Nick Mamatas (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nihilistic_kid) wrote,@ 2003-10-29 11:02:00 |
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My absolutely final Soft Skull Press post
Today, peachy-keen blogger Maud Newton posted a long note by former Soft Skull publisher Sander Hicks.
On this blog entry, Sander plays conspiracy theory rhetorical tricks in an attempt to refute a recent NY Press article that explained why he left the firm.
I was the Senior Editor for Soft Skull, a shareholder, a board member, and a major mover and shaker in the company for the time Sander covers here. Two years later, I'm still too annoyed to revisit the claims overmuch, so I'll just point out the major flaws in Sander's argument.
First off, he claims that the Press article is libelous. Funny, if someone was libeling me, I'd sue them, I wouldn't REPEAT their claims in a public forum, thus bringing them MORE attention. But maybe that's just me.
Let's talk about some claims.
That’s just not true. Soft Skull Press, Inc, (SSPI) under my leadership paid modest advances and then fair royalties under good contracts. SSPI has accounting records to prove it.
Mmmm, no. The contracts were mostly a mess, not malevolent, but simply incompetently drawn, until I started writing new ones based on SFWA's template. Some authors did get royalties. MANY did not. The largest sellers, J. H. Hatfield and William "Upski" Wimsatt were owed royalty payments in the five figures, and many other authors like Mickey Z. and Elieen Myles were owed significant amounts. A number of other authors were owed a couple hundred each.
Since filling a power vacuum in my absence, and stepping into an (un-elected) position as Publisher, Nash made it a point to alienate yours truly. Right away, he claimed for vague reasons that I could not come back to the company.
Here's the reason Sander couldn't come back: he alienated everyone, including me, leading to my resignation in late 2001. Nor is it correct that Nash was unelected. I was the one who nominated him for CFO (Sander's dot.com era dreams included a full Director and Officers stucture for a company with less than $300,000 in annual sales) and later CEO pro-tem. I did this with the unanimous, save Sander, cooperation of the board for one reason: the books were such a total mess that most debts were obscured. For the most part, debts were only recorded when they were paid off. As most debts weren't paid off, they were never put into the books. That's the major problem; I don't believe Sander realizes even now how much money he owed in printer bills and royalty payments alone.
I was the one who acquired the best-sellers, Fortunate Son (about Bush), and two other books which made the LA Times and Washington Post Best-Seller lists.
Here Sander rather publicly fumbles. Which book was the LA Times bestseller? Nowhere Man, a John Lennon bio. The Post bestseller? Dance Of Days, the DC punk scene history. What do those two titles have in common. Neither of them are published by Soft Skull anymore. Robert Rosen, author of Nowhere Man, owed nearly ten grand in royalties plus at least a thousand more in excerpting fees that Sander collected and then just kept, pulled his book with the help of the National Writers Union. It's now being published in paperback by Quick American Library.
Dance Of Days is even sadder, as the authors wanted the royalties to go to a charity -- not only didn't they get royalties, Sander asked them repeatedly to lend Soft Skull money to print the book, a horrible breach of ethics which the authors agreed to. Apparently, they finally figured out that they had to cut and run, as Dance Of Days is now being published by Akashic.
This, people, is the track record Sander is standing on. Non-payment of tens of thousands of dollars leading to the company losing some of its bestselling titles. It's not surprising that he mentions their bestselling status, but not their names. That's right out of the conspiracy theory toolbox.
Nash told everyone that due to a bureaucratic snafu our NY State corporate status had been dissolved (due either to an accountant’s misfiling of (S) Corp status, or due to SSPI falling behind on State income tax, it’s still not clear to me which)
Allow me to make it clear: Sander hadn't paid NY State taxes since 1999, leading the state to dissolve the corporation. We were operating without standard corporate protections all that time, until Richard finally found out by digging through all the old correspondence and bills that Sander dealt with by putting in a cardboard box unopened.
What does that mean? That means that the shareholders were potentially personally responsible for Soft Skull's massive debts. How massive were they? Well, we've already seen that four major sellers were owed five-figure royalty payments. The Fortunate Son lawsuit was another $15,000. We're already at over over $50,000, or ten grand more than Sander claims SSPI was in debt for.
Add to this the peculiar fact that we constantly changed printers. Most publishers, once they find a good printer or two, stick with 'em, develop credit, and use them regularly. Every title for Soft Skull was a hunt for a new firm because we owed so much to our previous printers. A number of bills, ranging from $6000 to almost $20,000 weren't being paid, weren't being serviced, and weren't even being acknowledged by Sander.
This is why Nash had to put together a bond; really, if the debts were only about $40,000, why put together a six-digit bond to pay people off? To make sure the company's revenue gets poured into dummy companies?
By April, here were the choices the shareholders were given. Reorganize as a corporation and shift ownership around so that Richard owned 51%, or hang on to the current stock in a non-corporate business entity, and be personally responsible for over $200,000 in debt, split as many ways as stock ownership is split.
Sander turns this into a malevolent powerplay: I had sold friends and family $115,000 worth of stock in the Soft Skull vision. Nash was about to cut their dream down by two thirds.
Private stock necessarily represents corporate worth. While the shares were sold for that amount, they were not, by April 2003, worth that amount. They actually had negative value, as they represented personal responsibility for Sander's fudiciary and legal problems. The company was drowning in bad debt and unconsciously shady business practices.
I let Richard Nash know that I had the majority of shares on my side. We would not vote in favor of his proposal. Richard Nash opened up the meeting by issuing stock to his yes-men, Tom Hopkins and Don Goede, just enough so that they would gain a majority of votes to approve their rapacious plan.
No. The sad fact is this: Sander tried to get his ex-girlfriend, and his "mentor" from his days at Kinko's to side with him, but when they heard the full story, they sided with the Nash strategy. Because in the strictest sense there was no corporation, Nash couldn't have issued new stock to Tom or Don (Don, incidentally, is a decade-long friend of Sander's who ultimately soured on Sander's business practices), and even if the corporation did exist, there was not enough stock in the original issue (200 shares, about 140 of which were owned by someone) to make the trio a majority.
Sorry Sander: your ex and/or your Jimminy Cricket voted with their brains and sided with the Richard plan.
Richard, incidentally, had spent the last 18 months working for free and wrote personal checks of over $35,000 to keep the business afloat and Sander out of bankruptcy court. I will say I was mildly surprised for Richard to push for 51% personal ownership, since I had to cajole him to be CFO and later CEO pro-tem. Well, you know what they say, social consciousness determines social being.
the Shareholders have NEVER received any serious documentation of his case: what exactly does the company owe, what’s in the bank, what have we paid off, what have we made?
This is true. Why? Because the debts were horribly obscured. Even in late 2002, old debts for $500-$1000 were being discovered by Richard. My fave: $800 to a Fortunate Son publicist. I made several media appearances on behalf of Fortunate Son and arranged a number of them and had never even heard of this publicist.
Further, the accountants, OSB, were another creditor at this point, and were holding on to more complete versions of the books until they were paid. Yes, I imagine OSB could potentially be suing SSPI by this point as Sander claims, but it would be because Sander didn't pay them for 2001 and Richard was unable to pay for 2002 because of the debt situation Sander left behind.
As Sander himself points out: Why? Well, they want to get paid.
Yes, just like your authors and your printers!
And maybe they’re also tired of Nash’s bombastic, undiplomatic style.
All I have to say about this is that if one could sue for this, Sander would be scrubbing my floors in a little French maid's outfit right now as part of my billion-dollar settlement with him.
Today, peachy-keen blogger Maud Newton posted a long note by former Soft Skull publisher Sander Hicks.
On this blog entry, Sander plays conspiracy theory rhetorical tricks in an attempt to refute a recent NY Press article that explained why he left the firm.
I was the Senior Editor for Soft Skull, a shareholder, a board member, and a major mover and shaker in the company for the time Sander covers here. Two years later, I'm still too annoyed to revisit the claims overmuch, so I'll just point out the major flaws in Sander's argument.
First off, he claims that the Press article is libelous. Funny, if someone was libeling me, I'd sue them, I wouldn't REPEAT their claims in a public forum, thus bringing them MORE attention. But maybe that's just me.
Let's talk about some claims.
That’s just not true. Soft Skull Press, Inc, (SSPI) under my leadership paid modest advances and then fair royalties under good contracts. SSPI has accounting records to prove it.
Mmmm, no. The contracts were mostly a mess, not malevolent, but simply incompetently drawn, until I started writing new ones based on SFWA's template. Some authors did get royalties. MANY did not. The largest sellers, J. H. Hatfield and William "Upski" Wimsatt were owed royalty payments in the five figures, and many other authors like Mickey Z. and Elieen Myles were owed significant amounts. A number of other authors were owed a couple hundred each.
Since filling a power vacuum in my absence, and stepping into an (un-elected) position as Publisher, Nash made it a point to alienate yours truly. Right away, he claimed for vague reasons that I could not come back to the company.
Here's the reason Sander couldn't come back: he alienated everyone, including me, leading to my resignation in late 2001. Nor is it correct that Nash was unelected. I was the one who nominated him for CFO (Sander's dot.com era dreams included a full Director and Officers stucture for a company with less than $300,000 in annual sales) and later CEO pro-tem. I did this with the unanimous, save Sander, cooperation of the board for one reason: the books were such a total mess that most debts were obscured. For the most part, debts were only recorded when they were paid off. As most debts weren't paid off, they were never put into the books. That's the major problem; I don't believe Sander realizes even now how much money he owed in printer bills and royalty payments alone.
I was the one who acquired the best-sellers, Fortunate Son (about Bush), and two other books which made the LA Times and Washington Post Best-Seller lists.
Here Sander rather publicly fumbles. Which book was the LA Times bestseller? Nowhere Man, a John Lennon bio. The Post bestseller? Dance Of Days, the DC punk scene history. What do those two titles have in common. Neither of them are published by Soft Skull anymore. Robert Rosen, author of Nowhere Man, owed nearly ten grand in royalties plus at least a thousand more in excerpting fees that Sander collected and then just kept, pulled his book with the help of the National Writers Union. It's now being published in paperback by Quick American Library.
Dance Of Days is even sadder, as the authors wanted the royalties to go to a charity -- not only didn't they get royalties, Sander asked them repeatedly to lend Soft Skull money to print the book, a horrible breach of ethics which the authors agreed to. Apparently, they finally figured out that they had to cut and run, as Dance Of Days is now being published by Akashic.
This, people, is the track record Sander is standing on. Non-payment of tens of thousands of dollars leading to the company losing some of its bestselling titles. It's not surprising that he mentions their bestselling status, but not their names. That's right out of the conspiracy theory toolbox.
Nash told everyone that due to a bureaucratic snafu our NY State corporate status had been dissolved (due either to an accountant’s misfiling of (S) Corp status, or due to SSPI falling behind on State income tax, it’s still not clear to me which)
Allow me to make it clear: Sander hadn't paid NY State taxes since 1999, leading the state to dissolve the corporation. We were operating without standard corporate protections all that time, until Richard finally found out by digging through all the old correspondence and bills that Sander dealt with by putting in a cardboard box unopened.
What does that mean? That means that the shareholders were potentially personally responsible for Soft Skull's massive debts. How massive were they? Well, we've already seen that four major sellers were owed five-figure royalty payments. The Fortunate Son lawsuit was another $15,000. We're already at over over $50,000, or ten grand more than Sander claims SSPI was in debt for.
Add to this the peculiar fact that we constantly changed printers. Most publishers, once they find a good printer or two, stick with 'em, develop credit, and use them regularly. Every title for Soft Skull was a hunt for a new firm because we owed so much to our previous printers. A number of bills, ranging from $6000 to almost $20,000 weren't being paid, weren't being serviced, and weren't even being acknowledged by Sander.
This is why Nash had to put together a bond; really, if the debts were only about $40,000, why put together a six-digit bond to pay people off? To make sure the company's revenue gets poured into dummy companies?
By April, here were the choices the shareholders were given. Reorganize as a corporation and shift ownership around so that Richard owned 51%, or hang on to the current stock in a non-corporate business entity, and be personally responsible for over $200,000 in debt, split as many ways as stock ownership is split.
Sander turns this into a malevolent powerplay: I had sold friends and family $115,000 worth of stock in the Soft Skull vision. Nash was about to cut their dream down by two thirds.
Private stock necessarily represents corporate worth. While the shares were sold for that amount, they were not, by April 2003, worth that amount. They actually had negative value, as they represented personal responsibility for Sander's fudiciary and legal problems. The company was drowning in bad debt and unconsciously shady business practices.
I let Richard Nash know that I had the majority of shares on my side. We would not vote in favor of his proposal. Richard Nash opened up the meeting by issuing stock to his yes-men, Tom Hopkins and Don Goede, just enough so that they would gain a majority of votes to approve their rapacious plan.
No. The sad fact is this: Sander tried to get his ex-girlfriend, and his "mentor" from his days at Kinko's to side with him, but when they heard the full story, they sided with the Nash strategy. Because in the strictest sense there was no corporation, Nash couldn't have issued new stock to Tom or Don (Don, incidentally, is a decade-long friend of Sander's who ultimately soured on Sander's business practices), and even if the corporation did exist, there was not enough stock in the original issue (200 shares, about 140 of which were owned by someone) to make the trio a majority.
Sorry Sander: your ex and/or your Jimminy Cricket voted with their brains and sided with the Richard plan.
Richard, incidentally, had spent the last 18 months working for free and wrote personal checks of over $35,000 to keep the business afloat and Sander out of bankruptcy court. I will say I was mildly surprised for Richard to push for 51% personal ownership, since I had to cajole him to be CFO and later CEO pro-tem. Well, you know what they say, social consciousness determines social being.
the Shareholders have NEVER received any serious documentation of his case: what exactly does the company owe, what’s in the bank, what have we paid off, what have we made?
This is true. Why? Because the debts were horribly obscured. Even in late 2002, old debts for $500-$1000 were being discovered by Richard. My fave: $800 to a Fortunate Son publicist. I made several media appearances on behalf of Fortunate Son and arranged a number of them and had never even heard of this publicist.
Further, the accountants, OSB, were another creditor at this point, and were holding on to more complete versions of the books until they were paid. Yes, I imagine OSB could potentially be suing SSPI by this point as Sander claims, but it would be because Sander didn't pay them for 2001 and Richard was unable to pay for 2002 because of the debt situation Sander left behind.
As Sander himself points out: Why? Well, they want to get paid.
Yes, just like your authors and your printers!
And maybe they’re also tired of Nash’s bombastic, undiplomatic style.
All I have to say about this is that if one could sue for this, Sander would be scrubbing my floors in a little French maid's outfit right now as part of my billion-dollar settlement with him.
