Complaint Review: Red Rose Publishing

In late August there was a major flap at Red Rose Publishing when an author posted a request on the readers loop asking the publisher, Wendi Felter, to please re-send her second quarter statement.  The author’s e-mail had been bouncing and she thought maybe she had missed her statement.  A few other authors posted they had not yet received their statements either and wondered what the problem was.  The authors’ and readers’ loops at RRP had very similar addresses and the mistake the first author made was quite innocent. 

She wasn’t even accusing Ms. Felter of anything.  She honestly thought her statement had bounced. These queries, of course, were met with the now-infamous vitriolic letter of venom calling the Red Rose authors ungrateful wretches in much stronger and more profane terms.  One of our male authors responded asking Ms. Felter who she thought she was addressing us that way and I, for one, thanked him privately for standing up for us.  In early September Ms. Felter’s letter and Rob Shelsky’s response showed up on Dear Author, along with the story of Kat Holmes’s struggle to regain the rights to her one contracted book and two books that Felter tried to publish without valid contracts (one under the name L. J. Holmes, Kat’s mother, who did not sign a contract on Kat’s behalf). 

None of us knows who sent that information to Dear Author, but it doesn’t matter. The post set off a firestorm and the comments were full of authors, editors and cover artists who seemed to appear out of the woodwork, many of whom had left Red Rose and had not been able to get their rights back from Felter.  Many had waited out their contracts in vain.  There were stories of poorly edited books and books published without authors being sent the ARC first. I was all too familiar with the latter.  Felter published my book, Rock Bound, without sending the ARC to me and I was ashamed of it.  When I asked her to make changes, she told me how difficult it was to re-format the book. 

I asked her to tell me how to do it and offered to help format it if she’d let me make the necessary changes.  She refused and berated me in her usual way.  I now believe she sabotaged my sales, or did not report them to me.  My book was never sent out for reviews.  I sent it out myself several months after its release.  And the reviewers noticed the same errors I had.  Here’s a quote from Larkspur of Long and Short Reviews:  “I also found a lot of editing mistakes in the text that weren't caught, which is a big issue for me and not the fault of the author (but the editor and publisher). Sadly, it is the author who ultimately suffers for it.”

I could not afford Felter’s prohibitive termination fees and I was waiting out my contract.  When I read the comments from other authors who had waited out their contracts and whose books were still for sale at Red Rose, I realized that would be me all too soon.  So I weighed in and created the Yahoo group, Red Rose Implosion.  So far there are forty-two of us with more joining as the excuses roll out instead of 2010 fourth quarter statements and checks.  I don’t know whether any 1099s are late, since I supposedly only made $7.00 in sales in 2010—which I have not received despite the fact that I’m one of the two or three people who have received an e-mail release of rights. 

I edited for RRP and was fired after I asked for help with marketing and made the error of mentioning that Felter released my book without sending me the ARC.  I’ve never received any payment for editing since then, either, despite the fact that my contract said I would receive royalties for work completed.  Recently, Felter issued an e-mail statement supposedly rescinding that clause of her editing contracts. Each of the forty-two of us has a similar story.  We want to help authors get their rights back from Felter.  If possible, we’d like to help editors and cover artists get their royalties, although we doubt anyone will ever recoup their monetary losses.  We also want to warn people not to submit to her. 

She is very good at using the “you should be grateful to me for publishing you, and if you leave me I’ll see to it that you never get published again” intimidation card.  At RRP Implosion, in addition to helping authors, editors and cover artists find redress for their complaints, we have also compiled a list of publishers we personally know to be trustworthy and honorable.  Yes, we recommend vetting publishers through P & E, Piers Anthony, Writer Beware, etc.  But we’ve been burnt and we’re all still a bit tender, so we recommend looking a bit deeper before submitting.  Most of us are no longer on the RRP loops, so authors are unable to find us.  If you decide to run another story about Felter’s fraudulent business practices, we would appreciate it if you would include our URL.  We offer assistance and support to authors who have been defrauded by Felter and want to pull their books from her. 

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Kindest regards, Rochelle Weber Owner, RRP Implosion Author, Rock Bound ((link redacted)))

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