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Reef Fishes of the Red Sea was published by Kegan Paul International, and is now being sold by Kegan Paul.
We approached Kegan Paul International because they had previously published a volume on Red Sea coral reefs. Owing to the costly nature of the book - many coloured photographs - we were urged to obtain some form of sponsorship to keep the sale price of the book to a reasonable figure.
We duly raised considerable sponsorship from a company in Saudi Arabia . Kegan Paul International (under the Chairmanship of Peter Hopkins) eagerly seized these funds and from that day our 'author/publisher' relationship deteriorated. The first and second due dates for royalty payments passed with no contact from Kegan Paul Int. There was not a lot we could do from Saudi Arabia in terms of taking legal action. When we returned to the UK we pursued a case through the small claims court in the UK and were told that Kegan Paul International was in receivership. Despite this, 'Kegan Paul' continued to sell our book.
For a number of years now our book has been sold openly by Kegan Paul and Columbia University Press (Kegan Paul's distributor in the USA) and no royalties have been paid.
It is clearly too expensive to take full legal proceedings against a dishonest publisher, as many other authors have found, but I am delighted to learn that a respected Middle Eastern organisation is currently suing Kegan Paul for non-performance to contract. I wish them well. Since I am still living in the Middle East I shall do my best to spread the word on Kegan Paul.
