade won’t be eligible for SFWA membership?