I publish books. Had a distributor hook me up with some artists she also reps for to provide artwork for covers of books. Distributor sells lots, but fails to collect. 5 months later, no payments even though I sent out $15K in books to customers. I say enough after one promise of check after another. I take over billing and customers have no problems paying.

I definitely overreacted when I asked and never got an accurate accounting of who paid and customer contact info so I could collect. I was so ticked by thattime I said I wouldn't pay her or her distributor boss any commissions. Didn't mean it. Just trying to get information any way I could.

Distributor boss (small single-person owned company) tells client who was set to order $30K in a special book order I'm not to be trusted. Client pulls the order. Then artists start dropping out, asking me to not use their images (I offered them easy outs in the contracts).

Now distributor has contacted all the artists and told them in essence they wouldn't distribute their artwork if they continued to allow images to be used on books.

I offered an olive branch today, and said you can sell again, just not distribute and sorry for blowing up.

If the distributor and her sales person don't agree, I feel I should actually go after them for slander and badmouthing me. There's no doubt what they said directly effected sales. Went from $60K in sales down to about $28K right now.

I can get other artists for covers of the books, so I'm not out much if I have to stop printing artwork. There's lots of artists in my area and in the world that would license images. A few are well-known locally, so it's tough to loose them, but these are tourist books tied to a local market and tourists don't seem to care. Tourists buy lots of chinese made goods.

Distributor was good at sales. But horrible at collection. And even worse now that they've badmouthed me and caused sales to evaporate. They have a tight arrangement with these artists, and have essentially said if you do a book with her, we won't rep your stuff.

What would you do?

Don't mess around talk to a lawyer and proceed with all dispatch. The longer you wait the harder it will be for your attorney to make a case. You definitely have a case, in my humble, non-legal opinion.

Kent Capener
Capener Consulting, LLC
http://www.capenerconsulting.com