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Grim Oak Press has announced that Unveiled, the highly anticipated follow-up to Unfettered, has been canceled due to a conflict between its publisher and editor.
“[Unveiled] will not be happening,” revealed Shawn Speakman, publisher at Grim Oak Press. “And it’s important to say, through no fault of my own. After waiting for more than six weeks for the simplest of work to be done on the anthology, editor Roger Bellini asked me to renegotiate the contract. In the renegotiation, he asked for 17.5% of hardcover and ebooks sales—less than originally in the contract, true—and his name still on the dust jacket. In return, he would not be editing the book. This would give Roger large royalties for effectively doing what I consider very little work on the book,”
As of the time this was written, Bellini, who was attached to the ill-fated Neverland’s Library anthology, has not commented on the cancellation of Unveiled.
“After talking with my book agent, I decided it best for Grim Oak Press to terminate the contract,” Speakman announced, spelling the end for this iteration of Unveiled.
This is disappointing news for readers and the authors involved in the project. Given Grim Oak Press’ success with Unfettered, readers can hope that the anthology finds a new editor before long.
Speakman discusses the cancellation in more depth on the official Grim Oak Press website.
EDIT (Nov. 3rd, 2014 – 7:05pm): Speakman confirmed on Reddit that he’s working on a different anthology. It won’t be called Unveiled or feature the same lineup of writers, however.
EDIT (Nov. 4th, 2014): Turns out that Bellini owns rights for the stories, so Grim Oak Press and Speakman are unable to use the collected stories in a new iteration of Unveiled. It’s unclear what Bellini intends to do with the anthology, but he, theoretically, could sell the it to another publisher.
EDIT (Nov. 4th, 2014): Having spoken with several of the authors announced for the anthology, none of them were under contract yet for their stories (though some had already submitted them), suggesting that Speakman and Grim Oak Press might be able to reassemble the stories under a different title.
While it’s a shame that the anthology fell apart, it does feel… unprofessional, to say the least, of Speakman to publicly broadcast the details of the fallout. We really didn’t need to know more than that it’s cancelled due to disagreements between the publisher and editor. I guess it accomplishes his goal of announcing to the world that Bellini is flaky, especially when added to the failed Neverland’s Library project, but it also announces that anyone who works with Speakman shouldn’t expect him to keep any details of an unsuccessful project private.
So…what happens to the stories the authors wrote and turned in?
@Dave – I’m assuming the stories been paid for, and the rights will revert back to the authors. Nothing like selling an original story twice, right?
Not necessarily . . . the editor that contracted for the stories owns the right to do with them for that particular project. There’s nothing that says he can’t resell the project to someone else down the road. So the rights wouldn’t revert. Though it depends on what the contract says, of course.
Thanks, Sean. That *does* seem to be the case with this anthology. It looks like Bellini still owns the rights to some of the stories, though I’ve heard from a handful of authors connected with the anthology that they hadn’t yet signed a contract). We’ll see what he does with them.
Aidan, I’d like to comment on this situation but I am unable to do so now, under the advisement of an attorney.
Also, I’d like to be clear about the fact that at no time was I contacted by you for a statement. So to say I’ve declined to comment up until now is deceptive to readers of the article.
Thanks for dropping by, Roger.
I’m sorry if I gave the impression that you’d ‘declined’ to comment, my only note in the article references the fact that you had not yet made a public comment about the situation at the time of writing. Nowhere did I suggest that I’d reached out to you for comment, or that you’d refused such a request. I’m certainly not in the habit of deceiving my readers.