Small Press Storm Warnings: Adelaide Books, Propertius Press, TouchPoint Press

Adelaide Books

I’ve written two prior warnings about Adelaide Books, but it seems that a third is in order.

Background: Adelaide, which presents itself as a traditional independent publisher but has a long-standing practice of imposing extra-contractual book purchase requirements, has been the focus of author complaints for many years. These intensified in 2021 and 2022, with authors reporting a range of problems including lagging royalty payment/reporting, poor editing, production and release delays, and major communications issues, with questions and emails going unanswered.

In 2022 the Authors Guild got involved on behalf of members, and (after some initial difficulty getting him to respond) extracted some apparent concessions from Adelaide owner Stevan Nikolic: he agreed to revert rights for authors who wanted to get out of their contracts, to provide digital book files to those who requested them, to pay all royalties currently in arrears, and to refund authors who paid for books (remember, this was a requirement for publication) but never got them.

I say “apparent” because it now seems clear that Nikolic–who, with his wife, moved to Portugal sometime in 2022 and set up a new Adelaide without informing any of the old Adelaide authors–is not cooperating in any meaningful sense. Reports in the Adelaide authors’ Facebook group indicate that, while some authors who asked for their rights back have received reversion letters, others have not–and they and many others also have not gotten the promised digital files, the refunds, or the royalties they are owed and that Nikolic promised to provide.

The Authors Guild is still trying to put pressure on Nikolic, but they’re reportedly being stymied by various delaying tactics and responsibility-shifting attempts (for example, Nikolic is reportedly asking the AG to compile a list of rights reversion requests, even though authors say they’ve been contacting him about reversion for months).

The original Adelaide Books, which still claims a New York City address, is closed to submissions…but Adelaide Books Portugal appears to be accepting them–though it does say that the “publication calendar for 2023 is closed”.

Writer beware.

UPDATE 9/1/23: To the complete un-surprise of anyone who is an Adelaide author or has been following this story, Stevan Nikolic is still not fulfilling his promises to the Authors Guild, and is not reverting rights or providing royalty payments or statements. This has earned him another article in Publishers Weekly–not, apparently, that he cares.

To add insult to injury, Nikolic published his own book in August, which he describes, without evident irony, as “the book that will forever change your understanding of writing and book publishing”. I think most Adelaide authors would agree that their understanding has already changed–and not in a good way.

UPDATE 1/5/25: Visitors to Adelaide’s website are now greeted with this notice:

Given Nikolic’s previous extremely poor record of response, I’ll be interested to hear from anyone who contacts that email address, and what (or if) they hear back. Alternatively, you can contact Amazon via its infringement report form, and use the notice as evidence that your book should be removed from sale.

Propertius Press

Founded in 2012, Propertius Press describes itself as “a small, not-for-profit indie publisher of provocative, engaging literature, non-fiction, and verse for the discerning reader of any age or interest.”

In late 2022, I received complaints from Propertius authors who reported non-payment of royalties (among other unfavorable contract terms, Propertius pays and accounts royalties annually), delayed publication dates, and non-response to questions. (The Authors Guild reported similar complaints from members, and also received no response to its questions.)

Over the past few weeks I’ve heard from additional Propertius authors who say they haven’t been paid. They also cite poor editing, formatting issues, and/or serious production delays; and all say they’ve had major problems with non-response by Propertius staff. Some who received informal reports of sales numbers say they believe that sales have been underreported.

I reached out to Propertius owner Susannah Smith for comment on these issues. She admitted that “not all” authors had been paid, “although many have”, and cited “abysmal” sales since 2021, “an autumn [of 2022] beset by staffing and technical challenges”, various email problems, and her own recent health issues. She indicated that she was working on an update to be provided to all Propertius authors.

I’m always a bit leery of these kinds of “bad things happened” excuses, especially where the bad things occur in clusters–plus, the royalty problems date back considerably beyond the autumn of 2022. I’m also generally not surprised when problem publishers’ assurances fall through. But about a week later, the promised update landed in my Inbox. In it, Susannah summarizes the challenges mentioned above, says that she is looking for someone to take Propertius over, and addresses the unpaid royalties:

She also promises that authors can request rights reversion, which will be granted “promptly and no questions asked.”

Even so, and even if things can be set up so that retailers pay future royalties directly to writers (I’m frankly skeptical this can be done while Propertius contracts are in force: retailers don’t want to deal with authors unless the author is the publisher), this plan still leaves Propertius authors who’ve been waiting a year or more for payment without a timeline.

Propertius is, at least, closed to submissions. I’ll post updates as I receive them.

TouchPoint Press

NOTE: Sheri Williams has announced that TouchPoint is closing. See the 9/16 update below.

In the late 1990s and early and mid-oughts, when paper submissions were still the norm, a common M.O. for fee-charging literary agents was to levy submission fees: charges to supposedly reimburse the agent for the postage, envelopes, photocopies, etc. required to send mss. and/or queries to publishers. Whether billed per submission or charged as a flat monthly or quarterly fee, these charges were generally calculated to yield a profit–and an even bigger one if the submissions were never actually sent out, which did sometimes happen.

This is not, and never was, reputable business practice. Agents do expect writers to reimburse the costs of submission above and beyond normal business overhead–but reputable practice is to deduct these costs from advances and/or royalty payments, or to bill them as incurred–not to charge them upfront, and definitely not to pad them in order to make a profit. Nowadays, of course, pretty much everything is electronic, so submission costs, if any, will generally be minimal. But in the pre-digital era, paper submissions did represent a regular expense, and a less-than-scrupulous agent could leverage that reality into a nifty extra income stream by charging inflated upfront submission fees.

Sheri Williams of the Williams Literary Agency one of dozens of submission fee-charging agents about whom I got complaints in the early days of Writer Beware. From 2001 through 2004, I received multiple documented reports of Williams’ monthly billings. Described in the agency contract as a monthly expense cap for postage expenses (“no more than” $45 or $50 per month), in practice this worked out to a fee at or near the cap every month. Writers received an invoice with the names of around 10 publishers and a fee of $4.52 per publisher: $3.50 for postage and $1.02 for a SASE (a self-addressed stamped envelope, for those who don’t recall those ancient times)–a serious upcharge given that a stamp back then cost 37 cents and an envelope much less than that.

Williams did make some sales to smaller publishers, and claimed to have stopped charging fees around 2004. Sometime between 2006 and 2008, she closed the Williams Agency and set up a new agency called Red Writing Hood Ink. Red Writing Hood Ink still exists–no longer as an agency, but as a paid service division of TouchPoint Press, which Williams founded in 2013.

The above may seem like a long-winded way to get to the point–but I believe that context is important.

Starting in 2015, I received a handful of complaints about TouchPoint from authors who cited production delays, royalty reporting and payment delays, unanswered emails, and generally slow process and communication (similar complaints can be seen here). Not trivial complaints, by any means, but it isn’t always clear whether a trickle of adverse reports over several years indicates a pattern, or simply a series of isolated incidents.

Now, though, a pattern does seem to be emerging, with recent author reports of books failing to be published by contract cutoff dates, contract offers not followed by any actual contracts, and TouchPoint staff citing internal communication problems. Writers inquiring about the delays have received a familiar roster of excuses: Covid, a system crash, staffing shortages.

Sometimes when such complaints start to appear they indicate a sudden crisis–but just as often, they attest to long-standing problems that have reached critical mass. I reached out to TouchPoint for comment, and quickly heard back from Sheri Williams:

Answering author inquiries would seem to qualify as part of “publisher duties”. But that’s just me.

Per its website, TouchPoint Press is currently closed to unagented–which does not necessarily mean all–submissions.

UPDATE: As I noted above, the emergence of complaints about a publisher can indicate a sudden crisis, or long-standing problems that have reached critical mass. It appears that the latter is the case with TouchPoint Press.

Almost immediately after I published this post, TouchPoint authors began contacting me to share their experiences. In addition to the issues mentioned above–sitting on books without ever publishing them, making offers but failing to send contracts, failure to respond to emails, phone calls, and social media messages, royalty payments in arrears–authors report little or no marketing, lagging payment of licensing income, missed publication dates, failure to release books in contractually required formats (for example, releasing an ebook but no paperback), distribution problems (failure to list or long delays in listing with Ingram), staff departures and work stoppages, deletion of critical posts in the TouchPoint authors Facebook group, failure to respond to rights reversion requests, and more.

At least one author has filed a lawsuit in Sheri Williams’s home state of Arkansas.

The additional complaints confirm that all of these issues were happening at least as far back as 2021 (and maybe even farther). Yet Sheri continued to acquire books at least through February of 2023. In 2022 alone, per Publishers Marketplace, she signed 28 books–all while failing to release multiple books signed in previous years.

Sheri’s statement above mentions wages. In fact, TouchPoint staff are not paid wages in the conventional meaning of the word: like authors, they receive royalties. This is a common way for small publishers to shift financial risk to employees (and a recipe for dissatisfaction and high turnover, since editors and others are essentially working on spec, even where the publisher doesn’t have problems paying). This has been confirmed to me by TouchPoint staff (who also report not being paid) and additionally by this employee review on Indeed.com.

I’m sure there will be more updates. Watch this space.

UPDATE 9/17/23: Things aren’t looking good.

• The Touchpoint author who filed a lawsuit against Sheri Williams on June 12 won a default judgment in August thanks to no response to the lawsuit by Sheri.
• Also in June, Touchpoint authors contacted the Authors Guild about the situation and to ask for help. Although the Authors Guild initially had trouble getting Sheri to respond, she reportedly assured them that the payment problems would be resolved. They have not been. (Shades of Adelaide Books, above.)
• Multiple Touchpoint authors have filed complaints with the Arkansas Attorney General. I’m told that the AG has opened an investigation.
• In August, Sheri informed authors that she was in the hospital. Although she reportedly told the senior editor (who apparently is the last staff member standing) that authors were free to revert their rights and that the editor would be given the access needed to pay outstanding royalties, neither apparently has happened. According to the most recent reports, Sheri is saying she is still hospitalized and unable to conduct business.

UPDATE 11/9/23: Sheri Williams has broken her silence with an 8-page Internal Company Memorandum emailed to TouchPoint authors, in which she confirms that she was hospitalized for mental health issues and admits to the problems described above, but appears to largely blame everything on selected TouchPoint authors, whom she accuses of complaining, making unreasonable demands, taking up too much time with questions and messages, agitating about royalty issues, “drumming up TPP group drama”, and generally making her life so difficult that she could no longer handle running the company. (The authors aren’t named, but the incidents–which make up the bulk of the memo–are described in enough detail that they will recognize themselves and probably others will too.) She also offers an apology…though not until the very last paragraph.

It seems clear that she’s determined to keep running the company, at least for now. Given the apparent extent of the problems–both TouchPoint’s and her own–not to mention authors’ considerable anger and frustration, it’s hard to see how that can really happen.

An Arkansas newspaper has picked up the TouchPoint story, with a lengthy article on the situation (you can read the article for free, but you have to register with the site). Headline: “Arkansas Book Publisher TouchPoint Press Goes Silent, Leaves Contracts Unfulfilled.” The article details authors’ and editors’ complaints of non-payment and non-communication, Sheri’s failure to respond to an author’s lawsuit or to inquiries from the Arkansas attorney general’s office, and confirms that the AG has received 12 complaints and is “continuing to investigate”.

UPDATE 1/22/24: The Arkansas Attorney General’s Office is actively seeking contact from Touchpoint authors. Below is a letter I received today. You can file a complaint via the OAG’s website: https://www.ArkansasAG.gov.

UPDATE 4/12/24: Sheri Williams seems to be making good on her promise to keep Touchpoint going. The company more or less stopped publishing last summer, but since January of this year, it has issued, or issued new editions of, around 14 books.

UPDATE 9/16/24: Under pressure from authors, staff, the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office, and, apparently, the Authors Guild, Sheri Williams has announced that TouchPoint Press is closing down. You can see her 9/13/24 note to authors–which does not appear to be an official announcement–here.

In the note, Sheri promises to

send a formal letter stating that TouchPoint is closing and your rights are being reverted. I will send
final editable interior and cover files for those available to anyone who wants them. For older titles, I
probably won’t have an editable cover file. I have set up a Google spreadsheet where everyone can let
me know if you want your files.

The Google doc is linked into the note; I’m not sharing the link because it includes author names, book titles, and requests.

The note also includes what appear to be actions requested by the Authors Guild, to which Sheri has apparently agreed:

“Below are the steps we discussed in our meeting. You will cease all publishing activities and shut down
the TouchPoint website, posting a notice on the main page and taking down all the other pages besides the home page. You will write to all the authors who still have a contract with TouchPoint Press telling them that you are shutting down and reverting rights to them. We will contact a lawyer and ask about solutions and ways forward.”

• The Facebook group will be closed.
• The main website main page will show “Closed For Business” until the end of this month, then it
  will be shut down.
• I will unpublish all titles (ebook, paperback, and hardcover).
• Any audiobooks that are through Tantor or Dreamscape will be handled by Metamorphosis
  Literary Agency as they brokered those deals and those audio payments are sent to them (any
  advances that are outstanding are my responsibility not MLA’s). Depending on the audio deal for
  your specific title, your audio contract term will be between 5-10 years. I can get that
  information for you, if/when needed.
• Titles through Audible/ACX are under contract with Audible for 7 years from the publication
  date. However, I can request that the full rights be given to you. To do this, you will need to have
  a publisher account with ACX.

The TouchPoint Press website does indeed display a CLOSED FOR BUSINESS message.

As for outstanding royalties (not just for authors but for staff, since TouchPoint, like many small presses, paid staff with royalties on the books they worked on rather than salaries or flat fees), Sheri says she has put in a claim to her business insurance, and “under advisement of the Author’s [sic] Guild, I will be putting a percentage of any income I make into an account designated solely for back royalties.”

Authors and staffers, please let me know what you hear, and whether you receive any payments.

ANOTHER UPDATE 9/16/24: This article from PW provides more detail about TouchPoint’s woes, including actions by the Authors Guild and statements from TouchPoint authors.

UPDATE 2/1/25: In a bizarre twist, someone has bought the Touchpoint web domain (https://touchpointpress.com/), which lapsed under its old ownership last year, and slapped up a Touchpoint Press website. It doesn’t look anything like the old Touchpoint website, but it uses content from that site (starting on page 2 of the Blog section), including new book announcements–where, curiously, the author links go to archived pages on the Internet Archive. Nothing appears to be sold from the site, however.

The home page claims the company is “in the heart of New York City”, but the legal information and privacy policies are both in French, suggesting a Canadian origin–and indeed, if you check the legal page, you can see the names and emails of the people who appear to be behind this, who are indeed from Canada. There’s no info about either of them online that I can find.

Hard to figure why this thing exists. I’ll check back on it periodically, and update with any changes or developments.