On Tuesday a federal court class-action lawsuit against Harlequin for allegedly depriving authors of ebook royalties was dismissed, with Judge Harold Baer ruling that Harlequin had abided by the terms of their contracts and that the plaintiff authors — Barbara Keiler, Mona Gay Thomas, and Linda Barrett – did not sufficiently state a claim that they had lost significant ebook royalties between 1990 and 2004. The original complaint alleged that Harlequin improperly licensed ebook rights to their own Switzerland-based subsidiaries, yielding authors a small royalty–“3 to 4 percent of the ebook cover price”–as their 50 percent share of proceeds, rather […]
