Roger Pearse

It was certainly notorious for it for centuries. If you wish to deny this, start producing evidence for your claims.

Tell that to the Brits in Valencia.

Pity you rely on racism rather than reason to defend a nasty example of corruption.

bacht

I doubt that corruption is such a recent invention. It's probably been with us since we moved beyond subsistence living.

Gorit Maqueda

Nice try.
:tonguea:

EarlDoherty

Good grief. I didn't set up this thread to accuse Spain or even Spanish publishers in general of being the poster boy for corruption. Besides, I'm being treated the same way, as I said, by a German publisher and, from the look of it, by two Korean publishers. Let's knock this off. I'd prefer not to have the mods locking it down.

Besides, I now have other worries. A couple of weeks ago, someone hacked into my "humanists.net" host, where the Jesus Puzzle website resides, and turned some of it, me included, into a Malware dispensary. I was told it had been cleared up, with measures taken to prevent it from happening again. Right. Anybody entered "humanists.net" (or even just "humanists") in Google today? It looks like half the humanist organizations' sites in the world are now sporting a warning as being attack sites, from Hawaii to India!

Somebody sure doesn't like humanists.

Earl Doherty

spamandham

Getting ripped off is commonplace, sadly, not just in publishing but in every aspect of life. Though it probably will do no good, you might try reporting the situation to Spanish media outlets when the next significant election is coming up. Someone might decide to use it as an example of corruption, and you could end up the beneficiary as a result.

Roger Pearse

One other thought: approach those websites selling the book and advise them that it is a pirate edition, and that legal action is pending. It might be possible to get it removed thereby, if they thought that they were likely to face legal action too. That would inflict financial penalty on the publisher.

Of course I imagine that you don't WANT to get the book out of circulation -- you'd just like some royalties (although how large they would be is also worth calculating, you know -- I know most publishers offer 5% royalties at most, so if you're not losing much money, just write it off to experience).

One other thought: is there a reputable Spanish atheist author, or group who could advise you?

Gorit Maqueda

I don'y know anyone first hand. There are, though, two reputable authors and scientific divulgators that are known to be skeptic: Manuel Toharia and Eduardo Punset.

DrZoidberg

I suggest you post the same question in the Absolute Write forum. It's authors helping authors. You'd be surprised with what help they can supply, and you're likely find others who have been in the same situation. I'm also a published author, and they've been a great help to me.

http://www.absolutewrite.com

I feel so bad for you. I know the work that goes into writing a publishable book. Getting screwed over by con-men like these is such a double pain, but unfortunately quite common.

Good luck

avi

I am confused.

Generally, one first receives the "advance", then, the translated work is published. That's why it is called an "advance", right?

Sounds to me, from your description, that you adopted a relatively relaxed attitude towards them, perhaps mis-communicating, by your actions (rather than by written legalese), a relative indifference to collecting royalties.

Did you clarify at the outset, the mechanism to be employed in reporting the sales volume to you? Absent such an agreement, and having shown a relative indifference to receipt of the "advance", one suspects that the publisher simply tucked your correspondence into the circular file.

avi

EarlDoherty

I probably didn't realize that an "advance" was something supposed to be paid prior to all work on the translation/publication, not having had much experience in this field. At the same time, they did push forward very quickly after I had signed the contract, getting the thing done almost overnight. Perhaps that was an alarm bell in itself.

That contract did have a clause relating to the regular reporting of sales. Naturally, it wasn't followed.

Thanks for the link on the Absolute Write people.

Earl Doherty