Bethany's Woodshed on front page of Sunday NYTimes Business section

There is a lengthy article in last Sunday's New York Times business section about Anne Willis, the founder of Bethany's Woodshed. She has published many spanking authors on her Blushing Books imprint. However, many of the authors have been suing her, claiming they haven't been paid the royalties they are owed.

Quite a surprise reading this!

You can read the story here.

An amazing read. It's sad to hear of so much talent and so many potential good books having gone to waste due to mismanagement. Even more amazing it was to read about it in the NYT.

I'm afraid getting paid was often a problem. Such a shame. I spoke to them several times and they seemed basically nice people, but they needed to pay their authors. It could have been a good business.

Thanks for the reference. I'll have to take a look at it. I am sorry to say I am one of those authors. They published my first book several years ago. Once it was published and on the market, I never heard from them again, which prompted me to come to LSF (a move that has been very beneficial and one that I have never regretted). I can honestly say Blushing Books did me a very big favor.

I have to say the article makes for astonishing reading. A few of the accusations I was familiar with - such as a number of authors not being paid - having had exchanges with the authors myself. I was also aware of the crazy contracts she was getting people to sign up to, apparently described by publishing experts as "onerous and outside of industry standards". But the rest of the Times article reads like a horror show and includes:

- that she'd threatened authors with lower royalties and defamation lawsuits if they defected.

- had the company's membership of the Romance Writers of America suspended and barred from attending their conferences.

- added clauses to contracts without notifying the author.

- created fake badges to attend conventions without registering.

- that she had a previous conviction for embezzlement.

- that she'd set up multiple publishing accounts on Amazon (10 alledgedly) which is wholly in violation of their terms, and used employee names, addresses and tax IDs to open additional accounts (seemingly without telling them!)

- that when their production manager, accounts manager and editor in chief all resigned at once, she filed a police report claiming that her production manager had embezzled from the company which resulted in her being arrested in her home. No evidence was ever provided of the alleged embezzlement.

I thought the situation with Ellora's Cave a few years ago was bad but this is on a whole new level.

We LSF authors are fortunate to be here and with LSFPubs. Thanks, Februs and flopsy!

A shame. I will never understand why some people insist on taking the slimey route even though they get caught frequently, and could probably have made as much or more by playing it straight.

Are they linked with Stormy Night Publications? I seem to recall they cross promoted books between sites/publishers ....

At least one of the people who run Stormy Nights did work for Blushing Books and then seemed to break away to set up his own business. He never said why, but he (James) is scrupulously honest and straightforward, so it's probably not hard to guess why he broke away. Certainly, Stormy Nights pay on the dot every month.