Is This True About Dorchester Publishing?

[Stacy]

These people were selling mass market books before I was born. I am hearing from some writers and industry folks that supposedly Dorchester will NO longer sell ANY print books and will begin only selling ebooks. I was trying to check this out but can't find an article or anything on it, confirming.

So does anyone know if this is really true? Not that it wouldn't be hard to believe since MM sales have been suffering for a while but I'd like to know if this is really the case and if someone can direct me to a link where I can read about it, I'd appreciate that.

Best Wishes!

http://www.stacy-deanne.net

[Jack Getze]

A newspaper book reviewer told me she wouldn't consider reviewing a book if it wasn't available in Barnes & Noble and most other book stores "for my readers to easily purchase." Of course, she might have just been giving ME the brush, but she sounded sincere.

[Richard Sanders]

Here's the WSJ's take on the Dorchester decision and the industry impact.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413611289...

[Jack Getze]

Thanks for the link. What I found intriguing was the claim romance readers are big e-book buyers because no one else can see what they're reading.

[I. J. Parker]

It doesn't say what it pays its authors now. 50 % or 70 % or the miserable amount they used to pay for the pbs.

[I. J. Parker]

Re reviewers: Sounds a tad snooty to me. That, too, may change as Amazon grows.

[Stacy]

Hi Jack,

I agree she's snooty. Screw her. You don't need her. Most reviewers now (I've learned) are asking for authors and pubs to send PDF's of their books because that's become an easy method for them. They want electric review copies now. Also, this is starting because of ebooks becoming popular.

There are tons of reviewers would review your books I am sure. I love book bloggers myself because they bring in more attention to your work and pass the word around fast! Sometimes you get a review from one blog and before you look around they've passed that info to five or more blogs. That's word of mouth, yes sir.

Blog reviewers are much nicer and author friendly. They will also get you more readers than a newspaper review probably would since a lot of folks don't even read newspapers it seems anymore.

Best Wishes!

http://www.stacy-deanne.net

[Eric Christopherson]

Snarky tweet from publishers lunch:

Funny How A Publisher All But Going Out of Business Isn't Headline-Worthy, but Going All Digital Sounds Exciting

[I. J. Parker]

Not really funny. This seems to be another new trend: if you can't beat them, join them. And from the Dorchester announcement, there is also a bit of a blame game going on: Walmart won't carry our books, so we're going it without the book stores. See how they'll like that!

[Karyn J. Powers]

Yes, check out Romance Writers of America. They sent a blurb out to their members and one of my critique group announced this at our meeting Saturday. Said they will go to print after x number of e books sell. They let all their sales staff go except for the vip who is now an army of one.

[Dana King]

"They let all their sales staff go except for the vip who is now an army of one"

This is what makes American business the engine that drives our ever-growing economy. We can live without everyone who worked there, except for the guy who oversaw whatever it was that got everyone else fired. Him, we keep.

[Karen Dionne]

I happen to know a Dorchester author who published in 2008 who didn't see a dime of their advance for nearly two years. When I first heard about Dorchester's move, it did make me wonder if Dorchester wasn't having financial problems, and they're just using the move to all e-books as an excuse to dig themselves out of a financial hole.

Now according to a couple of agents, it appears I'm not alone -

From literary agent Kristin Nelson:

"I'm just shaking my head. We agents have known for the last year (at least) just how precarious Dorchester's financial position has been but I must say I was not expecting this announcement. We ceased submitting to them awhile ago." http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2010/08/dorchester-ceases-mm-publicati...

And from literary agent Lois Winston on the Sisters in Crime blog:

"Karen, your friend was not an isolated case. Dorchester owes huge amounts in royalties and advances to their authors. Supposedly, the sale of much of their backlist to Avon several months ago was to pay authors what was owed them. They may have paid some, but the vast majority of authors have not seen any money or even royalty statements so that they have some idea of what they are owed. I was told that authors who write for the confessions market (Dorchester owns all those magazines) had checks bounce on them recently. It's a really bad situation, and it looks like lots of authors are going to get royally shafted with this move to epublishing."

I don't think in this instance that the relative merits of e- vs print publishing even apply; bottom line is that Twitterer up thread had it right - this isn't a wonderfully insightful publisher leading us into a brave new future, it's just a company going belly up that's trying to stay afloat.

[John McFetridge]

So what happened that the sales of Dorchester paperbacks dropped 25%? Did cheaper e-book sales have anything to do with it?