Dark Regions Press:

[RonClinton]

I wish everyone the best of luck in getting their money back, or at least some comparable replacement from DRP, if they still have any in-stock books.

That would also presume that one is able to make contact with Chris...from what I gather from those who have tried, everyone's in the dark (up to and including father Joe Morey's Weird House Press announcement) as Chris has gone completely dark and non-responsive, and has apparently been so for months. We'll have to all see how this shakes out and I may turn out to be completely wrong, but if I was a gambling man, I'd bet that customers are not going to receive any kind of compensation from DRP, either product or refund, and this may stand as the largest economic default on pre-order investment in the 85-year history of the horror small-press (using Arkham House in 1939 as the starting point). Most of the posts I've seen are from customers with multiple, often expensive books in pre-order limbo...I never had the faith to do pre-orders with them, but many, many others seem to have done so. It's now apparent that this was a business heavily invested in corralling pre-orders as a vital part of their business structure, and in that measure they succeeded, which leaves an inordinate number of customers with outstanding pre-orders...from what I can anecdotally tell from the sidelines, only CD rivals them in that regard.

[sholloman81]

Yeah, I've been trying not to wade into this mess but it's hard not to vent considering that I am a person who is definitely getting burned. I've got five pending pre-orders with them, which are also my oldest pending orders (2019). I believe that I paid for all of them via Paypal; so, with the age of the orders, there's no way I can dispute the charges per Paypal policy and am basically screwed out of the money & books. What especially hurts is that, as a part of a "special" DRP offer back in 2019, I had pre-ordered & paid for the last two CD Doubleday series books (the Stand & Pet Cemetary) which was supposed to save me money. Because of that, I passed when CD offered their copies of the Stand for pre-order. Now the book has sold out and I have no way to grab a copy other than crossing my fingers and hoping one become available closer to the publish date, not to mention having to shell out another couple hundred bucks for it. Trying not to wish ill towards anyone, but at the moment, I'm pretty pissed toward DRP and its owners. And it may not be fair, but I don't think I'll ever be supporting Weird Press either knowing that they are/were even tangentially associated with this press and the family that owned it.

[Splync]

I wish everyone the best of luck in getting their money back, or at least some comparable replacement from DRP, if they still have any in-stock books.

I wonder what they did with their stock of books, if there were even that many. 

This is pure speculation, but I think they sold their Lividian titles back to Lividian. Brian offered brand new copies of Heart Shaped Box to his Patreon supporters a few weeks back that came from a seller "that had gone out of business" and whose warehouse "was a mess."

And then SST just offered a handful of books that were from a seller who didn't pay for their allotment of titles.

In hindsight, both were probably Dark Regions. And given the Lividian titles, I wouldn't be surprised if Chris went through the warehouse and returned whatever third party books that he could. 

As for first party titles, I don't know how many they might have. Their paperbacks have been Print on Demand for years, so they shouldn't have any of those physically in stock, and most (if not all) of their hardcovers had sold out over the years. 

It's likely only odds and ends in the warehouse.

[dannyboy121070]

I feel for anyone who gets burned by this. I've only had one small press death ever effect me, and I managed to bully my way into at least getting a book that was comparable in price to the pre-order that I was losing, but a lot of other folks ended up with nothing. A lot of people got taken for lifetime membership money with that one.

I learned a long time ago to stop paying for pre-orders. CD at one point owed me a few dozen books. I have no idea how many it's down to now...I'd have to e-mail Mindy to find out for sure, but it's probably around ten, most of which are from the various book clubs and other nonsense that I foolishly joined up with. DRP turned me off long ago with their endless desperate e-mail newsletter, to the point where I had to have them marked as spam because they were getting so annoying.  I was going to mention another press that I see going down a similar road, but that's just my conjecture, better kept to myself.

I wish everyone the best of luck in getting their money back, or at least some comparable replacement from DRP, if they still have any in-stock books.

[Martin]

If you follow the link the Bev posted it shows that they listed that they were for sale three times. Jan 4th, April 30th and June 5th. In each post he stated that the company had been profitable for the last two years. I doubt that the claim of profitability would have stood up to scrutiny. Having dealt with financial systems, from the technical side, I know that anything paid for but not delivered cannot be reported as profit. You can report it as a positive sale but must report the liability of the owed value. That includes, product sold but not delivered, Gift cards sold and not delivered and any item remaining on a layaway plan. Complete speculation but I believe he was trying to sell to avoid having to shut down, but the clock ran out. I stopped ordering from them long ago, so I have no skin in this game. I would recommend any person with outstanding orders contact the financial institution used to make the purchase and file a claim. When The Nocturnal Reader's Bos shut down, I had two orders that were older than the time to file a claim. They refunded both. Hope people are able to recoup any lost funds.

[Dr Eric Vornoff]

It appears the Dark Regions Patreon is still up.  I quit their collectors club last year in disgust.  I also am on the hook for the red letter, four volume, Plague set.  Only Kiernan's Plague of the Womb was announced.  $500.00.  Couple of others DR books as well.  I just don't know what to say.  

[Boggle Champion]

Author William Meikle has been posting about the situation on Twitter. He has more than a dozen books published through DRP, and it seems like the authors are in the dark as much as the customers are. His most recent post:

Latest update on the Dark Regions Press situation is that there is no update. They're still uncontactable, the site is down, the business is up for sale and nobody, neither authors nor out-of-pocket customers, has been told what's going on. Its a real shitshow.

https://x.com/williemeikle

[RonClinton]

Bev Vincent posted a link over on thedarktower.org forums with the comment: "They're for sale". Looks like the business was put up for sale at the end of April:


https://www.prlog.org/13018372-profi...ince-1985.html

Huh, that long ago...and yet I see emails from them soliciting business in April, May, and June. I'm not a lawyer, but...wow -- especially June's gift card offer, which would seem to intimate that that they will be in business long enough to honor it.

I wonder if the sale terms of this "profitable business", as described by the link announcement, discloses all the outstanding debt in the form of undelivered books. One poster on my smallpresshorror .io group stated that he has "nearly 20 titles I had pre-ordered through DRP, including a four-volume lettered edition"...that's surely thousands of dollars and that's just one customer, and we all know he's not alone.

[swintek]

Bev Vincent posted a link over on thedarktower.org forums with the comment: "They're for sale". Looks like the business was put up for sale at the end of April:


https://www.prlog.org/13018372-profi...ince-1985.html

[brlesh]

Disappointing, but not surprising news.

It seemed like each newsletter for the last year and a half or so was just advertising some DRP website sale.

Not a long term sustainable business model.

It’s been so long since I’ve ordered anything from them (and I stayed away from their third party offers), but to the best of my recollection I’m out two books.

B
 

[swintek]

I wonder if Dark Regions will turn out to be the largest default of debt in the history of the genre small-press industry

That's an interesting- if painful- observation. I hadn't thought of DRP's potential demise in those terms, but, yeah- I'd imagine you'd be right. Overall, we've been very lucky down the years collecting in this relatively safe hobby of ours with very little fraud or blatant misuse of the collectors' trust (and money!). I mean, sure there have been plenty of small presses vanishing overnight with folks' preorder $ never to be recovered, but they have usually been with "only" one or two books from their own respective imprints owed, and not preorders from many other presses. I know, it hurts any way you slice it if you are out books owed. Maybe Chris can regroup and figure something out. I sincerely hope so. And, if he does- he's got to really scale back that all-over-the-place business model, imo. It always put me off sending $ for books I actually wanted from him.

[Ben Staad]

As my finances have tightened I have greatly reduced my pre-ordering of books. In the case of DRP and here at CD I stopped completely. I really wanted to order an SK CD gift edition but I just will not pre-order anymore from publishers with inconsistent communication and publication speed.

I have also cut back on preorders from publishers who only supply store credit in lieu of a refund of a preorder.

I really only trust a handful of folks these days with my money.

make it tougher for customers to have faith on the safety of preorders and that impacts the solvency of the industry itself.
 

 

[RonClinton]

As SM mentioned above, I’m also disappointed but not surprised, given all the years-long issues we’ve all seen. I hope those with pre-orders are able to find some kind of remedy to their unfortunate situation. With as long as the problems have persisted and as active in promotion as Chris was, I wonder if Dark Regions will turn out to be the largest default of debt in the history of the genre small-press industry…seems like only CD would eclipse them, if they should ever go down that route — as Joe says in his post above, there were a lot of books owed to a lot of people. It’s really unfortunate not only on a micro scale but on a macro one as well, given the increasing reliance from publishers on pre-orders…events like these only (rightly) make it tougher for customers to have faith on the safety of preorders and that impacts the solvency of the industry itself.
 

[CyberGhostface]

I only had their ‘Cabin at the End of the World’ waiting so it could be worse I guess. I was really looking forward to their planned limited edition of ‘The Woman’ though. Definitely sucks for those who had multiple orders.

[swintek]

FWIW: Weird House has issued a statement on their Facebook page:

It has come to our attention that Dark Regions Press has gone dark and their site has come down with no word to customers. We are aware that DRP owes a lot of books to a lot of customers. While Weird House is a separate entity from Dark Regions, many of you know that Chris at DRP is Joe’s son and that Joe used to own Dark Regions over a decade ago. As such, we feel compelled to make a statement and share what we know.
Some of you may be aware that Joe at Weird House was helping Dark Regions to fulfill some of the books they were behind on, including Transmissions from Punktown and Wolf Hunt 3. Weird House lent some of its resources to Chris to finish these books and fulfill orders. Small press is a tough business however, and we could only afford to help out so much. We had hoped that with the aid we lent to Chris and DRP the company could recover and make good on their commitments to customers. Unfortunately, Dark Regions seems to have needed more help than Weird House could afford to give.
As for what is happening with DRP, we honestly don’t know at the moment. We at Weird House were unaware of Dark Regions taking down their site. We only became aware of this when it was brought to our attention by a reader. Chris at DRP didn’t inform Joe or anyone else at Weird House of his intention to take down the site. At this point, we still don’t know the status of the company.
We wish that there was more we could do, but the truth is, Joe left Dark Regions many years ago. While we sympathize with those impacted by the actions of DRP, Chris and Dark Regions are responsible for their unfulfilled orders. We simply can’t afford to pay for the failings of another business because of a shared last name.
We will continue to share any information as it comes to us. Feel free to reach out to us via email or facebook messenger if you have any questions or concerns.