[mixu]

Apress is a freaking publisher - shouldn't they be expected to be at least minimally professional? Whatever the initial agreement e.g. regarding advances was, the fact remains that Apress did not pay the author until several months after they had completed the work despite several months of inquiries, reminders and so on.

Either Apress is just plain unprofessional (e.g. unwilling/extraordinarily slow) or as you said they are doing this in order to put themselves in a better negotiating position.

I had a similar experience with Apress while working with them as a technical reviewer. They printed the book without asking me for my bio, so I didn't get my five lines of text credits for the work I did. It wouldn't have cost them anything to do that, but they nevertheless screwed it up.

Needless to say, I figured it's way too much of a hassle to deal with them when they approached me to write an actual book, since I want to spend my time writing rather than following up to make sure my publisher does what they are supposed to do.

Yes, with a contract you have better legal recourse. But I'd prefer to work with people I don't have to sue in order to get paid, esp. when the sums involved are tiny.

[asr]

It certainly seems like apress doesn't have their act together, but the fact remains it's a bit silly to refuse to sign a contract and then expect to be paid an advance whose amount is apparently fixed in the contract! In this case, the author could have saved a lot of trouble by asking for an acceptable contract instead of just not signing anything.

Again, i'm happy to accept that apress is unprofessional and a pain, but when someone sends you a contract that says 'completion by X' and that's not ok, ask for a change! If apress paid advances to authors who refused to sign contracts with them, they could get into a lot of trouble.

[mikeash]

Once I started asking about my advance, Apress was happy to have me sign, and then sign themselves, a contract which specified payment in the past. They then took over two months of constant hassle to actually cough up the money. Note that I didn't actually start complaining until a date was fixed etc. and they missed it, so I think your remarks about being silly are off-base.