Authoress - vanity publisher - poor quality of books produced - breach of contract
see also Kent v. Valeforce Associates (1999)
The judge did not draw up a written judgment, but The Guardian of 25th June 1996 (John Ezard) reported the case as below (the court order follows):
Joanna Steans was overjoyed when she got an instant, glowing reaction from the first British publisher to whom she sent her wartime memoir The Avenue. But she was dismayed when the publisher, John West, owner of Excalibur Press in Fulham, West London, asked her to pay him £3,800 to bring out the book. That was far beyond the means of Mrs Steans, a pensioner living in Malaga, Spain. She declined the offer, but Mr West rang her to say the book was so good he would publish it for £2,800.
She paid him £2,100 in instalments - half her life savings as an auxiliary nurse. And there her troubles started. They lasted nearly three years, but this week they ended in a rare victory for her as one individual among hundreds of victims of "vanity" publishing. West London county court, operating as a small claims court, ordered Mr West to pay her back within 14 days. Judge Nicholas Madge accepted her case that Excalibur Press had produced a book "of such poor quality as to be unsaleable". He had heard that out of six copies - all that she received - some were so badly bound that pages fell out. The cover of another was bound upside down. Judge Madge ordered the firm's defence struck out.
Yesterday Mrs Steans said she was "absolutely overjoyed". Her advisor in the court case, Johnathon Clifford [see note following], founder of the National Poetry Foundation, who has crusaded for five years against abuses of vanity publishing, hailed the judgment as "a small beginning". Mr West did not appear in court. Last night his production manager, Jill Kline, said: "Mr West has had a stroke and was admitted to hospital on May 16. He is dealing with the case personally. Other members of the staff have no knowledge of it. We are unable to comment on anything. If there is a judgmewnt we are obliged to pay, but we shall be discussing this with our solicitors."
Mrs Steans had always wanted to write. Retirement brought her the opportunity. The Avenue is a fictionalised account, ending on VE Day, of her upbringing in Withington, Manchester, during the Blitz. She saw Excalibur Press advertising in a Sunday newspaper. The company's promotional material calls it a "subsidy" publisher, a word often used in the vanity trade. What convinced her was Mr West's rave report on her book and his phone call. He sent her a booklet raising the prospect of "royalties of up to 40 percent of net receipts" until she recovered her investment and 20 percent thereafter. The normal publishing royalty is only 10 percent.
In addition she would get "half of all money received from film, broadcasting, television and serial rights". His company would do all editing, proof reading, administration, promotion and distribution. His contract said her book would be finished within 280 days - November 1994. This would have made it topical, and more saleable, in the build-up to last year's VE Day commemoration. "I thought I might eventually make a little money," she said, but she and her husband found themselves having to do a lot of proof reading.
Then the firm wrote asking what to use on the cover. Mrs Steans, while making clear that she was no artist, sent an amateurish drawing of bombs and Anderson shelters as guidance for a professional artist. She kept phoning London to ask when the book was coming out. It was published on June 8, 1995, more than a month after VE Day. "That was a real blow," she said. Its cover was simply the drawing she had sent Mr West. As for marketing, the company told her it had sent a review copy to one national newspaper and submitted details of the book to a bibliographical database. But Mrs Steans's court victory has restored her spirits. "It has given me the confidence to carry on," she said yesterday. "I am half way through another book."
Debra Kuppers, 25, of Copner, Hampshire, has been less fortunate after replying to an advertisment in a Christian magazine. In 1991 another of Mr West's companies, Adelphi Press, wrote offering to publish her book of Christian poems Well, Here I Am. Mr West spoke of "very generous royalties geared to recover the subsidy as soon as possible". Ms Kuppers borrowed £2,400 from her parents. She managed to get good local press publicity for the book. But when people tried to buy copies as Christmas presents in 1992, Adelphi said it was out of print. "It has sold about 80 copies," she said yesterday. "To my knowledge they only ever printed 100 copies. They did nothing to promote it." She and her parents had their complaints reported on television and asked for their money back, without success. "I feel very angry and a bit of a fool," she said.
In an unrelated case last month, Winchester county court awarded a judgment for £280 against Excalibur Press. No further details were available last night. Last year the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint by Mr Clifford against Mr West. Its adjudication asked the publisher to withdraw claims made in press advertisements. Told of this, Mr West said in a letter to Mr Clifford: "The ASA have no standing in law and their opinions are not worth the paper they are written on." The Authority is considering three complaints againsts Mr West and four against other vanity firms.
In 1994 Excalibur registered publication of 68 books. Questionnaires sent to all big bookshop chains and library suppliers found that these outlets could trace having sold or handled only 60 copies of Excalibur books. All had been ordered by customers - mostly family or friends of the authors. The outlets had no record of any sales being made to them by Excalibur representatives. Sales figures for several vanity publishers were equally low. Others, with higher figures, had used trade reps. That year the 12 publishers studied in the survey registered the publication of 712 book titles but a total of only 4,568 copies were sold - an average of six copies per title.
Case No. MA516321 in the West London County Court, before District Judge Nicholas Madge sitting at 43 North End Road, West Kensington, London W14
UPON hearing the representative for the Plaintiff (Steans) and the Defendant (Excalibur Press Ltd) not attending
It is ordered that
1. The Defence be struck out.
2. There be judgment for the Plaintiff in the sum of £2170 payable within 14 days of the date of service of this order.
Dated 14th June 1996
Authors with problems which specifically concern vanity (or 'subsidy') publishers are advised to contact the campaigner Johnathan Clifford, of 27 Mill Road, Fareham, Hampshire PO16 0TH, telephone/facsimile 01329-822218, e-mail JohnathonClifford@compuserve.com, website http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohnathonClifford
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