‘Congrats!’ is what everyone keeps saying.
The reason people are going round offering congratulations is because, apropos of nothing, Atthis Arts, the publishing house that ran my first solo book, emailed to tell me that they are stopping the print run for Ex Partum and reverting the rights back to me. The whole kit and caboodle is mine again, because… well, because they no longer like me. From my point of view, this has come out of nowhere. It’s certainly not because I asked for the rights to be reverted to me.
For those who are less familiar with publishing, rights are the legal permissions a publishing house (or magazine, or audio producer, or movie people) purchase from creators in order to use a piece or pieces of work. There’s loads of stuff involved in them, and please don’t ask me for details because I am a) a novice in this field; b) not a lawyer; and c) too busy writing stories. But generally, the agreement says: we will publish your stuff for X amount of time, and you’ll get Y% moneys. There will be details about foreign rights, ebooks, timeframes, and audio/tv. If rights get reverted to you, there should be a reason for it, because it’s essentially yanking the book from the shelves. All the shelves.
From the end of October, Ex Partum will be off the shelves.
A potted history
There’s history, because there’s always history. It goes back years.
Others can guide you through the long drama revolving around Atthis Arts, and, in particular, its Executive Editor, Emily (aka E.D.E.) Bell. I was never directly involved in any of that, and didn’t know about it in advance of working with them. I was very late to the party, which has been going on for years. From a distance, I have nothing to say except: wow.
For me, this clusterfuck started about four months ago, just after Ex Partum was released.
In June, at the time of my first solo book’s release, when I should have been celebrating, maybe doing some book launches, definitely doing some hard promotion, I was, instead, in full panic because my publisher had made themselves so publicly problematic that there were calls to boycott the press. So instead of having a joyous book release, I did a lot of crying, and then I wrote a piece called Marketing strategy: Dumpsterfire. It was a response from an author who felt caught in the middle of a turf war, and was essentially calling on people with power to recognise the impact of their power.
What my book and I were caught up in was a social media shitstorm. It wasn’t directed at me, or Ex Partum, but at others in the sector. It created chaos, and not the fun kind. The kind that seriously dragged all of us Atthis authors down.
On her personal account, Emily repeatedly vagueposted and lobbed veiled threats, which were often re-posted by Atthis Arts. Anyone who queried her claims or disagreed at all were in the firing line, and Emily would very quickly lash out, launching the sorts of insults that require strong evidence to be verifiable. Many of her accusations verged on libel.
In another universe, I might never have intersected with any of this, except that Atthis Arts and Emily Bell are so inextricably entangled that it’s impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. The business is an extension of the person, and the opinions of the person drive the workings of the publishing house.
At that time, I made a point that Atthis has good taste in writers. They have run some really cool books. It’s actually why I got in touch with them, when I was looking for a publisher for Ex Partum. I’d read some of their books/collections, and thought what they ran aligned with what I wrote. In Dumpsterfire, I was clear that I didn’t think they should be cancelled, because if we have fewer publishers then it increases the competition between authors. No one needs that right now.
After Dumpsterfire, Atthis’ second-in-command, and Emily’s husband, Chris Bell reached out to me. He asked whether, as I’d chosen sides, I wanted the rights back to Ex Partum. I told him that Dumpsterfire was an impact statement, not a positionality statement, and that I really didn’t want the rights reverted. At that point, Ex Partum had been on the market for about two weeks. I knew it had already crashed and burnt. But I hoped that it might do a slow, steady trade from people who didn’t know the drama.
I carried on marketing the book, as and where I could. I found a spec-fic novella competition, and made sure it was listed there, along with another Atthis novella that had been released in 2026. I put it on the SFWA recommended reading list (something you’d think the publisher would have been keen to do), along with the other novella. I started an insta dedicated to my writing (rather than personal), and I made sure to link to everyone I could. In the past 6-8 months, I have sunk hundreds of hours into trying to learn how to market a book. On top of my four other jobs, and my regular life demands.
Of course, what I also did was support other Atthis authors. Those who had been burnt in the past, those who were scared now, those who might need support going forward. I clicked ‘like’ on public posts where people raised (entirely legitimate) concerns about (un)professional behaviour. I re-shared lived experiences. I was not overly vocal, except in relation to how this impacted authors. But equally, I did not hide my distaste and dislike of poor behaviour.
Sure, ok, but why?
Obviously, I wanted some clarification as to why the book was being dropped. When I emailed Chris, and asked why the rights to Ex Partum were being reverted, I received the following reply:
Although I owe no one an explanation or excuse for my social media behaviour, let me break this down into its component pieces.
- I shared a thread that “(1) doxxed the owner of the press, (2) called us abusers, and (3) encouraged a boycott on working with us.”
- These are their words and not mine. Doxxing is used incorrectly here, and has a very specific meaning. It is defined as: publicly revealing an individual’s or organization’s private, personally identifiable information online without their consent, usually to harass, intimidate, or harm them1. Atthis’ information is already public; the online rows are public; and the chaos it has led to is… very public. And nothing anyone else has shared releases any data that might be considered private/personal (address, mobile number, bank details, etc).
- The ‘abuser’ title was only ever dealt in one direction, and it was from Atthis pointed outwards. Again, this is in the public domain.
- As to a boycott, well, yeah, people were talking about that. I disagreed. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Not helpful, really. Just hurts the authors.
- As to the thread I shared? It was the one that Jason Sanford released, where he narrated the ongoing harassment he’d been suffering at the hands of Emily Bell. What I shared was that this caused me, as an author, extreme anxiety.
- If I were working for one of the Big5, I’d be under an NDA, but because I’m with a small imprint, I’m not.
- An NDA is a confidentiality agreement meant to protect sensitive, non-public information, trade secrets, or proprietary business data. It would, in fact, not be standard practice to have one for a publishing deal (except maybe around the financials). It would certainly not be used as a gag mechanism in the way they are implying.
- Perhaps they meant a non-disparagement agreement (also an NDA). But, for a start, the contract says nothing about reputational damage (mine or theirs). And, for another, isn’t America, like, all about free speech?
- I have every right to speak my mind on social media.
- Gee, thanks. But, also, this is in direct conflict to the first point – I am either ‘allowed’ to speak my own mind online, or I am not. But as it turns out they’ve essentially fired me for doing so, it would appear not.
- The online ‘attacks’ from other people hurt Atthis’ other authors.
- This is also in direct conflict with what Chris told me earlier this year, which is that sales are up. Some of this may have even been driven by sympathy purchases of Ex Partum (absolutely not my intent). Certainly, nothing has harmed their artistic kickstarters.
- I sought them out specifically because of their stance on Palestine, and that I commented that ‘I’m probably going to get a lot of shit working with you, but I don’t care.’
- This is going to be hard to phrase correctly, but… hard no. I sought them out because they have a history of good publications. I would never go to a press because of their politics, though I will avoid one because of them. And, also, I’m Jewish. I would never go to a white, American press as a proxy for managing my intergenerational trauma, or assuaging my ongoing, horrifying guilt about the genocide in Palestine. I say the things that need saying aloud, and on behalf of myself. I donate directly to causes and organisations that directly need my money, not through companies that claim activism whilst practicing capitalism. They do not get to claim this space.
- They have “taken a similar stance on Christian White Nationalism coming into the North American writing spaces. But that position challenges the privilege and access of a lot of people who have since turned to attacking us personally. I’d be willing to talk to you more about this offline, but only if you are interested.”
- This is out of context, irrelevant, and attempts to set me up as either for Atthis and their stances, or for CWN. I remind the room: I’m Jewish, and also not in America. Whilst I feel for you all on the rise of the religious right in your country, we have our own fascist cockwombles at home to deal with.
- Additionally, that ‘talk offline’ line is a divide and conquer technique. It is used to hide paper trails, to castigate, and to force the conversation in specific directions. I won’t be doing it, of course, but even if I did, it’s not like they’d suddenly change their minds and re-list Ex Partum.
Essentially, it appears I got fired because I reposted a thread on social media that the publisher took personally. Which, you know, they can do. It’s their imprint, after all, and it’s based in a country with limited protections for the vulnerable. Well done to them for living up to the stereotype.
Ok, everyone take a quick biscuit break. We’re not done here, but that was already a lot, I know.
Powerflex
I may be off the mark, but I get the feeling that a lot of genre fic is made up of people who have first-hand experience of being bullied. I often wonder if that’s why we’re generally so nice to each other. So kind and supportive. We know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of cruelty, mindless behaviour that cannot possibly have a good outcome.
In my previous job, I had this boss who everyone hated (we’ve all had one of these, amirite). He was vicious, and toxic, and he loved a bit of coercive control. I found that there were two groups of people in relation to him: people he had hurt, and people he had not yet hurt. You might be in the latter category for now, but eventually, everyone ended up in the former. He will hurt you2.
This situation has a painfully similar vibe to it. I was originally a golden girl. Book with so much promise, etc. But that spark is long gone. I have shifted from the ‘we like you/can use you’ camp to the ‘we will hurt you’ camp.
My launch went down like a lead balloon. The summer was entirely dead of attention or promotion. Then, after months of ghosting me and my book, Atthis seems to have decided to trawl my social media, and it turns out they don’t like what I have to say. So they’re doing a power flex. I’m not a lone author here, this is a pattern of behaviour. It is habitual for them to check authors’ posts, re-shares, even clicks from their author’s socials, pulling out details they don’t like, and spinning that into criticism of Atthis/Emily. Which almost none of us have done, from what I can tell. Everyone treads on eggshells. I certainly only posted things that were author- or self-focussed3. The thing that sets me apart (right now) is that I didn’t ask for my rights back, whilst some others have. The authors who requested their rights expected to be cut loose. I did not.
So here’s the expected order of events:
- In the first instance, they get to privately kick me. Strip me of something meaningful, give me no options. They know Ex Partum will be hard to re-sell, because who wants to touch a book that’s been out for less than half a year and then tossed aside?
- Then, they force me to expose my own situation, because they know I’ll have to make a public statement about why my book is no longer available. And here I am, doing just that.
- Finally, this will set me up as a target, and they get a chance to have a go at me again, more publicly. I’m sure they’ll call me all manner of awful things4.
So, they’ve lined me up to be bullied twice. Plus, I no longer have a book out.
I called out power as an issue in Dumpsterfire. I said: authors have none. Publishers have loads. They can use it to help, or they can use it to harm. Here we can see the latter enacted. When someone said something they didn’t like, it hurt their feelings. When they retaliated, it potentially destroyed a career.
I don’t really have any say in this. I could beg, I suppose? Please, please take me back, I’ll join the cult, drink the juice, be the lapdog? Except, I got bullied enough at school to know that never pays off. I could investigate a legal route, and don’t get me wrong, it’s tempting. But for a start, that would be a massive money and time sink; for another, it’d probably be a lost cause; and for another-another thing, even if I won some sort of challenge, it’s not like I’d want the book on Atthis’ lists anymore. Why would I want to keep hanging out with bullies?
No mistake, though. Atthis is killing Ex Partum because I went out there and said that their public-facing behaviour was harmful to me and others like me. The irony isn’t lost on me.
Close to the jugular
It’s tempting to go for a character assassination here. Really it is. But you know what they say about picking fights with pigs: you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. However, there are things that I can say that are not specific to the person, but about the way my book was handled by Atthis. That is to say: poorly.
I found the editing process to be problematic, but I played ball. I am a good kid, and generally a ‘yes’ person. I’m happy to be easy to work with. I accepted almost all the suggested changes, although I thought they made the book weaker. Luckily, multiple beta readers picked up on the insertions and suggested cutting them (without my input, they just picked up the voice change and the weak prose themselves). Following beta read comments, the book reverted almost entirely back to its original, submitted version (barring a few very insightful modifications suggested by a sensitivity reader, to whom I am still grateful5).
The formatting/layout process was fine, but there was almost no useful, critical feedback. The feedback I got was from my own network of artists. They helped bring the cover art to life. There was no particular drive to find quotes or ARC readers, either. A majority of the list was prepared by me, and most of the people who agreed were already within my network. My spec fic community is extensive, because I’ve put the work in (and also because people are awesome), but you’d think a publisher with over a decade of experience would have more reach outside of that small community.
And, I’ve said this before, but there was almost no publicity. What was done was sloppy. There were repeated issues, like not tagging people or including links to direct purchase; not sending ARCs out in time (e.g. to Reactor, for its regular what’s coming out next [Month] roundup); and typos and unrelated commentary in social posts. Plus, it felt like there was a huge amount of ‘we’ve tried this before and it doesn’t work,’ rather than ‘let’s give it a go and see what sticks.’ It was a very no-first strategy. No marketing budget doesn’t mean no attempts, surely.
I know there have been issues with how Atthis’ financial stuff has been communicated in the past, but that has not been a concern for me. Things have been clear, and I suppose they’ve been on time. I have nothing to compare it to. And there’s nothing really to report anyway, because sales figures have been so low. Lose some, lose some, I guess.
Essentially, there was a lack of care. And I have questions about that. I mean, why bother at all? What is the benefit to owning all these great stories if you don’t share them? Why bother to run a publishing house if you don’t actually need it to function? Why say you’ll shout from the rafters about the books, then complain when there’s not enough money coming in?
I’ve been sat with these questions for a long while, actually. It’s like watching dragons hoarding whatever it is that dragons hoard. But it’s also a masquerade. From here, Atthis Arts, whilst not quite vanity press, seems mostly to run as a platform for legitimising kickstarters and as a publication route for the owner, who gets to avoid all the hoops everyone else has to jump through.
There is also the matter of insults, and on this one point, I will be specific to the person.
Godwin’s law asserts that any online discussion that goes on for long enough will inevitably end up with someone being called a Nazi. The one thing that I will say about Emily is that it seems to take her surprisingly few lines to descend to namecalling, often using the basest in her lexicon – fascists, nazis, supremacists, child abusers. I find this surprising, offensive, and a bit lazy. It is generally a tactic used by people on the far right to both trivialise victims’ pain and suffering, and as a way to shut down open discourse. Which is to say, I think Emily virtue signals so far to the left that she performs her politics as if she’s on the right.
Congrats?!?!
When people say ‘congrats,’ I can see where they’re coming from.
I’ve nominally been released from a problematic (at best) working relationship. I’ve got full agency to say what I want, and to whom (and/or just go take a nap). I can experiment with something like self-publishing, if I want to, with a book that I know people enjoy.
But there are other impacts, which means ‘congrats’ doesn’t really sit so well right now.
I don’t want this shitshow to be a defining feature of my publishing history. I want Ex Partum to be the first of dozens of books that I write, which make people ask me ‘Mate, what’s wrong with you?’ and ‘Are you sure you’re ok?’
I really don’t want agents or publishers to shy away from me because I appear to be a liability. I want them to say ‘Oh, yeah, you wrote that cool book about mushy food stuff, right? What else you got?’ whilst they wiggle their fingers, fishing for more horrible delights.
I really, really don’t want to be wasting my time on this. Everything to do with Atthis has been a colossal drain on time and emotional energy. It has wasted a good first book; it wastes other writers’ time on manufactured drama; and it is wasting your time, right now, even having to bother reading this.
I previously said not to boycott Atthis books, and even now, I still stand by that. We need publishing houses. We need to support the authors who are stuck with this one – how will those authors make money if we cut them off? But if you’re an author looking for an imprint, be cautious. Even if you’re the brand of human they say they’re on the side of. I embody some of the things they say they champion (‘global’6, female, queer, ‘diverse’7, and neurospicy), although what that ‘championing’ amounts to is unclear. Don’t believe their rhetoric. Don’t place trust in them. Don’t waste your talent and your time.
But, hey, it’s not all bad. I am seriously not a fan of bullying, which is what the action taken by Atthis amounts to. And it turns out, neither is the rest of the spec fic community. I have found that there is a whole net of people out there, who were able to catch my emotion as this dumpsterfire burnt on. People who are outraged, and disgusted, and just so fed up with immature behaviour. Just the sorts of people you want in your community and your corner, the ones who show you (and your book) care.
And, I’ve found that there are good publishers out there. People who care, who are excited, and who want you to succeed. In return, we can support them to succeed. People who run indie presses who do the absolute coolest stuff, and don’t use it as a platform for attention and drama8.
So, yeah, in the near future, I won’t get paid for the creative work I did for Ex Partum. And soon, it will be hard for readers to find my book out in the wild (reach out on bsky or insta if you want a copy. I have a small stack and can post it you direct).
I’ve not got a clue what will happen to my first book now. But, Ex Partum is mine again, and I love it. Even if the people who had the power to nurture/destroy it didn’t.
Notes
- Dox(x)ing. Cambridge Dictionary. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/doxing.
↩︎ - Side note: I did whistleblowing which helped get him fired. For gross misconduct. So, be aware: the area of effect around me is that of enforced niceness. ↩︎
- I checked the contract, btw. It says nothing in there about reputational changes/damages (mine or theirs). In fact, there is no moral clause in the contract at all, nor any other mechanism that restricts my statements on the internet. The only listed cause for them to terminate a normal publishing run seems to be if there were “libelous or obscene material” found in the text, as in, within the body of the book. Whilst they can decide how many copies will be printed and distributed, and yanking the book and reverting rights is contractually within their power, it’s deffo a screw over. I suppose they could have pulled the book and not reverted rights, though, so, hey, small mercies. ↩︎
- Though before they call me a nazi, I will remind them, yet again, that I am Jewish, and that could be interpreted as a hate crime. I am also not a fascist, and do not support fascists. They will struggle to call me a White Christian Nationalist, as I am, well, none of those things. What’s left on their plate? Child abuser, was it?
↩︎ - For those interested, the writing process went: I wrote the book, then had alpha readers, then re-drafted, and had my own beta readers (including sensitivity readers, particularly around parenting – I used a lot of my own experience in the book, and didn’t want to make it sound like that was the only parenting experience. Also, around toxic relationships). Once Atthis had accepted it, Emily did a round of edits, I reworked the manuscript, then it went out to another round of beta readers and a sensitivity reader. The betas were because… reasons? But I’m glad they were there, they helped, as I said, with getting it back to its stronger form. The sensitivity reader was because there was an enby character, and as I’m not enby, it was agreed that we should run it by someone with lived experience and a writing background. They picked up on four very good points, and I made tweaks off the back of them, so in that instance, very glad we went that route. Following those edits, the production process began. ↩︎
- Whatever that means. ↩︎
- This is actually much more complicated and I’m going to take a moment here to unpack. I am, quite obviously, white. But (and I know I’ve banged on about it here. Rarely has it felt so relevant), I’m also Jewish, and that makes the concept of ‘whiteness’ and ‘diversity’ more complex. I have been in a conversation with people where they ‘find out’ that I’m Jewish, and they say ‘Oh!’ and you can see as they reconsider me, as they recategorise where I fall in their typologies of people. I very quickly become an other. However, I in no way claim to be BIPOC – that would be utterly absurd, and could cause extreme pain to others. My lived experience is as passing. ↩︎
- You should support these presses, by the way. They only exist if people buy their books. If you’re unsure whether the imprint was good to the author, reach out and ask the author! ↩︎