The story of one the biggest selling books in decades was, as Sarah Weinman observes in a Los Angeles Times report, “an improbable Cinderella story”:

“The Shack,” William Paul Young‘s novel about a man rediscovering lost faith after the murder of his 5-year-old daughter, started out as a manuscript no one would touch. Finally, pastors Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings discovered the book and created a start-up, Windblown Media, to publish it. The novel sold a million copies for them in the first year, eventually ending up at No. 1 on the New York Times’ trade paperback bestseller list.

Then Hachette Book Group got involved. In May 2008, the publishing conglomerate – one of the largest in the country – cut a deal with Windblown Media to market and distribute the book. In the two years since, “The Shack” has become a 12-million-copy-selling phenomenon and the biggest Christian publishing sensation in decades.

You would think that would make for a trio of happy Christians, but you would think wrong: “For nearly eight months, the trio have been mired in a series of lawsuits, accusations flying over improper accounting practices, millions of dollars in missing royalties, contract breaches and copyright disputes. Hachette, meanwhile, just wants to know to whom it owes money – and how much.”

Young seems to be disputing many the standard aspects of a book contract, including suing his former partners over lower royalty rates for “high discount sales,” such as those earned from book or bulk clubs sales, a “return reserve” held against future returns, and a 10% distribution fee (which, to little indies like Melville House, is an extraordinarily low rate).

The disagreement have even grown to include an argument over authorship —

Not only did Jacobsen and Cummings feel they deserved their rightful share of the proceeds but also – because of the significant work they had done to transform an unpublishable manuscript into a bestseller  that they were co-authors of “The Shack.”

According to the filing, “Young announced [in February 2008] that he wanted to add Jacobsen and Cummings’ names to the cover of the Book as co-authors, as should have been done from the first place. However, when Young subsequently shared this announcement with his family, Young’s wife expressed extreme anguish over the change and pressured Young not to change the cover page.”

On March 11, Jacobsen and Cummings asserted their claim to co-authorship with an amended copyright filing to the Library of Congress.

Meanwhile, ” Hachette, meanwhile, just wants to know to whom it owes money – and how much.” The company is afraid that if it pays one party, the other will sue it, and so has “filed its own lawsuit in federal court, stating in its filing that ‘as a result of disputes that have arisen … [Hachette has] a real and reasonable fear that distributing the funds would expose Hachette to multiple claims and liabilities.'”

So the company has “deposited the first-quarter royalties into the court registry,” meaning “neither Young nor Windblown Media will be able to touch any money earned by ‘The Shack’ until there’s a clear ruling on who is entitled to the funds.”