R.I.P. CREATION BOOKS

Started by online prowler, March 07, 2013, 04:16:31 PM

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online prowler


After many years of publishing literature Creation Books is now putting in its oars. Sad news.

http://www.creationbooks.com/ 

online prowler

As I understand the backlist titles will be available from amazon.co.uk and the distributor Turnaround for some time.

http://www.turnaround-uk.com/books?op7=contains&filter7=Creation

As you say it was maybe inevitable that they would close shop. Still, they did a good line of quality editions - Peter Sotos being among them. Seems like Nine-Banded Books in US as taken up that legacy.  

HongKongGoolagong

Very sad news. The Cinema Collection, Attack Books, Matthew Stokoe's Cows, American Campgrounds, the 'best of' Rapid Eye collection and the Peter Sotos books and limited editions are all things that no other publisher in the world would have touched - amazing radical and daring publishing, similar to Olympia Press under Maurice Girodias, even down the the lack of money left to pay the authors amidst the general chaos of production.

It's a shame if the campaign led by Brian M Clark contributed to this decision. One of Mr Creation's numerous amusing alter-egos told me last year that he is the most unpleasant and unreasonable person Creation ever dealt with. Best wishes to Mr Williamson/Halibut/Havoc in whatever he decides to do in the future: his place in literary history is assured.

yosef666

I imagine it might have something to do with this: http://www.creationbooksfraud.com/. A lot of authors he published (including Boyd Rice) allege non-payment of royalties, rights reselling without permission, unauthorized translated editions, etc.
Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song and there's always music in the air.

"As long as humans have hands to draw with, topics such as fucking, sucking, tits, ass, sodomy, pink cunts and big dicks along with death, murder, politics and power will always be on our cave walls." -Joe Roemer

HongKongGoolagong

Quote from: yosef666 on March 08, 2013, 02:12:07 PMA lot of authors he published (including Boyd Rice) allege non-payment of royalties, rights reselling without permission, unauthorized translated editions, etc.

Creation Books seemed to be running out of steam and funds before that campaign started anyway. Some of the authors who've put their support behind Clark's campaign really ought to think about how despite the lack of recompense, Creation helped to start their career and get them taken seriously as writers. Like the 'obituary' page says, it was "a free publishing platform for non-mainstream authors" which wasn't a vanity press. And as far as the paper trails, reselling and translation rights business goes, you'd be hard pushed to find any respectable publishing company who doesn't try to sneak all that into the small print on contracts.


Jordan

I wonder if he'll be selling the rights to his back catalogue for someone else to reprint, though I'm not sure who would be up to the task. Nine Banded Books is certainly putting out some things of similar quality, but "Chip" has a day job, and it's really more of a hobby kind of thing, I'd imagine.

online prowler

#6
I just dealt with Creation Books regarding some items for my distro. According to them they will supply books for a while ahead. By the end of the year their releases in stock will be available via a third-party management. Wholesalers like Amazon plus will have books as long as they are available. For those of you wondering ... CB has no Sotos-books in stock. I guess we will se an increase in prices online on these and other titles once the third-party management take over.

yosef666

Quote from: HongKongGoolagong on March 08, 2013, 02:54:31 PM
Quote from: yosef666 on March 08, 2013, 02:12:07 PMA lot of authors he published (including Boyd Rice) allege non-payment of royalties, rights reselling without permission, unauthorized translated editions, etc.

Creation Books seemed to be running out of steam and funds before that campaign started anyway. Some of the authors who've put their support behind Clark's campaign really ought to think about how despite the lack of recompense, Creation helped to start their career and get them taken seriously as writers. Like the 'obituary' page says, it was "a free publishing platform for non-mainstream authors" which wasn't a vanity press. And as far as the paper trails, reselling and translation rights business goes, you'd be hard pushed to find any respectable publishing company who doesn't try to sneak all that into the small print on contracts.


My girlfriend works as a senior editor at a publishing company, and I've done a bit of work in the industry myself. No "respectable publishing company" would sell translation rights or republishing rights that were not covered in the original contract without contacting the author and signing a new contract to that effect, nor would they refuse to pay an author the agreed-upon royalties for their works. That's simply unacceptable.
Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song and there's always music in the air.

"As long as humans have hands to draw with, topics such as fucking, sucking, tits, ass, sodomy, pink cunts and big dicks along with death, murder, politics and power will always be on our cave walls." -Joe Roemer

FreakAnimalFinland

Probably is, but many things work out differently on paper and so called real life.
Of course one should not try to make excuses for certain things, but very often artists, authors or whoever, have quite unrealistic idea of financial value of their work in 2013.
Having your minority-interest book translated to other languages, there simply might not be real profits for ANYONE involved. Merely that thing happened, is achievement alone. Even if everybody put in more effort than they got "paid for"...

E-mail: fanimal +a+ cfprod,com
MAGAZINE: http://www.special-interests.net
LABEL / DISTRIBUTION: FREAK ANIMAL http://www.nhfastore.net

HongKongGoolagong

While Creation Books were more disreputable than some in the business by all accounts, I will stand by my claim that attempting to sneak foreign translation rights into small print on contracts is standard operating practice in publishing, done in the hope (usually justified) that writers are hopelessly impractical types who won't notice until they've signed it. I don't know how many people here have signed a standard music business deal, but a similar trick there is to discount or charge the artist for mysterious 'promotional copies' from accounting and provide mystifying rates for different countries. I had to do this for a track on a mainstream compilation thing once and the royalty statements with things like "-4 pence:Japan" were actually pretty funny, although they wouldn't be if I'd had any genuine wish to make money from it.

Other great Creation Books I forgot to mention: Mark Manning 'Fucked By Rock' and 'Collateral Damage', and the phenomenally weird Jake Chapman book MEATPHYSICS which is like something from a dream or acid trip. The best publishing company of my lifetime.

Jordan

Also, the royalties that the authors are complaining about probably don't amount to much more than somewhere in the hundreds of dollars. I think someone (possibly Brian Clark, don't care enough to check) on that anti-Creation website says something like "he owes me hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars." I would be angry if someone ripped me off for even a hundred dollars, but how much is it costing Mr. Clark to keep that website? It seems like it's not really worth the effort. Probably best to just try and write a new book and publish it elsewhere, or just re-publish the book that Creation published elsewhere. It's not like any of the slighted authors are really making a career out of their work (I'd imagine) and they should probably be pretty happy that their work is even published, and by a notorious publisher to boot.

FreakAnimalFinland

Well, saying "hundreds, maybe even thousands" appears as if he can't really measure what exactly should be paid. There is probably some sort of idea that they made book, he did X copies, and I got Y money, he ripped me off. Without knowing the details of deal, we can't say much.

This has been seen so many times in music business. Band gets deal, expect X% of royalties. If this royalty is not paid in % of physical records, I smell trouble. They'll measure 1000xCD x 12 euro = 12000 euro of money.. where is my several thousands of euros of royalties? And when you really go down to reality of business, in many cases label has not generated income of any relevant level. They probably struggle with several such projects, thinking where this money should be used.

So.. what was the deal? Did artist assume his work is a bestseller? How many copies was made, how it was distributed? Does he know the details of printing costs, shipping, retailer return policies, overall level of prices, etc. Did they work under firm agreed sum of money, or something based on potential profits what was never reached?

Certainly a lot of small publishers are somewhat unreliable. Easiest would be to just honestly tell the breakdown of how it's going to be. But let me think of reality, where guy who could do years of work, get couple of hundred pages book ready and then publisher tells, this is going to sell maybe 100. You get paid royalties when we have covered all the costs and are making profit. And due nature of business, this "profit" ends up being everything else but worth of couple years of work...  It's like saying, "lets do book, you get 20 free books for all the work". And author may ask.. 20 books for ALL this work?!? Then you may try to explain that there just ain't "market". Ask him to go write a blog and join modern world...
E-mail: fanimal +a+ cfprod,com
MAGAZINE: http://www.special-interests.net
LABEL / DISTRIBUTION: FREAK ANIMAL http://www.nhfastore.net


Jordan

#13
People in underground cultures shouldn't be expecting to make much money, and if you're going to hire people to work on a translation with you, say, then you should understand that what you're doing is a labor of love and you probably won't see any of that money back. I'm working on translating this old little book in french of Verlaine's writings on Rimbaud, and have considered paying someone with a good working knowledge of symbolist poetry whose native tongue is french (I grew up somewhere around fifty percent of the time in a primarily french-Canadian household, but I've largely lost the ability) to look over my work, and I've no intentions on publishing the work beyond perhaps a photocopied, self-published limited edition. This will probably take a few years and will certainly cost me money that I certainly won't recoup, but I'm doing this for myself. Mind you, I'm know professional scholar, but if I were, Creation books probably wouldn't be my choice for a publishing house if I had mainstream, or even academic ambitions.

• Also, I fully realize that french-canadian isn't much like parisian french from a hundred and fifty years ago.