Author Complaints at Starfish Bay Publishing

I first heard of Australian children’s publisher Starfish Bay Publishing (SBP) in 2024, thanks to a question from an author about the advisability of investing in SBP’s Author Supported Traditional Publishing Programme. Implemented, SBP’s website explained, because of “the severe effect the pandemic had on our publishing business”, this program–despite using the word traditional–required authors to come up with a “temporary loan” of AU$6,000. Here’s how SBP’s website described the Author Supported program at the time I received the question, from an October 2024 archive of the SBP website (thank you, Wayback Machine). I told the author that including words like “traditional” and “loan” and “temporary” in your demand for money doesn’t change the fact that a large amount of cash is due upfront as a condition of publication. Pay to play is pay to play. Even if SBP sincerely intended to pay the money back within two and a half years, what guarantee was there that it would still be in…