Dorchester Publishing and...

[Xiabei]

I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs, looking through the site, and I remembered how much I enjoyed the Dorchester horror club - two paperbacks a month delivered to your door for less than ten bucks. It was a great and consistent way to grow my horror library and be introduced to authors that I wasn't aware of. Sadly, they gave that up to jump on the ebook bandwagon and more expensive trade copies, doing away with the clubs altogether.

I was just wondering if anyone happens to know of anything similar out there, though I imagine these days that type of thing would be tough to sustain economically.

[C.W. LaSart]

Dorchester itself has been the center of much controversy and has recently shut down completely. Sorry, I know of no other club.

[Xiabei]

Dorchester itself has been the center of much controversy and has recently shut down completely. Sorry, I know of no other club.

Wow, didn't know that. I guess their plans weren't so hot after all!

[RJK1981]

More like they mismanaged the hell out of the company and also decided they didn't need to pay their authors what was owed, or do accurate counts of e-book sales. Oh yeah, and weren't reverting rights back to the authors (Which they were legally obligated to once they decided not to pay their authors) and also selling e-books they didn't have the rights to. All of those led to a widespread boycott of their books and their likely unloading of books to Walmart, where they ended up in discount book shelves at some. Brian Keene has a full accounting of it on his web page.

They even tried selling books under a somewhat new name to avoid the boycott (DP instead of Dorchester Publications).

What happens from here remains to be seen as Amazon has purchased a lot the company. I personally think the people at the very top there should be put in jail for theft and maybe fraud due to selling e-books they didn't have the rights to and not paying out or keeping accurate count of royalties due.

[Xiabei]

Wow, that's really shitty. I'll look up Keene's info. Thanks.

[bookworm 1]

Please do. The whole story will tick you off.I found it quite disturbing every time I went to Brian Keene's web site and it seemed to be getting worse for him and the other authors before it even had a hint of turning around.Hope amazon comes through foer these guys and gals.

[RJK1981]

So do I. Curious to see what they offer those who were unable to escape. I think the only reason Keene did was from being a major player in the boycott, and yet even after reverting his rights they sold e-books of his they didn't have the legal rights to. Luckily he found Deadite Press and now gets paid more money than he has in a very long time.

Wasn't even just horror authors Dorchester screwed over, they screwed over their romance authors before the horror ones.

I will admit to having purchased a couple Leisure books after supporting the boycott, though I only bought them through Half-Price Books, who doesn't get their books from the publishers.

The loss of Dorchester and Borders is quite sad for horror authors other than ones like Stephen King who are very popular and huge sellers.

[Xiabei]

yes