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Many, many, many months ago, when I started with my long going investigation of Blu Phier, I learned that Chris Manning was briefly associated with them. It was a very brief association. Chris soon discovered that Bare-Nudie was intransigent about releasing the books to the authors who wanted their titles back.
Chris attempted to persuade Mike Bernoudy to turn things around and behave like a normal publisher. All of his attempts failed, because Bernoudy refused to treat the authors like people, rather than slaves he had purchased with a bad contract.
While I cannot share everything I learned (a lot of it was off-the-record), I do want to make it known that Chris became as much of a victim as the others.
Kudos to Chris for making the effort to salvage matters for his friends.
“It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.” That makes Chris a fine man in my estimation.
Here is Blu Phi’er’s latest act of bashing the bishop. You will notice that they do not mention payment.
We are however accepting submissions of stories for the anthology, Legend of the Phi’er Lady: Volume I.
Stories submitted for this anthology will out line the origins of our company logo, a woman with a head of flaming blue hair.
Genre is unimportant. This is an annual anthology and a sufficient number of stories in the same genre may be grouped together for subsequent volumes. We welcome unpublished authors to submit stories for Volume I which will be released in late 2008 early 2009.
Hey, Mr. Bare Nudie, are you looking for more bedmates?
I recieved several copies of this from various authors at blu phier.
It was sent out as part of a group mailing to all the people connected to them.
From: phierstarter@bluphier.com
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDate: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:36:00 +0000
Subject: Final Group Email
As you can tell from the subject, from here out I plan on ceasing with the group emails. I will send out an email each month concerning book sales and pay royalties accordingly. If you have relevant questions concerning your book, or marketing thereof, feel free to contact me.Due to many of the emails I’ve received, I have to reiterate that I need you to limit your communications to relevant issues.
Me owing you money for editing. Relevant.
Your book not appearning on Amazon. Relevant.
Your book not selling to your expectations, yet you have only done one signing in 3 years. Irrelevant.
You wanting out of your contract once your book is in print. Not going to happen.
You needing contributor copies. Relevant.
Over the past year and a half our author base has nearly trippled. We’ve gotten some great authors and great people out of the deal. That being said, we’ve also gotten some assholes. I have no problem dealing with assholes I do it on a daily basis. However, many of you are older than me and have children of your own. I should not have to babysit adults. Especially when the adults are COSTING me money as opposed to making any.
Only two authors we currently have in print can say they responded to ads I placed in 2005 looking for new authors. Only one author can state they have sent a dime towards the publication of their own book. Everyone else, has asked me to spend my money to publish their books.
Some of you work your asses off and make decent book sells. Some of you think because you wrote a book the sells and money just automatically roll in. You feel that if the money is not rolling in, apparently I’ve done something wrong. The simple fact of the matter is, many of you are lazy.
Over the past several months I’ve come to the conclusion that some of you just can’t be helped. That being said, I still have valid contracts with you, I still have expended substantial funds towards your books, and we will continue or efforts. However, if you aren’t going to lift a finger to promote your own book so be it. Technically you’re in breach of your contracts, but I’ll just chalk it up as a loss.
For those of you who are trying, feel free to contact me and I’ll help in any way I can. Many of you have asked for copies on consignment and when the fees were available we have provided. I can’t think of anyone who has asked for money for marketing or had a valid idea we have refused. I will continue to do what I can to support you productive authors.
For you upcoming authors, think carefully about what you are doing with requesting us to publish your books. Once your book is in print we are in bed together, for better or worse.
MLBjr
I want to examine the timing on this because I do not believe that the entire truth has been brought out concerning Chris Manning’s connection with Blu Phi’er.
To make this easier, I am going to use AW as an abbreviation for Absolute Write. All actions take place at the Absolute Write forums unless otherwise noted.
Absolute Write Blu Phi’er thread
The Rusty Nail thread with Chris’s comments
Yesterday, July 28th
1:02 PM Chris announces that he’s the new Marketing Director for Blu Phi’er.
2:14 PM Victoria Strauss expresses her alarms concerning Chris’s decision.
4:05 PM I asked him about the rights to Jane Baxter’s novel
4:11 PM, I get a notification that Chris has sent me a PM from AW.
When I try to reply, I find that Chris has blocked all private messages.
4:37 PM I get an email from Chris, using the marketing email address at Blu Phi’er.
5:28 PM, Victoria Strauss posts a question as to why Chris has his private messages blocked.
6:29 PM, chris posts a comment to TRN about being threatened and now just being a writer for Blu Phier.
6:47 PM Chris says that the warnings from Victoria came after he had been threatened, not before in comments at TRN
7:56 PM, JimmyD1318 posted an announcement that he received an email from Chris claiming that Chris has been seriously threatened at his workplace. The threats were recieved by phone.
Jimmy asked Victoria to lock the thread.
So, in an hour and a half’s time, (the time between when Chris made his post and Victoria replied) Chris had apparently gotten enough threats to make him reconsider being their marketing director.
I can understand people making threats in regard to the fact that Chris would be working for a convicted sex offender. However, I cannot imagine disgruntled authors going to the trouble to locate his private information (unless they had it earlier because they are known to him personally), and then make calls that were threatening to Chris and his family.
Do the math, folks. What is Chris and Bernoudy not telling us?
If anyone has more information to add to this timeline or otherwise, I will be very happy to hear from them.
