GREELEY, Colo. – A Weld County woman who runs a business publishing romance and erotica novels has been charged with defrauding her customers out of more than $125,000 in royalties.
Jana Koretko of Johnstown is the owner of JK Publishing, which publishes and distributes books to services like Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble and Kobo, among others.
Koretko faces nearly two dozen charges in connection with accusations that she altered sales reports and pocketed royalties owed to 15 authors over a two-year period.
JK Publishing’s agreement with authors states that authors receive 50 percent of sales but in many cases, authors received far less than that and missed out on income from the sales of more than 10,000 books, according to an affidavit obtained by Denver7.
Koretko paid one author in particular $98,614.60 less in royalties than she should have earned between Jan. 2014 and Sept. 2015, the affidavit states.
The affidavit states that while Koretko underreported sales numbers to authors in monthly and quarterly reports, she actually exaggerated sales numbers in conversations she had with her clients.
In one case, Koretko told an author that she had sold nearly 3,000 books in a month when she had in fact sold only six and Koretko told another author that her book was a bestseller in the United Kingdom even though she hadn’t sold a single copy that month, the affidavit states.
According to the affidavit, Koretko sent an email to several authors in August 2015 accusing them of conspiring to defraud JK Publishing by inflating sales numbers, then later claimed she had been hacked and hadn’t sent the email.
Koretko also falsified her own income on a tax return and failed to file returns for two years in a row, the DA said.
Koretko will have her first appearance in court on July 7.
