At the beginning of the month, we ran an item in which Quayside Publishing Group marketing director Mary Aarons had harsh words for Holly Schmidt, a former Quayside colleague who’d gone on to launch a new company and produce a line of erotic photography titles for distribution by Sterling—harsh enough that I noted at the time that Aarons was doing little more than “thrust[ing] the knife in a little deeper.” That’s how Schmidt interpreted the remark, too, and she’s emailed us a measured response. “Her personal, below-the-belt comment exemplifies the lack of creativity and tiresome petty politics that characterize much of Quayside’s business,” Schmidt wrote, “which is why [Allan Penn] and I left to start our own company.”
As for my prediction that, if tempers kept flaring at those levels, “this dispute is going to get settled after work in the parking lot of the office complex where both companies are based,” Schmidt scoffs, “I don’t need to fight Mary in the parking lot, because I’ve already won. Sterling is a fantastic, enthusiastic, supportive partner, and Allan and I couldn’t be happier.”