Excuse me while I complain....

We all have those moments in life when you just feel like you're taking a beating that you don't deserve. You look around and wonder why shit just ain't going right and you ask the cosmos, "Okay I give - what did I do to deserve this?"

I'm saying all of that to say this: Despite what I've chosen to reveal or not reveal here, I have had an incredibly, difficult and challenging year - and it's only May.

I try not to whine and complain -- but today I feel like I need to say some stuff - and then maybe once I get it off my chest, I'll feel better about it, so here goes:

My agent back in the day did a lot of really wonderful things for me. And for that I was and remain very appreciative. However, the one not so good thing he did was agree to joint account my book contracts - which is very, very bad for writers - unless you're racking in seven figure advances - then who the hell cares if you ever earn out -- cause you got a lot of upfront money.

But for midlist authors like myself - joint accounting is death.

So what is joint accounting?

Lemme break down to you real simple like:

You have a two book deal. Let's say you received 20K for each book. Book #1 comes out in 2009 and book #2 is scheduled to be published in 2010. If book #1 does not earn out the 20K advance you received, the balance is rolled over to book #2.

So let's say you earned 1K on book #1 -- well now, the balance of 9K is attached to book #2.

Now this is bad - but not horrible - what makes it horrible is if the publisher suddenly decides to stop printing one of the two books in the contract. Which is what happened to me and so one book has to earn out the advance that was given for two books.

I'm angry right now, so I don't know how much of this makes sense, but to put it in even simpler terms: I am SCREWED...

So here I am, eleven years - ELEVEN - after the publication of my first book and I still can't tell you what a royalty check looks like.

Are the checks silver coated? Are the sums stamped in gold?

But here is why I am ultra-pissed - I usually receive my royalty statements around mid-april. When they failed to arrive, I called the Royalty Department - which these days seem to be unmanned. I left a message inquiring about the whereabouts of my statements - and waited for someone to return my call.

A week later, I called again. And then again --

So yesterday I sent a TWEET to the various imprints associated with Penguin Books -

"What does an author have to do to get a response from the royalty department?"

@penguinbooksUK was kind enough to respond.

Of course I told them that I was in the USA....

I guess someone over there called someone over here and finally my phone rang.

I told the person that I had not received my statements - her response was:

"We mailed the statements out at the end of March. You haven't earned out yet..but I'll be happy to mail you another copy."

Did I mention it's been ELEVEN years.....

So here's my thought, if the book - which is SUGAR - by the way - is selling so few copies why is the publisher keeping it in print?

*scratching head*

Somebody got some 'splaining to do......

Bernice L. McFadden