Dorchester Publishing going away [ Edited ]

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

Publishers Weekly reports that Dorchester Publishing is close to shutting its doors. They have no editorial staff left, and the Senior VP of Sales and Marketing has left the company. It sounds like they're working out the details of paying bills and closing up.

Dorchester was a modern-day incarnation of the pulp publisher, printing direct-to-mass-market-paperback genre novels. Later they added e-books, and then they switched to being an e-book publisher with print-on-demand paperbacks. They had two imprints: Love Spell and Leisure Reads. They also printed Hard Case Crime, but HCC parted ways with Dorchester a while back. Dorchester was also the major publisher of Westerns.

IMPORTANT: if you have any e-books that were published by Dorchester, be sure that you have them properly backed up. There is no guarantee at all that B&N (or wherever you bought them) will be able to let you re-download those e-books after Dorchester stops operating.

Also, if you've bought part of a series published by Dorchester and want the rest, go get them while you can. The e-books may stop being available by the end of the month, and supplies of paperbacks might dry up fairly quickly (remember, Dorchester is now print-on-demand).

[keriflur]

FYI - Dorchester has been refusing to pay their authors and selling ebook editions that they do not own the rights to sell (including giving some of those books away for free).

So, if you want to support the authors with books published by Dorchester, don't buy from Dorchester.  Wait until the author has another publisher, or, better yet, check in with the author for the best way to gain access to their books.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/thousands-join-dorchester-publishing-boycott_b26464

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/blog/tales-of-the-wtf-dorchester-reverts-rights-but-continues-to-...

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

Sarah Weinman at Publishers Weekly reports that Dorchester is now out of business. The doors are locked, and all real, private, and intellectual property has been foreclosed on.

In a sly (sneaky? nasty?) legal move, the foreclosure is by the owner himself. This will assure that he has priority over most other creditors.

[keriflur]

Somehow I am not surprised...

[Tim40744]

According to Nate Hoffelder, Amazon is interested in Dorchester. One good thing that may happen:

"If I’m reading the legal announcement correctly, Amazon (or whoever buys Dorchester) will still need to get the authors to sign off on the deal. There’s also a mention that unpaid royalties, some of which date back a couple years now,  still have to be paid to the authors. And that’s the full unpaid royalties, not some negotiated underpayment."

The former owner certainly gave the authors a raw deal. It would be excellent if they finally got paid.