Tough times encountered, Richard Tate, founder says
Richard Tate, the founder and chairman of Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC, is proud of his company’s work.
It has helped tens of thousands of authors — some famous, some infamous and thousands of others who simply had the desire to write and share their works — get published and have their works sold in stores and online.
He remembers a time when the company, in the mid-2000s, had 1,000 employees worldwide and a monthly budget of more than $1 million.
"It was rocking and rolling," he said.
All told, the firm worked with more than 40,000 authors and titles, including books authored by Sooner running back Joe Washington, former Gov. David Hall, and country music Hall of Famer Lee Greenwood.
The firm offered some writers a complete package of publishing and marketing services without charge, based on expectations the books would sell very well.
It offered other authors a package of publishing and marketing services they could pay nominally for, with an expectation those books would make both the author and publisher money. If those books sold well enough, the author was promised their up-front costs would be returned.
It also offered marketing-only contracts, which cost authors nothing. They could buy their books at a substantial discounts.
But Tate said the book publishing and selling industry has undergone dramatic changes during the past decade.
Barnes & Noble is having difficulties staying profitable. B. Dalton Bookseller and Waldonbooks no longer exist, and Hastings Entertainment and Family Christian Stores, a Christian bookseller, are bankrupt, he said.
Meanwhile, ways in which writers can selfpublish, market and distribute their books are multiplying through venues like Amazon's CreateSpace.
Remaining publishers have responded by lowering the costs of the services they can provide in “a race to the bottom,” Tate said.
“I thought my son would still have this company when he was 90 years old,” Richard Tate said. “Do you think we ever saw this coming?”
Tate said he and his son, Ryan Tate, who is president and CEO of Tate Publishing, made some hard decisions in 2014 to keep operating.
While the business was going through some tough economic conditions, their bet was those would improve.
“We put every dime we had into it to keep it going,” Richard Tate said, adding that anyone who believes the family is sitting on millions of dollars it made from the business is mistaken.
“Have you ever sat down, done your due diligence, and have the hope and expectation that you can turn just one more corner?
“It just didn’t happen. Sometimes, things just don’t work. We hate this.”
The company and his family, Richard Tate agrees, faces ongoing challenges as they continue to deal with two multimillion lawsuits in federal and state courts.
While he declined to discuss specifics about those cases as part of this story, Richard Tate did say his company is finalizing an agreement to hire an attorney to deal with not only those, but any other issues that may come up.
He said he wants for Tate Publishing's authors and the public to know the firm intends to do everything it can to help its authors and to meet its other financial obligations.
“We are going to do the right thing, (going) to do the best as we can,” Richard Tate said. “We will honor the law, and will do what is proper.”