A roundup of recent publisher troubles and closures that have come across my desk:

Noble Romance Publishing

Noble, the subject of numerous author complaints (and those are just the ones that are still online; a number of others have been deleted in the past few months) since owner Jill Noble departed abruptly last year and left the company in the hands of Jean Gombart, is finally closing its doors.

I first became aware of Iconic Publishing last year, when this post appeared on Absolute Write. It's a tale of breathtaking unprofessionalism on the part of the publisher, Jano Donnachaidh of Marietta, GA.

Starting last February, I began hearing from Iconic authors reporting a variety of similar problems, including production delays, poor copy editing (books were printed full of errors), poor communication, and broken marketing promises. I've also seen several Iconic contracts, and they're pretty bad, with a sweeping claim on subsidiary rights (even though there's no evidence Iconic is capable of exploiting them), unacceptably vague reversion language, royalties paid on net profit, and a Right of First refusal clause that could be interpreted to require the authors to submit to the publisher any subsequent book they ever produced.

One thing these contracts do make clear, though, is that the authors retain copyright. See the two screenshots below (note also the antiquated language in the second screenshot):