Down and All the Way Out

 It’s been a couple of weeks since Down & Out Books expired but I like to let things marinate before opining. As a former Down & Out author who was there during the glory days but got out while the getting was good, I may have a unique perspective worth sharing.

 I’ll start by saying I am grateful for the opportunity Eric Campbell provided me, as well as the support I received from everyone at Down & Out. I was proud to be a member of that group, especially when I saw who my peers were. Bouchercon was made even better by the opportunities to get together with the Down & Out family. Taking over an off-site bar in St. Petersburg and holding our own Noir at the Bar in New Orleans stand out. I’m smiling at the memory of those events.

 So what happened? I’ll try to be as clear as I can in drawing the line between what I know is fact and my own speculation. Eric stepped back a little to take on a franchise opportunity involving home electricians. Why, I don’t know. Entrepreneurs often find running an enterprise not as much fun as starting one up. Maybe he wasn’t making the money he wanted or needed. What I know is that he became less engaged with Down & Out.

 Among the ways this manifested itself was in a lack of accountability. Quarterly statements specified in contracts arrived annually. Interaction with the authors dropped significantly, at least for me. Getting the books out didn’t change, but Eric didn’t handle that end.

 My seventh Penns River novel, White Out, released in July of 2022. I had a good feeling about that book and several people told me it was the best thing I’d written. I signed up with a well-regarded marketer to see if we might be able to boost sales. The plan was to take place in two phases. After the initial effort, I’d check to see if sales increased. If so, we’d go for Phase 2. If not, we were done.

 The campaign ran and I sent an e-mail asking for sales figures and if Eric noticed any trends. (Editor’s Note: This would not have been necessary had I been receiving timely quarterly statements.)

 No reply.

 I tried again a few weeks later.

 No reply.

 A subsequent effort through another channel bore no more fruit than before.

 I was spending my own money in an effort to boost sales that would profit Eric as well, and he was ghosting me. This set me to wondering if the benefits of being a Down & Out author still outweighed the frustrations. (See “The Reward to Bullshit Curve Redux.)

 I invoked my six-month notice to cancel the contract for Bad Samaritan, the only Nick Forte novel published by Down & Out, and was working on a schedule to recover the rights to the Penns River novels when my annual quarterly statement arrived. Apparently the author’s copies I’d ordered to hand sell outweighed my earned royalties; I owed Down & Out money.

 Fair enough. If I owed, I owed. I went over that statement with a fine-toothed comb and found a dozen or so copies I knew had been sold to the Suffolk (VA) Mystery Authors Festival were not included. I immediately wrote to Eric. He replied this time, saying he made a typo when entering the sales in the database.

 That was the straw that broke my back. I wrote Eric to tell him that if my contractually mandated “quarterly” statements were only going to come out annually, they could at least be accurate. (To myself, I wondered how many other sales may have been “misfiled” over the years.) I used a quote from The Maltese Falcon – business should always be conducted in a businesslike manner – and requested the return of all rights, including the source files used for publication, to all my books or I would invoke the termination for cause clause in the contract. Eric made no counterargument and I received everything I asked for within a matter of weeks.

 A lot of my friends are – er, were – Down & Out authors. Their treatment by Eric when he folded the tent is reprehensible. One received his ‘going out of business’ notice a week after his new book dropped. He’ll never see a dime from it. Another had a significant sale take place since the last statement. He’ll never see any of that, either, even though it should have been included in a quarterly statement, were they being delivered.

 I make no accusation of malice or fraud on Eric’s behalf. I’ve tried hard to consider his actions, or lack thereof, as sloppy business practices. Everything I learn about his treatment of authors and contractors, especially as the end grew nearer, makes that harder to do. The editor and cover artist I’d grown to love working with were unavailable for my final Down & Out novel, The Spread. I’ve since learned this was due to “financial difficulties with Eric.” Honorable people aren’t like that.

 Eric turned away from his authors despite obligations defined by contacts he wrote. I understand no one was getting rich at Down & Out, but the authors Eric ignored were entitled to expect a level of professionalism in their intercourse with him. What they received was an intercourse of another kind.

 I enjoyed all my interactions with everyone else at Down & Out. Lance Wright did yeoman’s work handling all the nuts and bolts of bringing a book to life. Eric Beetner’s covers were uniformly excellent and Chris Rhatigan’s editing made every book he worked on better. I particularly appreciated how he came to learn my style and helped me sand off the rough edges. I consider all three of these gentlemen to be my friends.

 Down & Out Books left a legacy in the landscape of small press crime fiction. A lot of authors and anthologies won awards for books published there. It’s a shame things ended as they did. If any good comes of this, let it be as a cautionary tale to writers so eager to land a contract – any contract – that they do not hold their publishers to the same standard of professionalism the publisher demands of them. For us, writing is a calling and an art. It’s business to them, and there are no noble failures to a business. You make money or you’re gone. Never forget that.