June 1st, 2020 - Press Release
Thank you to everyone in the horror community who reached out to us regarding a freelance editor who worked with us between 2016 and 2018. Your support and kindness mean the world to us. We will respond to all your emails, but in order to provide answers quicker, we prepared this statement.
We met Andrea Dawn at a 2016 horror convention. She bought a book from our table and we had a great conversation. Her experience in editing and love for the genre led us to work together. She first helped us on a novel called The City. When that went well, Dawn went on to assist in editing an anthology and a few more novels.
Blood Bound Books’ mission is to spread hope through dark fiction. We may be a smaller press, but we’ve made a big difference in the communities we’ve touched. The City’s sole purpose is to generate donations for St. Jude’s Children Hospital, and we supply books to teachers and classrooms in need. If you’d like to help spread hope with us, please click here for more info.
Part of our philosophy is seeing the good in people. However, when it became clear that Mrs. Dawn’s actions were not in alignment with who we are as a company or individuals, we ended our professional relationship. We wished her well in future endeavors, but have no desire to continue working with her. Mrs. Dawn did receive royalties from us every quarter as her contracts outlined and we kept her editing credit in our books. We were bound by those agreements and we honored them even though we no longer worked with her.
On Wednesday March 4th, 2020 we received an email from Mrs. Dawn asking us to remove her from all publications and contracts. We enthusiastically complied. Since her social media feed has been shared on June 1st, 2020 several authors who had thanked Dawn for her help have asked us to remove her name from their acknowledgements section. Again, we plan on making those changes. Please be patient with us as changing files will take time.
Please do not feel that these authors or Blood Bound Books share the comments made by this editor. Decide to support them and us based off our track records, not an editor who worked with us on a few projects. It is painful to have to write a statement like this. People you hire don’t always work out, but it doesn’t usually escalate to this level.
No one knows where the future will lead, but wherever we go, you can rely on Blood Bound Books to continue to do what we’ve always done. We’re proud to have enjoyed a decade of providing great service to the horror community, and we look forward to decades more with you!