The NY Times reports that Inkwell Publishing Solutions has left scores freelance writers unpaid for work they completed on textbooks, providing a gloomy glimpse into the freelance writing pool.

According to the freelancers, Inkwell explained that they were owed money by conglomerate publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt--but the publisher did not return the newspaper's calls for comment. The overall atmosphere of sadness among freelance writers in the article is heartbreaking.

Here's more from the article: "More than 30 freelancers who were interviewed by phone or e-mail told the same story: Inkwell stopped paying them for work on textbooks, claiming that Houghton had stopped paying it...In the real world, the books are written and edited by faceless workers in textbook factory towns like New York." (Via Publishers Weekly)