Industry & Advocacy News
March 29, 2024
In recent months, the Authors Guild’s legal services department has seen a surge in micro-publishers failing to meet their contractual obligations to authors. Two of the most egregious examples are TouchPoint Press and Adelaide Books. Guild members have reported numerous serious issues with these companies, ranging from failure to pay royalties to lack of advertising and promotion to non-responsiveness to authors’ complaints. Our legal team is working to resolve these issues for members who have contracted with these entities, but we strongly urge other authors not to sign up with them going forward.
The legal services department started receiving many complaints about TouchPoint Press in 2023. All involved similar issues, including missing royalty payments, lack of general communication from owner Sheri Williams, failure to publish in a timely fashion, and failure to respond to termination requests.
After trying to contact Ms. Williams multiple times in the summer of 2023, we were able to reach the one remaining senior editor at TouchPoint (we understand that most of those hired by Ms. Williams had not been paid and had stopped working for her), who informed us that Ms. Williams had been in and out of the hospital. We were able to reach Ms. Williams in January and March and are continuing to work toward a resolution of these issues.
At this point, Ms. Williams has agreed to revert rights to our authors who still need reversions and is working towards payment. We are awaiting confirmation that the reversions and payments have been made. Several authors have expressed skepticism that Ms. Williams will make good. We will stay on top of the situation and be ready to take further action if she does not follow through with her promises.
Complaints concerning Adelaide Books and its owner and editor Stevan Nikolic have been coming into the Authors Guild for several years. These complaints include failure by Adelaide to adhere to its contractual obligations for advertising and promotion of its authors’ works, failure to provide contractually mandated royalty statements and payments, and failure to provide prepaid copies of books that authors were obligated to purchase before signing a contract.
The Authors Guild’s legal services department has attempted to solve these issues with Mr. Nikolic on behalf of our affected members for some time, but he has continuously failed to adhere to the deadlines he has set and become unresponsive once they are missed. While a number of our members have had their rights reverted to them, we have at least fifteen authors who still need files, reversions of rights, or both. Mr. Nikolic has sent emails to Guild members saying that he is continuing to work on these issues, but he has not addressed the outstanding royalty payments, royalty statements, and unfulfilled pre-purchase book reimbursement payments.
After not hearing from Mr. Nikolic for months, we have advised our members that due to Adelaide’s breaches, they can terminate their agreements with Adelaide and reclaim their rights. We are going to write a legal opinion supporting our members that reiterates this and are writing a letter to Mr. Nikolic informing him of these reversions. We will continue to monitor the situation.
