Boycotting Leisure/Dorchester
Mar. 24th, 2011 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
future_guardianI apologize for any potential typos...I am so ragey about this right now (and I'm not even an author!).
If anyone happens to be a horror/mystery/romance reader, you might be interested to know about this really bad company. So, last year (2010) Leisure/Dorchester stopped paying authors for their books because they were sort-of-but-not-really going bankrupt. Around this time, the Leisure website had a post about "Hey everyone, we're going to stop publishing Mass Market Paperback and focus exclusively on ebooks! Because we are innovative!" Yeah, sure, not because you were late in the ebook game and now you've screwed yourself! So anyway, writers stopped getting paid and there was a time when Leisure wasn't releasing any books. So a bunch of writers did one of two things: find another publishing company and start fresh or find another publishing company and get all rights to their backstock (um, not sure if that's the right word). Sounds like that's the end, right?
WRONG!
In 2011 (actually, new reports are saying as early as late 2010) Leisure/Dorchester began putting unauthorized copies of their big-name authors in ebook form on places like Amazon. I always thought if an author said "Okay, publishing company, you screwed me over and I want my books back so I can do whatever with them" then the author gets to do whatever they want with their work and their relationship with the publishing company is done. Which would mean the publishing company has lost all rights to the work. Except Leisure/Dorchester is all "Oh no! How did this happen! Oh, wait, it's Amazon's fault. We'll look into it" and "Oh no! Why are all these readers so upset? We are innocent!" Also, they've been making it difficult for people to comment on their Facebook page.
You know what? This is absolutely the sign of a bad publishing company. It's bad enough that they didn't pay their authors the first time around. It's worse that they agreed to revert all rights back to their authors and then go back on that. It's even worse they're acting like they have no idea what's going on and everyone (authors, readers) is making a big deal about nothing. This is most definitely something.
Anyone who wants to get the word out can go to Twitter and use hashtag #BoycottDorchester. It's interesting to read the tweets already there.
If anyone happens to be a horror/mystery/romance reader, you might be interested to know about this really bad company. So, last year (2010) Leisure/Dorchester stopped paying authors for their books because they were sort-of-but-not-really going bankrupt. Around this time, the Leisure website had a post about "Hey everyone, we're going to stop publishing Mass Market Paperback and focus exclusively on ebooks! Because we are innovative!" Yeah, sure, not because you were late in the ebook game and now you've screwed yourself! So anyway, writers stopped getting paid and there was a time when Leisure wasn't releasing any books. So a bunch of writers did one of two things: find another publishing company and start fresh or find another publishing company and get all rights to their backstock (um, not sure if that's the right word). Sounds like that's the end, right?
WRONG!
In 2011 (actually, new reports are saying as early as late 2010) Leisure/Dorchester began putting unauthorized copies of their big-name authors in ebook form on places like Amazon. I always thought if an author said "Okay, publishing company, you screwed me over and I want my books back so I can do whatever with them" then the author gets to do whatever they want with their work and their relationship with the publishing company is done. Which would mean the publishing company has lost all rights to the work. Except Leisure/Dorchester is all "Oh no! How did this happen! Oh, wait, it's Amazon's fault. We'll look into it" and "Oh no! Why are all these readers so upset? We are innocent!" Also, they've been making it difficult for people to comment on their Facebook page.
You know what? This is absolutely the sign of a bad publishing company. It's bad enough that they didn't pay their authors the first time around. It's worse that they agreed to revert all rights back to their authors and then go back on that. It's even worse they're acting like they have no idea what's going on and everyone (authors, readers) is making a big deal about nothing. This is most definitely something.
Anyone who wants to get the word out can go to Twitter and use hashtag #BoycottDorchester. It's interesting to read the tweets already there.
