Christina Garner needs our help. She has been fighting a court case over the last year and is running an appeal for donations so that she can continue the fight.
This post is from 11 April 2018. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open.
If you haven’t been following this case, it is against a notorious author/box set promoter/marketer/author coach who goes by the name of Rebecca Hamilton – and also runs other author businesses like OTOH Books (formerly GenreCrave).
The name of Rebecca Hamilton may be familiar to you – and if it’s not, ask around. Because of the various suits and countersuits also involve claims of defamation, I can’t go into detail on what happened, but you can read Christina Garner’s eye-opening account on her GoFundMe page.
The most recent legal developments are as follows: as you can read on Christina’s page, Rebecca Hamilton lost her Motion to Quash this lawsuit. Rebecca Hamilton then filed a crazy countersuit against Christina Garner for half a million dollars. She then also tried to sue multiple other authors who had done nothing more than donate to Christina’s case and pledge support.
Obviously the judge saw through all this bullshit and threw out those countersuits against those other authors, viewing them as completely without merit. No surprise there, but these legal tactics have delayed the main case going to trial against Rebecca Hamilton, and Christina still faces that ridiculous countersuit – which is why she needs our help again.
I’d like nothing more than to detail my full distaste for Rebecca Hamilton’s business practices, and what she has done to several authors I know, but the defamation angles in these cases make it impossible. Suffice to say that I trust Christina Garner implicitly, her account of events is wholly believeable to me, and I wouldn’t recommend Rebecca Hamilton’s services to my worst enemy.
And if my word isn’t enough, then consider this little fact so you know who you are dealing with: Rebecca Hamilton had her Amazon KDP account terminated for repeated breaches of the exclusivity agreement (meaning she was enrolled in KDP Select and publishing that same content elsewhere).
Considering what Amazon does let fly these days, that’s quite remarkable. I can also confirm that I personally witnessed breaches of exclusivity too. With my own eyes, as it was happening, in case there is any doubt whatsoever.
Rebecca Hamilton has quite the reputation in the author community – read Christina’s account for more. Usually if you ask two writers something you’ll get at least three opinions. I’ve never seen the self-publishing community come together in such agreement on anything before, so that should tell you something too.
If you can spare a few dollars to support this court case, you would be supporting not just Christina, but anyone who thinks ethics and fairness is important, and that the worst people shouldn’t get to do whatever they wish.
Christina Garner has had to go back to her day job to fund this case, working 60-to-80-hour weeks to pay her legal bills. The author community has been great in stepping up and supporting her but she needs our help again. I’ve been really happy to donate previously and I’ve just done so again. Please consider doing the same – it’s so important.
Unfortunately, because this is a case involving defamation I have to take the unusual step of closing comments – I trust you understand. I’m not a lawyer and don’t have the legal expertise to moderate discussion on this matter. I would, however, appreciate you sharing either this post or Christina’s GoFundMe Page as widely as possible, and encouraging your fellow authors to support the fight.
Sometimes a line in the sand has to be drawn and we have to stand up for what is right. This is most definitely one of those times.
EDIT: Seems relevant.
