The Commonwealth Publications Saga Part III: Implosion

We returned from Chicago with an air of confidence and success. C.P. had made some important business deals and, more importantly, soothed the nerves of some very skeptical authors (the company cash cows).

The afterglow didn’t last long, however. The proverbial ‘red flags’ soon began to appear. The volume of complaints from authors steadily grew; the production backlog became the elephant in the room, and uncertainty over company funds became fodder for water cooler chat.

Then on August 31, 1997, an event occurred that signaled the beginning of the end.

The morning after Princess Diana died on that fateful Paris night we were summoned for a general meeting. Phelan had decided that we couldn’t miss an opportunity to capitalize on our good fortune – we did, after all, have Diana’s very own step-grandmother, Dame Barbara Cartland, under contract – and announced that all C.P. titles in the production queue would be put on hold indefinitely. We were going to create the ultimate biography of the late Princess of Wales, using the connection between Cartland and the late Princess to our advantage.

Editors and other staff were pulled from their normal duties and put to work researching and piecing together the work. I and one other Author Liaison Officer were moved out of the Public Relations department and given jobs in the Marketing department, with one specific task: promote the biography.

Not an easy task, given the quick flood of Diana related books which suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The atmosphere in the office took on a feel of desperation. We were in a race to create, print, and launch a special product to compete with major publishing houses with authors the like of renowned celebrity gossiper Kitty Kelly.

Given the fact Commonwealth was already in a mess before the project, the pressure on Phelan to get the bio done was immense. More than anyone, he must have known that this was his last shot at keeping the company afloat. Those who experienced him everyday saw the change from simple, overbearing, hot tempered egomaniac to a person who felt the walls close in. Phelan bet everything on this. The Diana biography was going to be his way out.

Staff unrest (family squabbles?) soon caused some excitement. Phelan’s brother, Michael left the company and moved to Costa Rica. By this time, I had established many solid sales and marketing contacts for the project, and the end result was that I found myself at the helm of the department.

Job number one was to get the word out about the biography – with no funds and no budget at my disposal. I was the manager of a Marketing department with only one product.

The Marketing department became an island in a sea of disaster. We spent our days mostly isolated from the soap opera playing out in the upper offices. The implosion of Commonwealth Publications had begun.

Contracted authors became enraged when told of the publication delay of their books, which was natural given the money they had spent. More lawsuits were threatened. The entire Sales staff – suddenly claiming a problem with the ethics in their position when the flow of money coming in started to dry up – demanded more money and walked when they were refused. Don Phelan’s lunch hours began lasting all afternoon. The company, like Phelan, was spiraling out of control.

Almost by sheer luck, the biography was completed and was met with favorable reviews. Diana: A Commemorative Biography is still considered to be one of the better and more accurate accounts of the late Princess’s life. But problems occurred with the release of the book, from the photo insert pages falling out to covers being attached upside down.

The Cartland gambit also failed. Many of the radio and newspaper interviews with Dame Cartland were mostly unusable, as the elderly author often rambled off on topics completely unrelated to the Princess. Outside of the trade magazines and the usual avenues, the biography was produced but largely unnoticed.

Commonwealth found itself at the end of the Diana project with no massive sales, an impossibly-long production backlog, never-ending calls from authors and lawyers alike, and no money.

Soon, articles began appearing in the local newspapers regarding the ‘scam’ publishing house. An investigative segment on CBC television’s ‘Marketplace’ destroyed whatever positive image the company had left, and exposed numerous questionable and outright scandalous business dealings by Phelan and his top guns.

In February of 1998, I handed my resignation to Don Phelan. Not to him personally, of course, as he was at his usual spot spending more of the company (read: authors) money downing Irish Mist at the Earl’s lounge. About a month later, Commonwealth closed its doors for good.

It is estimated that more than two thousand writers had been taken for an astonishing amount, perhaps millions of dollars over the span of Don Phelan’s publishing venture. Even those who wrote off the money and just wanted their manuscripts back were shut out. Published books were seized and sold off for pennies on the dollar to pay Commonwealth’s creditors.

Since Don Phelan was never named in any legal action (the company was), the case ended when he locked the door and walked away. Even though a court ruled that the contracts were void and ordered that the authors were to get their manuscripts returned, most never did. In fact, most of the authors paid their money and never even had their work published.

But Don Phelan did.