I'm certainly out of the loop and in general have tried to stay out of the Noble loop for ages but it looks as though the publisher has imploded and in a quick and messy way.
Jill Noble, the face of the house and editor in chief has quit. She apparently was working for her brother Jim and tried to buy him out and didn't, leading her to quit the house in one of the greatest flounces ever.
At this moment, I do not know what the owner's plans are, as far as the company's immediate future is concerned. I'm pretty sure he'll keep it up and running, in some form, so he can earn back some of his initial investment. I, on the other hand, only invested years of my life, my talent, my expertise, and my hard labor, and so I don't imagine there is any way I'll recoup my contribution. ;-) I'm not concerned about that, though. For me, this has always been a labor of love. I've met a lot of really wonderful, talented people (and let's face it - a few crazy ones, too, lol), and up until this past year, I never looked on my position here as a "job." Jobs are never this fun. To say I've enjoyed working with you sounds like such a cliche, but I promise you, it's true. I'm hoping many of you will want to keep in touch and maintain a friendship on some other level. On the bright side, I can now review your books without being accused of practicing favoritism.
She went on to say :
I sincerely apologize for the fact that my parting ways with NRP will no doubt disrupt some of your lives, to one degree or another. I hope you're treated fairly; I believe you will be. You all have contracts; follow them to the letter, and you'll be fine.
I loved that. Follow your contracts to the letter... but the company doesn't have to?
Of course the minute she sent that out then the authors started talking. Suddenly we learn that royalties haven't been paid, promises about books in print weren't followed through. Emails have gone unanswered.
Then Jill's daughter, apparently another Noble executive came into the author's loop and demanded that the authors show loyalty to her departing mother by not discussing royalties or issues. Good authors don't discuss such things, it seems. When she was shot down it got momentarily not prettier.
Noble's new "face" Jim, the owner we didn't know there was,
is not taking calls at this time. The person left as a contact for the authors isn't contacting back. And the author's loop was shut down.
My experiences with Noble weren't good. I contracted
Hot Hexed and Bothered with them. Far from my best book but definately my best title (hee hee). Anyway, the editor I was assigned never contacted me and we had a quick release date approaching so a new editor was assigned maybe two weeks before release.
That editor rewrote sections of my book (she just rewrote, no asking) and so I rewrote them back to what they were. I was assigned a new editor who sent me an email and said she didn't know anything about editing but she was there to be my publishing buddy and get me answers to any questions I had.
Then Jill wrote me a week before my release and said the book wasn't going to be released on time. I complained and she apologized and said they'd provide me some swag for giveaways to make up for it. Apparently she meant they'd provide pictures of swag because I never got a thing from them.
They released the book, it tanked, they released it as erotic romance even though there wasn't a single sex scene in it *scratching head*.
Being in the author's loop with Noble it was easy to see that the business was being run like a club. Jill was the most popular girl and she promoted
hard the people she liked. It was a clique and not a business, or so it seemed to me. And later Jill was offering an online workshop which lasted one lesson and then she dropped it and never mentioned it again. Flaky.
Anyway, so that was my experiences with Noble. It'll be interesting to see what happens next. But I'm not going to hold my breath for them. Unless they hire someone whose last name isn't Noble to run the business. Then they might have a fighting chance.
