Over on BlueSky, authors are sharing their #unbound horror stories. It’s awful. So much worse than I imagined. It’s Alan Dean Foster vs Disney all over again.
Unbound went into liquidation and immediately a new company, Boundless, popped up. They now own all of Unbound’s assets … and none of its debts.
There are so many authors owed tens of thousands of pounds each. Many of them have no other source of income and this represents a year’s worth of royalties.
And #Boundless are stringing these authors along. Saying things like: We feel terrible so we’ll make goodwill payments of as much of your outstanding royalties as we possibly can.
That leaves authors having to choose between:
A. Playing nice and letting #Boundless keep selling their books, hoping they’ll someday get some of the money they’re owed (while allowing that figure to increase daily); or
B. Claiming rights reversion on the basis of nonpayment, thereby cutting their losses to an entire year’s worth of income and having to start fresh on their own.
I supported several books through Unbound, bought others, and borrowed some from my library. Seeing how they’ve shafted so many people out of so much money, I’m really feeling like I participated in this scam. It’s awful. I’ve lined the coffers of management at the expense of the authors.