Red Rose Publishing (RRP) started operations over 3 years ago (2007). The individual who started said company, one Wendi Felter, already had a "reputation" of having issues with other now defunct epubs (look up Mardi Gras Publishing). However, she still managed to start a new epub and get submissions for it.
If you read Piers Anthony's site you'll see that the history of RRP is now long and, well, pretty bad. The troubles haven't ended. More recently, an author had to resort to ask help from Karen Knows Best to pretty much have RRP remove her books from their site, as she had requested reversion of rights, with no response from the owner. Additionally, I don't think I need to say that this publisher really didn't endear itself to bloggers and reviewers in general after this gem of an incident involving the popular blog Dear Author, with further reports here and here.
At this point, as a mere reader, I find baffling that people still submit to that "publishing company". To put things into context: according to the site Internet World Statistics, 77.4% of the population in the US has internet access. The growth from 2000-2010 has been 146.3% Now, I am sure that all those people have heard about Google and other search engines, I mean, if you want to find anything online, you HAVE to use a search engine. When people decide that they want to write something, the first thing to do is to research where they can get published, right? So, that means that they need to use a search engine (likely google) and trust me, as it pertains to that particular publisher, at this point in time, people are going to find both the good and the bad when they do a search and stumble upon the name Red Rose Publishing. It is now well documented online the kind of track record that company has.
Frankly, the word naive to refer to those that newly submit there is not a word that I would use, not even to be kind. At this point, I firmly believe that anyone submitting there is either outright dumb (not going to apologize for this one), is taking a calculated risk, is friendly with the owner thus, is being treated preferentially, or is outright desperate to be "recognized" in some form as an "author".
I truly feel bad for those caught in a rather nasty tug of war to get their rights not only reverted, but their work brought down from the publisher's site. However, I will not feel bad for those that submit their work there now and are accepted, only to end up crying foul in the future. As a reader, I just will not buy any excuses along the lines of "I didn't know" or "I was naive" because no, you were not naive ... the word that I would use is a lot harsher than that...
Mireya
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