Ellora’s Cave: Another Editor Gone, Big Merger/Sale?

[deirdre]

(Note: if you link outside of Tumblr/DW/LJ, please link to the deirdre.net version of this post. Thank you.)

Former Senior Content Editor Kelli Collins announced yesterday that she’s out:

https://twitter.com/EditMeThis/status/556209546872770560

You can see from the replies (if you visit that link by clicking on the timestamp) that she was much loved.

Best of luck in your next venture, Kelli.

I pointed out today that, six months ago, Ellora’s Cave had 15 editors and 5 artists (I incorrectly said earlier was 20 editors) plus one editor on the leadership page. After Kelli’s departure, EC lists eight people on the editor page plus two on the leadership page.

Speaking of Editors, EC Has Some New Ones

(Note: I’ve added commentary at the bottom of this post that’s a partial correction.)

And then people started looking at who was on the page, latching onto Jill Noelle, aka Jill Noelle Noble. LinkedIn ties the names together.

Jill was previously involved in Noble Romance Publishing (NRP), a publishing effort that had some interesting failure modes, as The Passive Voice highlights. She’s also the author of Not Your Mother’s Publishing Model, published by NRP toward the end of her tenure. There are so many places to go with that tidbit of information….

#notchiller Gianna Simone wrote two posts of her own about her experiences with NRP: one, which links to even more posts, and two.

And then there’s Jill’s note of departure from Noble Romance Publishing that was posted on AbsoluteWrite.

Here are a bunch of Dear Author posts about the Noble Romance debacle.

Let us return to the land of the current affair: Ellora’s Cave.

A Sale? Or a Merger? You Decide.

http://twitter.com/ataglanceRMC/status/556581866791120896

Well, we heard it from Peanut, so who the hell knows?

For those who haven’t been following along, many of us #notchilled regulars believe that @pubnt (aka TinaNut and other nut nicks) is none other than Tina Engler/Jaid Black. More discussion of that in this older post. For that reason, I refer to Pubnt as TinaNut frequently.

However, there’s a lot of deliberately obfuscatory rhetoric in Peanut’s tweets, so one can’t rely on what’s said.

http://twitter.com/pubnt/status/556178930726895616

JB = Jaid Black, pseudonym of Tina Engler, EC’s primary owner.
PM = Patty Marks, CEO of EC, aka JB’s mother.

But our Fallacious Filbert keeps referring to “BigPub.” See, a merger is of equals, and, frankly, Ellora’s Cave isn’t that big. How big? Hard to say because there is more than one company. Jasmine Jade has a tax lien for $29,679.52 from the City of Akron for the 2012 tax year. That translates to $1,319,090 in profits (or more, since some of the taxes may have been paid prior to the lien). Dear Author’s Curious Case post

http://twitter.com/pubnt/status/555673891935617024

http://twitter.com/pubnt/status/555674173335683074

Charming, referring to former staff and authors as fat and trash.

So, maybe some contract sell-off? Chicken feed, says peanut. (Sorry, link because pasting the link in WordPress doxs JL.)

http://twitter.com/pubnt/status/555802150732058624

http://twitter.com/pubnt/status/555584255095742465

Oh. Really. That’s a charming way to refer to the people who helped build the company.

http://twitter.com/pubnt/status/555583827230601216

Big Five? You don’t say.

Ongoing Acquisition Talk

It seems so odd to be talking about an ongoing acquisition. If the ink were dry, I’d expect that it would be announced. Given that it’s not, I don’t even know what to say. (I’ve worked for firms in the S-1 quiet period, as has my husband, and so that’s the culture we’re used to.)

It wouldn’t surprise me if EC were entertaining offers, but hearing about them like this, especially from an anonymous Twitter account, seems incredibly weird.

Julaine really has the killer point, though:

http://twitter.com/julainestone/status/556444067371180032

http://twitter.com/julainestone/status/556444401384558592

http://twitter.com/julainestone/status/556444697510809600

Julaine’s referencing the 27-page judicial smackdown against EC (et al) in the Brashear case. Two excerpts from that document:

Adding injury to insult was Defense counsel’s bad faith production of the tax returns and general ledgers to Plaintiff at the conclusion of the two days of depositions of the named Defendants. While Defense counsel was in compliance with the latest court order as to the tax returns, his decision to wait until the conclusion of the two days of depositions to produce these discovery documents, which addressed the heart of the claims in this case, impeded Plaintiff’s ability to fully depose the Defendants and was clearly done in attempt [to] hamper Plaintiff’s case and thus done in bad faith. This was plainly gamesmanship: a tactical move to ambush and sabotage the Plaintiff.

[…]

Defendants’ conduct as detailed above is nothing short of contumacious: stubbornly disobedient and a flagrant disregard for the Court’s orders. Defendants’ maneuvering during the two-year discovery phase of this case has been plotted to undermine the progression of theis case. This is evident by Plaintiff’s need to file two motions to compel, three motions to show cause / sanctions and two trial continuances, all arising from Defendants’ discovery abuses in the last two years. Defendants willfully evaded the production of discovery, resulting in unnecessary delays of this case and increased legal fees. Defendants’ actions in this case have crossed the line from a zealous defense to malingering, malfeasance, sabotage and delay.

How’s that compare to recent behavior?

Ex Post Facto Justification

Let’s rewind to Christmas Eve.

One of the things the Nut has gone on about is why former EC staffers weren’t paid. In a letter last week, Tina/Jaid said that all were paid.

https://twitter.com/pubnt/status/547697888319791104

https://twitter.com/pubnt/status/547698348724338688

Too. Nice.

https://twitter.com/pubnt/status/547761777321476096

So, they can withhold payment for former contractors in case they will defame? And then they can file that motion any old time? Or a successor case?

There have been multiple comments about suing other people, too, e.g., this one.

https://twitter.com/pubnt/status/547767378726359040

https://twitter.com/pubnt/status/547777692964511746

https://twitter.com/pubnt/status/547797331295621120

As usual, Courtney Milan just nails it.

https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/547780375800717313

https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/547780575923560450

And then there are the tax liens. That really needs its own post. It really does.

Until then, if you’d like to read more pubnuttery, here’s the PDF of all its surviving tweets. (Some tweets have been deleted, but I believe that’s relatively few.)

I Need a Fangirl Moment

I can’t wait for Courtney Milan’s new book. Already preordered it.

A Note of Update

Per my source, Jill Noelle was an editor at Ellora’s Cave before the layoffs last August. To the best of my source’s recollection, she started in March or April, just didn’t wind up on EC’s Editors and Artists masthead last July. And since archive.org hasn’t taken any snapshots of that page more recently, hard to know when she was added, exactly.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.