TOUGH CROWD
■ IN 2011, the innovative publisher Unbound launched with great fanfare, promising to allow authors to build relationships directly with their fans, who could crowdfund books that the big publishers wouldn’t back.
That dream is now dead. Unbound went into a pre-pack administration in March owing £2.36m, with authors and agents down by £656,671, and nearly 8,000 people who crowdfunded books owed £390,564. The company was reborn as Boundless, and it promised to honour authors’ historical royalties, although – because it had no legal obligation to do so – these were framed as “goodwill payments”. However, on 30 May, Boundless CEO Archna Sharma emailed authors to tell them there would be no more money until the company was on a “firmer financial footing”.