For those of you who may have missed the news as it exploded over the weekend, Jane Litte and the Dear Author site are being sued by Ellora’s Cave. As you might expect, there was a great deal of brouhaha over this, not only on Dear Author, but also over on Smart Bitches.
However, there are new developments as of this morning. Jane reports on Dear Author’s Monday news post that she’s now retained the services of Marc Randazza, a story also picked up by The Digital Reader.
It’s very worth noting that a bunch of Jane’s commenters were urging her to go talk to PopeHat, and that the guy she’s now hired is spoken VERY highly of on that site, calling him a First Amendment badass. This is promising news indeed.
Meanwhile, I’m seeing the #notchilled hashtag springing up on Twitter, and several of the authors I follow are speaking out passionately on it.
Like Courtney Milan, about whom I’ve posted before as one of the small but growing set of romance novelists whose work I REALLY like. Courtney’s letting Ellora’s Cave have it with both barrels on her own blog as well as on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/516592408289898496
Fellow Carina author Ella Drake ALSO has words to say about this–because SHE’S had some experience as an EC author, too:
We don't need an outside blogger to show us the doubt we already had. #notchilled
— Ella Drake (@Lori_Ella) September 29, 2014
And with Ella in mind, I’ll make an open offer to any Ellora’s Cave authors whose sales are impacted by EC’s implosion and by readers backing out of buying their work: if any of you have non-EC titles you’d like to encourage people to buy instead, come talk to me and I’ll run a piece for you on Boosting the Signal.
ETA: Couple more links as people continue to post about this:
The Book Pushers have proclaimed that, moving forward, they won’t be reviewing Ellora’s Cave releases and invite EC authors to submit non-EC titles for review instead
Novelist and blogger Barry Eisler is deeply unamused at EC’s behavior, along with the rest of the Internet
Jenny Trout has choice, pungent words for some individuals who’re pleased that DA is getting sued
Bad Menagerie posts about how they’re exactly the small-time bloggers that many are suspecting EC is trying to intimidate
Wendy the Super Librarian breaks out her Little Miss Crabby Pants persona, and goes into detail as to why EC’s behavior is a problem for everyone
Book blogging site KBGBabbles expresses its concerns
Deirdre Saoirse Moen has an EC Author Exodus Support thread
And OH YES: the LA Times has picked up the story
More to come as I find it.
