Shawline Publishing

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Shawline Publishing

It is with interest that we all learnt of the account of Brad Shaw otherwise know as Brad McBride and Edwin Jason McBride in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) at the weekend. The headline of the article reads: Murky past of publisher Brad Shaw – and the authors suing him for missing royalties.

Andrew Horney writes in the Sydney Morning Herald:

A Herald and Age investigation has revealed Brad Shaw’s real name is Edwin Jason McBride, who according to company records is the owner and director of Shawline Publishing. EJ McBride is also listed among Shawline’s “bestselling authors”, including one book billed as “tales from the mind of a self-confessed nutter”.

AND

Dan Moon said he paid Shawline $6,000 for his book to be published and marketed.

In the article Moon claims that despite paying Shawline for marketing, he hired his own publicist and received widespread exposure yet only received a small royalty payment. Brad Shaw has since issued a communication claiming that Shawline Publishing has acted with proprietary in Moon’s case. An article posted on Books and Publishing  Shawline denies allegations of unpaid royalties.

The SMH article claims Shaw or McBride, has been bankrupted three times. A decade ago, he collapsed in an Adelaide courtroom after pleading guilty to a criminal charge of distributing pornographic pictures on his website. A proponent of the ‘hybrid’ model of publishing, currently Shawline is in dispute with a number of authors over royalty payments.

At Green Hill we see hybrid publishing as double-dipping – getting the author to pay a fee for production and then taking a portion of each sale. This might be great for the publisher, but its usually terrible for the author.

Green Hill Director David Walters said ‘the sales technique sometimes used by hybrid companies goes like this – “by getting a share of royalty payments we are highly incentivised to market the book” ‘

‘But often the hybrid company does very little, and if for some reason the book sells, makes a windfall’

“In this case the author might have put in a big personal effort to make themselves and the book publicly known”

‘This windfall might be in addition to a highly inflated price for book production. Its a big win-lose in favour of the hybrid publisher’ he said.

Over the years Green Hill has been contacted intermittently by customers of hybrid and self-publishing companies (Australian, North American and UK companies) and we have on occasions been able to assist. We may be able to help by re-establishing an author’s book as a true self-published (not hybrid) title.

HELP HOTLINE David – 0411 311 205