E-Book Printing By Favouritism...

I was just over at Erecsite, on the Whiskey Creek Press post, (they do so have interesting stuff over there) when this comment by Pepper Espinoza caught my eye:

"Liquid Silver has a sales requirement *and* a length requirement. They also flat out said that authors with a "good relationship" with the publisher will have priority for print, all else being equal. They claim that everything that meets those requirements will be moving into print at some point, but I have no idea when that'll happen."

I was a little gob-smacked. Does this mean that if an author doesn't make nice with the publisher, that their books take much longer to go to print?

I always wondered if this was the case with Elloras Cave. There always used to be certain authors who's books were slated for print really quickly, whilst other author's books were left and left. (Actually, now that I think back, certain authors used to have a book out every two minutes, whilst others had to wait, and wait, and wait.)

I like Liquid Silver, but if what Pepper says is true, then what a crappy way to conduct business. They're basically saying, if the author behaves well, then they get priority over the problem authors. Hmmm... not impressed by that at all. I kinda understand it, but it just seems..... wrong, somehow.

I wonder how many e-pubs make their printing decisions this way?