AND IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!

I’m so angry I could spit (if I had any saliva, that is). After BookPros, the company I choose to publish my book, went bankrupt, I thought my self-publishing horror story had at last died.

I was wrong.

It just keeps getting better all the time. BookPros had a distribution company called Midpoint, who keeps authors’ books in various warehouses across the United States. During the bankruptcy, Midpoint asked me what I wanted to do with my books. Basically, the options were three: send them to another distributor, to another warehouse, or back to me. As difficult as it was to decide on a fourth option, to destroy them, I chose to do that because the cost of shipping boxes of books isn’t cheap (not to mention the storage nightmare). Still, it felt like condemning my first born child to death.  I lowered the boom and thought that would be the end of that story.

I was wrong again.

Recently, I’d begun putting up some of my short stories as E-books, and also my revised first novel, East Garrison, (to include photographs, illustrations, and new text about mountain lions). While checking for my new cover I ran across Midpoint’s website. Guess what? They had East Garrison for sale. And yes, this is the book I condemned to capital punishment—all East Garrison books at Midpoint were supposed to have been destroyed.

But I was wrong yet again.

Some East Garrison books are in Midpoint’s Kansas warehouse, some are in another warehouse in Little Rock. It has been over two years since I terminated my contract with BookPros (August 13, 2010). Sometime around the beginning of the year 2012 they filed for bankruptcy. Over two years have passed from the time when I gave the execution order for my baby. My innards twisted and I doubled over in pain. I felt the cloud of misery that had been my daily experience for too many years return.

There are no words to describe, to truly make clear the horrible feeling of a writer being ripped off and betrayed by a publisher. Publishers like BookPros are truly evil. They’re the snake-oil salespeople of our time, without morals and accountability. That’s also true about so-called distributors like Midpoint.

So, calling all authors who published their book(s) through BookPros and distributed through Midpoint! Your baby (ies) are likely still up for sale, and you’ll never see a penny. In fact, you’ll probably get a bill for storage. How’s that for another slap in the face of people whose only dream is to be an author? 

For the actual names of the people involved in this money-making scheme, leave a comment, and I'll be more than pleased to comply.