Stand Up And Fight

Remember awhile back I talked about community? Well, here's an example where a community comes in handy and where you, if you are one of that community, are much needed. You see, Dorchester decided to go all digital for the most part many months ago, which caused a great disturbance in the force. Some made out on the deal, getting all their rights back so they could do with their novels as they saw fit. Others were not so lucky and their rights are still in a kind of limbo -- specifically Leisure has them and are still using them but aren't really paying their authors anything. And then today many of their authors received this email:

Dear Authors,

As many of you know, in conjunction with building the trade line, we're working to release our backlist in e-book. We've heard from some of our readers over the last several months about titles and author backlist they'd like to see released and so, as we build the upcoming publist, we've decided to reach out to them in a more direct manner to really get a pulse on what they want.

A newsletter campaign is going out today asking people to name the top 20 titles they'd like to see in e-book format. To make it fun, we're running it as a contest (see copy below). We hope to get a great response! Feel free to spread the word via your own website and social networking outlets. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call.

Cheers,

Allison

Top 20 Titles that should be an E-book

Dorchester is building its upcoming pub list, and along with all the great new genre fiction filling the pipeline, we’ll be releasing the best of our backlist in e-book format. But we need your help!

Be part of the process and help us select which backlist titles will be released! Send us between 10 and 20 titles that you want to see in E-book and be entered to win $25 worth of e-books from the Dorchester Web site!

Perhaps your favorite series is missing a few titles. Or your favorite author’s early works were published before e-books were even a possibility. No matter the reason, if you’re looking for a Dorchester title in e-book format and it’s not yet available, let us know. We want to hear from you, the reader, and make our upcoming list of releases the best it can be!

E-mail your list to contests@dorchesterpub.com subject: Top 20 Titles that should be an E-book and you’ll automatically be entered to win!

Contest closes Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Winner will be announced Thursday, March 31, 2011.

http://dorchesterpub.com/site/top20ebookscontest.aspx

Allison Carroll
Editorial and Web Coordinator
Dorchester Publishing
http://dorchesterpub.com

Lovely, no?

What's happening here is while Leisure is on the cusp of being forced to give back the rights to many of its authors because those authors' books are about to go out of print, they're looking for reasons to keep those books in print and hence hold onto those rights. Anyway, here's what I just emailed them:

from: Robert Swartwood
to: contests@dorchesterpub.com
date: Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:11 PM
subject: Zero Titles that should be an E-book

Howdy --

I think this is a GREAT idea! But do you know what would be an even BETTER idea? If you gave back the rights to all the authors who have been waiting patiently while you guys screw around! If you do that, I'll be a happy customer.

Sincerely,

Robert Swartwood

If you'd like to help out some writers who are getting royally screwed over, I encourage you to email Leisure and say the same thing I did. In fact, if you want to copy and paste my email, feel free. I'm offering full world rights -- print, e-book, audio, the whole shebang.