http://wovenbook.com/
So Cedar Fort really likes a book submitted to them and says that they think it will sell well. Cedar Fort gives a contract to these two authors. They write their author bios. One mentions his “partner” instead of his wife. Cedar Fort flips out and drops them.
A couple of thoughts.
1. Just from a business/marketing perpsective, what a stupid, stupid, stupid, bone headed maneuver that was by Cedar Fort. Bad publicity for them, and on a side note way to make my home state look bad, because Cedar Fort is from Utah.
Cedar Fort is a regional publisher and sells lots of books to the LDS market. So by extension, way to make Mormons look bad, you dumbasses. Because the vast majority of Mormons don’t care if an entertainer is gay when we watch their movies, read their books, or listen to their music, you dipshits just made us look like the knuckle dragging stereotypes that got flung around during the election. Yay.
But then again, I’ve got a few other author friends who have dealt with Cedar Fort, and Utah publishers have a terrible rep for contracts and business. This is just another example. Even if you were super worried about getting gay cooties or whatever the hell, just from a pure amoral capitalistic business perspective, there had to be a smarter way to break your relationship. As a retired finance manager, I would demand that whichever moron pulled this stunt should have to commit ritual seppuku in the board room in front of all your share holders.
You aren’t Chic-Fil-A. You didn’t stand up for your beliefs against pressure. I know whoever made this call tried to spin it that way to his investors, but actually you entered a business arrangement with someone, didn’t do your homework, flipped out, dropped them, and now you look like bullies. You don’t look brave. You certainly don’t look smart.
2. This may suck for the authors right now, but this is the kind of publicity that money can’t buy. Once this gets out, some agent/publisher is going to jump on this book. This is national marketing attention gold. (which is the reason I’m taking the time to write this blog post)
At this point, I’d wager that some big name is going to swoop in, pick this up, and use this incident to get national media attention. Publicists love media attention. It will release from a different house. Because of this media attention the authors will sell a thousand times more books than they would have with dinky Cedar Fort, and thus GET PAID. And smart authors always have GET PAID in their mission statements.
Good for them. I don’t work in YA, but I know that a bunch of my regular readers do. I’d be stunned if somebody didn’t pick these guys up.
If the authors read this, seriously guys. Trust me on this one. I’m a businessman first, author second. Usually authors have to murder somebody to get this kind of story that the media will latch onto. Tell your story and spread the word. In the long term this is going to get you a lot bigger audience than anything Cedar Fort would ever be able to get for you. This is the kind of thing that gets you on the Today Show.
3. This pisses me off on a personal level too. I keep seeing authors get black listed for their political opinions, and since the publishing industry is mostly in Manhattan, it is usually writers who lean right (righters?) that get blackballed. Of course, when I talk about this on the internet, proper goodthinking people tell me that’s crazy talk. So this will happen with a gay author getting screwed over by some little dinky regional nobody publisher and that will become national news so the low information facebookers will tell me how the publishing industry is obviously biased the other way… Sigh.
But I’m posting about this anyway, because fuck Cedar Fort. Morons.
