Dorchester News
Update: This Publisher’s Weekly article seems to make it official.
As yet unconfirmed reports are trickling in that Dorchester is planning to cease publishing print books starting September 1 and become an e-publisher only.
Dorchester has long been admired for their willingness to take on different time periods — in short, for their willingness to try to do something different — and for the fact that for a long time they were the only publisher of paranormal romances. I’ve heard of problems going back years of payment issues for authors, but they’ve always managed to pull it out and keep on.
But now, apparently, they are in serious trouble. Due to persistent unresolved payment issues, RWA denied the publisher the right to hold a publisher highlight session at the Orlando conference. They were, in fact, not officially represented.
Dorcester editorial staff have always been spoken well of in the industry and I know, as Lynn reported, that there were a multitude of fingers crossed at the conference that they would survive. I was one of them.
Do you have any confirmation you can share? Does anybody know what will happen to contracted books? I hope that authors will not lose as a result of this. I’m afraid that readers will.
– Sandy AAR
Here is a WSJ article on Dorchester, courtesy of Lee Goldberg’s blog:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703309704575413611289773690-lMyQjAxMTAwMDAwNjEwNDYyWj.html
Their Hard Case Crime imprint might move to another publisher. I wish the other imprints had that option! (Some of the established romance backlist was already picked up by Avon in a deal several months ago, but the new authors will be hurting. :()
This news really sucks for me because I love lots of genres, and Dorchester is one of the few publishers that published mass markets in less popular genres such as horror and Westerns on a monthly basis. My local Wal-Mart stocks a lot of their Westerns. Now that section will be like a brackish pool. The romance section will be hurting, too.
I will buy their e-books, though. Recently, Leisure was selling some of their e-books for $2.99 and less, and I bought several titles. Maybe they were trying to get new readers this way. I sure hope it works because I don’t want to see even more choices going away.