Search online for “Writer’s Coffee Shop” and “Fifty Shades” and you’ll find articles with headlines such as “The Aussie Housewife Who Established a Publishing Empire” and “Meet Amanda Hayward - the face of the e-book publishing phenomenon,” but the stories don’t mention Pedroza. She’s talked to a lawyer but hasn’t filed a lawsuit. In the restructuring, Pedroza became chief marketing officer but said the amount of money she received from sale of the publishing rights was unfairly small, and she hasn’t seen any of the e-book royalty money.
“Amanda came to us and told us we had to sign contracts and incorporate for tax reasons,” Pedroza said. In 2012 Writer’s Coffee Shop sold the rights to Random House for seven figures and a percentage of royalties on future e-book sales. (Neither Hayward, Dimov, nor McGuire responded to interview request for this article.) When Random House showed up the following year asking about buying the rights, Hayward drew up paperwork showing herself as sole proprietor, telling the others it was “for tax purposes,” Pedroza recalled. Up to that point, the profits from the company had been small change, so the documents didn’t seem like a big deal. Hayward handled the company’s business registration and paperwork from Australia. Few people were making money in fanfic until The Writer’s Coffee Shop published Fifty Shades online in 2010 and watched it become a global phenomenon. The Texas women and the Aussies met online in the 2000s. Fifty Shades was spawned from Twilight, the book series so popular with teenage girls and a lot of other folks. Fanfic, as it’s sometimes called, refers to e-books written by fans and based on the plots and characters of previously published books. Pedroza, Waxahachie resident Jennifer McGuire, and Australians Amanda Hayward and Lea Dimov founded The Writer’s Coffee Shop in 2009 to write and share online fan fiction. She’s remarkably upbeat and positive, despite missing out on the Fifty Shades gold mine. Pedroza is still smarting from that business fiasco, but not much. The company sold the publishing rights to Random House for a reported $1 million-plus.
Pedroza is now making citrus-scented and other kinds of soap with her longtime friend Christa Beebe, who also worked for the small publishing company that introduced online readers to E L James’ steamy mom-porn before the rest of the world saw it.
0 kommentar(er)
