The Scribe Publishing Scandal: What Happens When the Leader in Your Field Goes Down in Flames

TRANSCRIPT

If this is new to you, the short story is that there was a hybrid publishing company called Scribe that has been in chaos. And I have very intentionally not chimed in on the chaos because I have watched other hybrid indie custom publishers descend like hawks and start running ads that say “We're the alternative to Scribe” and writing posts that say “If you were left by Scribe in the lurch than we're here to save you.” If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, about a month ago—this is being recorded on June 25 2023—Scribe fired without warning, roughly 70% of their staff. They had 130 employees and they basically just fired them without any warning and without any severance.

Until recently, its CEO was someone named Javon McCormick and right under him was someone named Meghan McCracken. There was an episode of a podcast by somebody named Sam Lacrosse called the Scribe Media Files, where he was basically called the Zoom meeting, this town hall that had Scribe clients and employees and all of these people who could talk about what had happened. 

And there was very negative feedback about Meghan, but she was sort of left in charge. And then, roughly a week ago, she resigned. And while she was a little bit opaque in what she said about leaving, the quote she wrote on LinkedIn is “If anyone takes advantage of the best things within you, your compassion, your desire to be a part of something bigger, your huge heart, your desire to help that is not for you to be ashamed of.” 

That’s seemingly passing the blame to Javon McCormack, but none of this this was clear. And so everybody is kind of passing the baton. And meanwhile, Scribe employees are left without any warning, without any paycheck, without any severance. So what a petition was very quickly started up and change.org with the goal of 500 signatures, which has as of this recording 495 signatures, It's asking for severance packages, a $1000 therapy stipend for each affected individual and for people to be granted ownership and unrestricted access to their hardware.

It sounds like employees were cut off from the books they were working on. And they were told they could not speak to their clients which in Scribe terminology, their clients are called “authors.” In the Scribe files audio that I heard, there was a former Scribe employee who talked about how she was working on six different books at once and how she was told she couldn't be in touch with those clients, leaving them in the lurch.

Meanwhile, the people who were left at Scribe were reaching out to these clients, and saying, “Oh, there's nothing to worry about, don't worry about the headlines. We've got this all under control.” This made of course, no sense because they really had no staff anymore. And so it's just been a shitshow. 

Now I’m somebody who started a company because I admired what Scribe was doing so much…well, I admired about 75% of what they were doing. I've just been watching, astounded, and learning so much, basically, about what not to do.

What’s happened since all of this is that a company called Enduring Ventures announced a few days ago that they were buying it. And they announced on the Scribe LinkedIn page; there was something from the founder of Enduring Ventures, which said that they were coming in and saving the day.

And that’s crucial because there were hundreds of books that were clients had paid in advance. And you know, if you tallied up with what Scribe charges and the numbers, it was millions upon millions of dollars.

And everybody has sort of said different things—that basically it was everything from it was a Ponzi scheme to it just really mismanaged. The history of Scribe is that it was started by I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell author Tucker Max, and his partner Zach. And they started this company, and it became successful. 

And then a few years ago—this was also very opaque—they left but it was never clear. Apparently, they were selling it to Javon McCormack that wasn't stated explicitly. But they “left.” However, Tucker Max has run many workshops there. I personally know people who he has signed to be clients in the last couple of years, people where he said, “I'm going to be working personally on your book.” But when all of this stuff came up with Scribe, somebody asked him on Twitter, “What's your feeling about this?” And he said, “I haven't been involved with the company in years.”

So there are very much conflicting reports about that and I did hear from somebody that he was on a very generous retainer fee. So Enduring Ventures announced that they were coming in. And what was interesting is that, the founder said on LinkedIn, “If you need to direct your anger at someone, direct it at me. I didn't cause the issues, but perhaps I can solve them with enough time.”

Which, if you're watching the way that I sort of have been watching with who is actually going to take responsibility for this, it's not JT McCormick. It's not Meghan McCracken. Okay, so it's this guy who's going in and say, I'm taking responsibility, but it wasn't my fault. I feel like maybe it's living in Hollywood. And having worked at People Magazine and US Weekly, I have learned that we will forgive anything, if somebody takes responsibility. I know that from my personal life too. And I think the reason that it just kind of gets worse and worse and worse is that people are saying they're taking responsibility, but then they're sort of also saying at the same time that it's not their fault.

So when I say I really admired about 75% of what Scribe was doing, I often stood back and marveled at the fact that they were very proud of the fact that they had released 1000s of books, because I know what it takes to release a high quality book. And it takes love and determination and time and energy and just something that I don't believe could really be replicated 1000s of times. We work with a fraction of the people who reach out to us and we really won't take anybody that we don't believe can earn back 10 to 100 times their investment. We release fewer than 15 books or 20 books a year and each one is very much a labor of love. So I would stand there and I would look at what they were doing. And I just assumed because the publicity around it was so good that they had figured out a way to produce really high quality in mass volume.

And yet, many of our clients are people who have either worked with Scribe in the past or had spoken to them and had decided to work with us. I always explained we are very, very different; we're almost the exact opposite. And the people who decided to do their second books with us talked a lot about how the Scribe books were not what they wanted, they weren't happy with the results, they had to rewrite the entire thing. And, and while I know that, that you're never going to have a 100% happiness success rate, there are some clients that are never going to be happy no matter what you do. What I thought was interesting is Meghan McCracken would put these videos—I was on their newsletter list—and she'd send out videos every week and one of the videos said, “100% of our clients have been thrilled with their experience,” which just stood out to me not just because I don't think there's any company in the world that can say that, but also because I had so much information that refuted that.

I also noticed that they were getting by based on some exaggerated claims. They did work on David Goggins book which was a massive book and a huge, huge success. But they also touted the fact often that they published Tiffany Haddish’s book. Now, Tucker Max wrote her book but it was published by Gallery Books, which is a division of Simon and Schuster. And I noticed that they were promoting it on their website, very much leading people to believe they had published it, which would, of course, be a very big deal. David Goggins became very well known as a result of the book, but Tiffany Haddish was very famous, I would say more famous than David Goggins. And so if she had chosen to work with Scribe, that would have been different. And I wondered, “Okay, if they're fudging the details on that, and that I think that is a pretty big detail to fudge, what else are they fudging?”

There were all these articles and stories about how Scribe is the best place to work. It is the happiest workplace on earth. I actually just finished reading a book about Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, he was obsessed with Zappos being the happiest place to work. He died very tragically a few years ago in a fire but it was controversial. And the end result is that he sounded like one of the least happy individuals on Earth. So whenever hearing a place is so happy, my ears perk up and I think, if you're happy, aren't you just being happy and not talking about it everywhere?

Also Javon McCormick made it very clear that he was very interested in promoting his personal brand. He posted all the time on LinkedIn. He published his own book, and he made it really clear that that's what he wanted to do. I have a friend who talked to him about a partnership with Scribe and this friend said that really all he talked about this wanting to do to further his own personal brand. And there’s a lot of buzz that he became more interested in becoming famous than he did in running this big company. 

What the Scribe Files podcast that I listened to said that he had leased this very expensive building in Austin right when the pandemic hit and so everybody kind of converted to work from home. And so it was just a really poor investment that drained money. They also had 130 employees and that is a massive, massive overhead.

I also noticed when I would talk to a lot of potential clients, they would say, “Scribe charges less” but I looked at their website and I would see that their think was to upsell; they give you this kind of low ish sounding price. And then you get in and they go, “Well, you really need this marketing.”

And I could look at the marketing offer and because of what I know about publishing, I could see that it was BS; it would say, we're going to pitch you to 100 podcasts, we're going do this, we’re going to release this press release. And I could look at this long list of 12 things and go, that is taking them about two hours and about $500 in expenses. And there were no guarantees. And so somebody who doesn't know media at all would look at that and think it sounded like a great thing, I could tell it wasn't.

And so it turns out, that was being run by somebody who really didn't know anything about marketing; I talked to a former Scribe employee this week who just said everybody there knew it sucked. But this person was in charge, and there was nothing they could do. The conclusion is don't have a marketing plan that is run by someone who doesn't know book marketing.

And really, I think that's a really big determination, if anybody runs a business and is looking for what not to do. When Tucker Max left, the people who were running this organization had no experience with publishing. And I noticed because there are a lot of other hybrid or custom publishing companies run by people who seem to have discovered that book publishing is a good business to be in but they have zero experience.

One of the things that I'm very proud of is that I come from traditional publishing; I've done six books with HarperCollins, I did a book with Simon and Schuster, I've hit the New York Times bestseller list. So I'm able to take those elements of traditional publishing and merge them with the way publishing works today. So I think that if you're going to have a publishing company, have someone running it who has lots of experience in publishing. 

And so, a month after all of this, Scribe has not updated their LinkedIn or their website, which seems dishonest. I ran into somebody I know who is a client. I saw him about two weeks ago and we were talking about this. And he said to me, “Oh, Scribe has personally reached out to me, and they said it's business as usual and don't believe the headlines.” And it turned out that that was that was not true. 

I promise you that I am not concluding I'm so great and Scribe is so terrible. I think I have made tons and tons of mistakes as a publisher. And I've also learned a lot from Scribe, all positive things. I think what I've learned from this is that in addition to everything I've said, even the most successful systems can go belly up if they're mismanaged.

And I do think that much like a person needs to consistently grow if they're going to evolve and remain healthy and all of those things, a business always does too. And I know that there was a lot of bravado by the original founders, about “We know everything and this is how it's done.” And the reality is that you have to consistently study and consistently be educating yourself so that you don't rest on your laurels. 

And I think this just shows what a volatile business this can be if people are trying to do it as a factor. Books are not cans of soup; they are exquisitely loved into existence, and part of me is relieved to find out that wasn't wrong, that that didn't make any sense. I did want to say I have deep admiration for what Scribe was able to do. And I think it's really tragic to have your legacy attached to something that went down in flames.

I think anybody can learn from this. You may be considering working with a hybrid publisher. Or maybe you are studying what hybrid publishers do and are doing it on your own or maybe you are still submitting to traditional publishers. I would in addition to listening to this, Google and find out what is out there about Scribe.

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