Dorchester Publishing Going All Digital

[jaxx6166]

This actually made my local 12:00 news!
Genres to go digital include mystery, action, and romance.

Dorchester to Drop MMPB for Digital Distribution
Wall Street Journal Article

Mass market romance publisher Dorchester Publishing has dropped its traditional print publishing business in favor of an e-book/print-on-demand model effective with its September titles that are “shipping” now. President John Prebich said after retail sales fell by 25% in 2009, the company knew that 2010 “would be a defining year,” but rather than show improvement, “sales have been worse.” While returns are down, the company has had a difficult time getting its titles into stores as shelf space for mass market has been reduced, Prebich explained. Dorchester recently let its field sales force of seven go, although Tim DeYoung remains with the company as v-p of sales and marketing. The editorial team remains intact, although Prebich said the number of titles released monthly will likely be reduced from over 30 to 25. He said the schedule for 2011 is set and Dorchester has books in the pipeline through June 2012.

Dorchester will continue to do print copies for its book club business and has signed a deal with Ingram Publisher Service for IPS to do print-on-demand copies for selected titles. According to Prebich, some e-books that are doing well in the digital marketplace will be released as trade paperbacks with IPS fulfilling orders; the company, however, will not do any more mass market paperbacks for retail distribution.

Prebich said Dorchester’s e-book business has had “remarkable growth” which he expects to double again in the next year. Still, digital sales accounted for only 12% of total revenue prior to the company making the transition to the e-book/pod model. Prebich conceded that Dorchester will have lower revenues, but he expects margins to improve. He said the company is working out a new royalty rate with authors that he expects to announce next week. Editors are talking to authors now about the changes. “We hope they’ll stay,” Prebich said. Dorchester’s e-books are available at most major vendors and compatible with most platforms at an average price of $6.99. Trade paperbacks will be priced in the $12 to $15 range.

On his decision to drop the mass market format Prebich explained: “These are like pioneer times in publishing. We felt like we needed to take some chances and make a bold move."

[Kali Yuga]

IIRC this was discussed here a few weeks ago.

[J. Strnad]

Two new developments come by way of Brian Keene's blog. Please forgive me if they're mentioned in the other thread.

Brian is a horror writer who, for several years, has defied the odds and common wisdom and made a living writing for Leisure. Lately, though, his royalities have come late and he has some income overdue from Leisure. He's severed his relationship with them and regained the rights to his books.

The other bit of news is that Dan D'Auria, a Leisure editor well-respected by the horror community, was let go.

None of this bodes well for the company. Maybe they're trimming horror to concentrate on the more lucrative (I assume) romance line.

[jaxx6166]

It would make sense to trim the fat if they're having as much of an issue with staying in the black as they make it out to be. But, the problem is, I think Harlequin may have a better reputation and been doing the eBook thing longer than Dorchester. They'll have to work extra hard to make up for a market share they probably already lost.

But, I do like Simon Wood and the Westerns..it would be a shame for them to go away, I haven't found a good multi genre publisher in a while.

[MaggieScratch]

The sad thing is that this is not a positive change--from all reports, Dorchester is circling the drain and they are doing this as a last-ditch survival effort. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be nicer, as a fan of ebooks, if they were embracing digital for more positive reasons. "We see this is the future and we're charging in to stake out our claim early!" I don't think we're quite in that place where publishers would be wise to do that, though. Maybe in a year or two or five.

[sbtx99]

Dorchester let two of their editors go. Leah Hultenschmidt was let go at the same time as Dan D'Auria. I think that left just one editor in house.

And Harlequin is light years ahead of Dorchester when it comes to ebooks. I've only purchased ebooks by two or three Dorchester authors, and for a long time I had a hard time finding their ebooks anywhere other than Amazon. Their ebooks didn't show up in the Sony store until months after the print and Kindle versions were released. It's gotten better in the past year, with their ebooks available at more places now. But I don't think they're as widely available as Harlequin.

And as far as I can tell, Dorchester doesn't sell ebooks directly to the public. They have the infrastructure in place for selling print books directly to the public, but they haven't taken advantage of that to sell ebooks from their own site. Their decision to go digital first seemed bizarre to me; from what I've seen, they were slow to embrace ebooks and still have a lot of catching up to do.

[Critteranne]

I'm still waiting for the "digital" part to kick in. While some of the September books became available as e-books pretty quickly, many still are not available. Including the ones I want, of course. Anyway, I think one of those authors will have a trade paperback edition coming out with a small press instead of Dorchester.

They are continuing their mass market paperback subscription plans, but they are fulfilling the orders with books from other publishers. For example, the two horror paperbacks this month included a Sarah Langan novel (from 2009 IIRC!) -- and that was published by Harper.

[SensualPoet]

Perhaps Harlequin should pick up the operation for 10¢ on the pulp dollar.

[jaxx6166]

I wonder if Simon is allowed to chime in on this?

[L.J. Sellers]

I'm sure a lot of Dorchester authors are very worried. But I believe the Hard Case Crime imprint was picked up by Tyrus, so some authors have found a good new home.
L.J.