Addressing author concerns about the timeliness of royalty payments from Ellora’s Cave, an Ohio publisher of erotic romance fiction, CEO Patty Marks blamed the problems on the implementation of new accounting software. But she also said the house is processing payments manually, and claimed all payments are up to date and going out to authors without disruption.
Marks told PW that Ellora’s Cave, an erotic romance publisher that publishes primarily in digital, began implementing new accounting software about two years ago because the house has grown to large for its previous system. Unfortunately, she told PW, the new software system, installed at a cost of about $250,000, is still “not quite working.”
However, Marks emphasized that the Ellora Cave CFO is now processing about 800 royalty payments a month manually. “She’s putting in 60 hour weeks to keep up,” she said. Marks also said that while Ellora’s Cave authors are paid royalties on a monthly schedule, the publisher’s contracts specify a minimum quarterly payment schedule. “We pay our authors on a monthly payment schedule so now instead of being two months ahead, we’re only a month ahead but still well within the contract minimum.”
Marks said the house now works on both the old system and the new system and acknowledged that they are “running slow.” Marks also said that authors were updated about the problem “toward the end of 2013.”
“It’s a pain. We’re not happy,” she said. But Marks also said that “I can’t say when we’ll get it fixed. I’m hoping it’s not much longer” adding that “every time the software company fixes something, they break something else.”
