Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

UPDATED Wednesday 2nd October 2024

Shawline Publishing (now called New Found Books)

– the no-good, the bad and the ugly.

The situation

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). 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 a courtroom after pleading guilty to a criminal charge of distributing pornographic pictures on his website. Located in Ballarat Victoria, a proponent of the ‘hybrid’ model of publishing, currently Shawline is in dispute with a number of authors over royalty payments.

Of even greater significance is the number of authors who have fully paid for services yet to be delivered. Some authors have been in Shawline’s production queue for over 18 months. Others have been told by Shaw that future production schedules for their projects cannot be estimated.

They have also relaunched their business as New Found Books with a new website, basically a copy of the old Shawline website but with a new name.

Several authors have contacted Green Hill confirming the company is asking past and current authors (who in some cases have paid huge fees but not received any work) for financial contributions citing ‘cashflow issues’. The letter reads:

We have published over 200 books for your talents to be found in the world (sic)

The targeted attack of (sic) our business has caused a disruption to our cashflow reserves, which in turn has led us to look at different revenue streams to get us through this difficult period so that we can maintain our operations.

At this time we are looking to raise $200,000 AUD to keep the business expenses and our awesome 15 staff employed through the below listed pledge options.

A part of the ‘reward’ for contributing $5,500 is a 1% shareholding of the business, a business which looks as though it might possibly be insolvent i.e. have a negative value. The Shawline letter says ‘we  are looking to raise $200,000 to keep our business expenses (sic)’. So the 1% ownership for $5,500 might not be a great deal – its a company with “a disruption of cashflow reserves”.

So many questions

Does all this mean that if Shawline can’t raise $200,000 they will not be able to ‘maintain our operations’? Without operations being maintained, will the queue of fully paid-up authors ever have their projects delivered? One author told Green Hill he felt the letter was like ‘blackmail’.

The letter is ambiguous. There is no detail about the valuation of the company. If $5,500 is a 1% share this means the company is valued at just $0.55M. Is this ‘intrinsic value‘ calculated by factoring in cash surpluses over years – if 10 years, does this mean that the company has a cash surplus of $55K per annum?

The big remaining question is: is the current negative publicity concerning just one author the reason for “a disruption of cashflow reserves”?  Where has the money pre-paid by authors gone?  Does this mean that Shawline is depending on recruiting new authors to keep afloat like a Ponzi scheme? Has the recent publicity meant that little new business is coming their way and does it mean there were no “cashflow reserves”?  A salient point for potential investors is that Brad Shaw has been bankrupted 3 times prior.

The letter also describes Brad Shaw as the ‘former CEO’ and the New Found Books website has announced the starting of new business ventures outside of Australia. Where will Bradley Shaw get the funds to launch a new business? You can find out all about exit scams here: what is an exit scam? 

The pledge deal also includes a 100% royalty payment on Nett (sic) profits. Note Net Profit is calculated on sales less costs which in the case of many, if not most authors will be negative.

Just this week I spoke to two authors who had each paid $6,000 just before the SMH article was published, to commence a book publishing project. They received the letter asking for a pledge as well. In their telephone conversations with Bradley Shaw their requests for a refund were not positively received and they were informed that the production of their books might be indefinitely delayed.

Our comment

The Shawline case is damaging to professional practitioners in what is a legitimate and expanding self-publishing industry. The reason for this blog post is to hopefully prevent authors from being scammed.

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 unhappy 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