Something is very rotten in the state of Dorchester.
Both Jane Litte and I have been pretty frank about our hesitation to recommend or buy books from Dorchester since it is relatively well-known that some authors haven’t been paid royalties for years. I know Dorchester’s decision to go digital-first has meant some very tricky and pain in the ass changes for authors, particularly when they were anticipating and planning for a print release that was rescheduled at the last moment for a digital release sometime in the nebulous future.
But I thought the Dorchester drama was, for the most part, over – until I received an email in my inbox from author Jana DeLeon.
DeLeon received the rights to her work from Dorchester on 15 September 2010. She even sent me a PDF of the rights reversion in case I doubted her story. She hasn’t been paid, nor has she received royalty statements in months, but now she has a bigger problem.
Over a month later, her digital books are still on sale pretty much everywhere. (Please note: links to books on sale ahoy. I’m going to do something horrible and ask you NOT to buy them. Please. Do not buy them. I have no faith that DeLeon or any Dorchester author I link to would ever see a dime.)
Her books, including “Showdown in Mudbug,” are online at Amazon.com, and there’s a paper copy available, too. Barnes & Noble also has her books for sale for the Nook, and independent retailer All Romance also has them listed for sale.
Why? Short answer: Dorchester, despite being contacted by DeLeon and her agent, Kristin Nelson, hasn’t stopped their digital distributor from selling them.
On 9/20/10 my agent sent the first request to Tim DeLong that they take down the ebooks that had reverted. He replied that they would take them down when they did the next data update to the retailers. That did not happen….
On 9/23/10 my agent informed me she had asked Tim for a date when they would do the update and removal but had as yet received no response.
On 10/1/10 my agent sent an email to Tim Delong and Chris Keeslar, demanding that they take down the books that had reverted and she clearly spelled out that they had no rights to sell what they did not own. Chris responded on 10/4/10 with apologies claiming her email went into his spam folder and he’d just received it. He agreed that the issue needed to be looked into right away.
As of today, 10/14/10, we have still heard nothing and the books are still for sale.
I sent DMCA notices to the appropriate departments at both b&n.com and amazon.com, per the instructions on their website. I have received no communication from either site or their legal department. I included a copy of my reversion rights contract with the DMCA notice. My agent has contacted Dorchester every week since the rights reverted and asked them to remove the listings. I have not contacted them directly as my agent handled all the reversion contract negotiations with her attorney.
Today is 20 October 2010 – and DeLeon’s books are still on sale.
But wait, there’s more – DeLeon put me in touch with Leslie Langtry, another Dorchester author.
Langtry’s rights were also returned from Dorchester, and her digital books are still for sale at Amazon and other digital vendors. But Langtry finds herself in an even more uncomfortable situation: after her rights were reverted, her book Guns Will Keep Us Together was offered as a free digital download for Kindle:
[They] offered it free for three weeks, despite my agent’s repeated attempts to get it taken down. GUNS debuted as the #2 free download for a while and stayed in the top ten for about a week and a half. It remained in the top twenty another few days and finished at #57. During that time, I was getting 10-12 friend requests on Facebook and my other books were all in the top 1,000 paid kindle downloads. GUNS debuted in the top ten on the Paid kindle bestseller list and stayed in the top 50 for a while. All of my books are still being sold by Dorchester on Amazon, and now I’m getting 15-20 friend requests a day from readers.
The problem with this is that fans are asking where they can find my books since Dorchester isn’t selling hard copies now. I hate to recommend them to Kindle when I know all the money is going to Dorchester, but I hate the idea of losing a budding audience. It is very frustrating.
I’ve had my rights since mid-September and to this day, Dorchester is still selling my books and profiting from them. I truly believe I won’t even see a royalty check from this. My agent, Kristin Nelson, has repeatedly asked Tim DeYoung and Chris Keesler to “cease and desist” since the ink was dry on the agreement. They have either given excuses or refused to answer.I don’t know what to tell my readers. If I tell them not to buy my books, I could alienate a new audience. If I tell them to buy them, Dorchester gets all the money.
This is theft, plain and simple.
Now, I asked a few digital folks what they’d do. One suggestion I received was that the author continue to pester Amazon and BN with weekly email messages. It doesn’t seem that Dorchester will be that responsive. I also know from my own experience that small bookstores like All Romance are pretty responsive so if you contact them directly about a rights dispute, you would likely see those books removed. However, if Dorchester isn’t answering, and Amazon and BN aren’t either, you might also try contacting Ingram and Overdrive, the two major digital book distributors, directly. If the book is for sale at any retailer, it’s probably coming through either or both of them.
ETA: I’m informed that not every retailer uses Ingram and Overdrive, though some do. Some buy direct from the publisher. Either way, it seems that the best option is to make as much noise as possible, in as many places as possible.
I am not at all an expert in the backstage mechanics of digital sales, but I should think a month is more than enough time to have this corrected and the books removed from on-sale positions.
For any author, this is a ridiculously sticky situation and I don’t envy your position.
From my perspective, I would say to any reader looking for a new book to read:
Don’t. Buy. Dorchester.
I agree about Chris. I don’t think he should have commented, but he’s stuck in the middle and most likely will lose his job when Dorchester files for bankruptcy.
And for Chris’s bosses to expect him to talk about the issue is wrong. He’s only an editor, not a lawyer, or talking head.
For the record, I did not mudsling or call names, and I have repeatedly said this is not about money and it’s not personal. I reported the details of contact as it was made and the details of my contract. Period. Those facts alone are enough for people to know that what happened isn’t right.
Since my agent’s repeated attempts for an answer have been met with stone-cold silence, but yet this post got action in a matter of hours, that tells me all I needed to know. Again – this is BUSINESS. I am a company and most companies do not take kindly to theft.
As I said before, perhaps if the copyright laws were more stringent, the penalties would be so harsh that this form of “oversight” would never occur.
And now that everyone will be watching, it’s not likely to happen to other authors, which is the bonus.
I wanted to second everything Sandra Hill said.
It’s a terrible situation all the way around, but personal attacks won’t make anything better for anyone.
Readers and writers gravitate toward Dorchester books – romance, horror, suspense, and westerns – because they push the boundaries of genre while continuing to exemplify it. And that evolving voice of genre fiction is brought to the marketplace by an editorial staff with an eye for discovering talent. Chris Keeslar is not the villain here.
Writers who have been negatively affected by this situation have the right to speak up, and certainly should be paid for their work.
I hope everything works out for everyone as soon as possible.
I must applaud the authors who stepped up to speak out about their situation with Dorchester. It’s obvious not all the authors were having problems. However, the ones that did needed to come forward, ESPECIALLY, after they and their agents tried contacting the publisher multiple times and never received a response. No response from the sellers is just as bad.
I also want to say that Jana has rather gracefully defended herself and other authors and been more polite than most would in her same situation.
I hope all the authors affected by Dorchester’s problems come out ahead. I look forward to seeing your books available in the future in a manner that will ensure you get paid for your hard work.
Good luck, Authors.
And one final thank you to Sarah and the SB site. You ladies are why I still have hope for romance and publishing.
/salute
While waiting for the legal wheels to turn, every author should make digital copies of their own books to which they hold rights and sell them from their own Web sites. If you have rights, it is also legal for you to go ahead and put up your won copies for sale at Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. You will still lose revenue but at least you have a place to send all the new readers. Good luck.
Scott Nicholson
I understand there are limitations to pursuing intellectual property theft, copyright infringement, etc. However, has anyone called the Attorney General’s office or the ACLU to report Dorchester and the others? No one likes to fight for the little guy more than the ACLU (although they can go a little overboard) and I can’t think of anyone a business or attorneys handling the affairs of a company in bankruptcy would like to get a call from less than the Attorney General’s office. No one wants the AG taking a look at their business practices. Just a few suggestions.
Good luck to all! Fight the good fight and, if that fails, kick ‘em where it counts – in the pocketbook!
Jana,
I’m 100% sympathetic to your cause. However, I’m really not sure what else you want copyright law to do.
Assuming the requisite mental state can be proven, what you have described here already appears to be a criminal offense under 17 USC s. 506(a)(1)(A), punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Of course, you actually need to report the crime, and see if the feds are willing to go after the person—just like if someone steals my stereo and I fail to report to the police, I can’t complain if they’re never punished. You might also consider reporting the crime to your Congressperson, to see if they can help get the wheels moving there.
You are already eligible for at last half a million dollars in statutory damages, if not substantially more. If you chose to file a civil suit over this, and pursued it, you could probably force Dorchester into bankruptcy.
(Actually, you could probably force Dorchester into bankruptcy even without filing a copyright claim.)
The problem you have is that the government is unlikely to go after Dorchester as a copyright infringer because it will be hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the infringement was willful and not inadvertent, and that Dorchester, having no money, cannot be pressured with threats to try to take away more.
I can’t imagine any reasonable penalty you could attach to copyright law that would possibly make your untenable situation any better. Sometimes, someone does something bad and it just sucks.
Courtney – I know it’s not reasonable, but I was thinking arrested and put in jail would work for me. 🙂
Thanks so much for the information. I completely understand the futility of the situation, unfortunately. Let’s just hope that other authors will not have to endure this not that it’s out in the open.
Also, I should add, since I was writing with a purely lawyer hat on: I do not, in fact, actually endorse or support the notion of putting anyone from Dorchester in prison.
That would be a really, really shitty thing to do.
Just one overnight…..one 12-hour period. Really? In the drunk tank, maybe? 🙂
No. I don’t want anyone going to prison and I don’t want to force them into bankruptcy. I do hold out some hope that if they can pull off their new business model, authors may see money someday. There are many authors and authors’ families in dire straights right now that could really use the money due to them. I hope they get relief soon.
Just to clarify, RKCharron (and thanks for the respect), I wasn’t defending anything Chris Keeslar said about Dorchester’s business practices in his comment.
I was saying that (a) I could see where he was coming from with respect to wanting to be contacted before this story ran—although I also made it quite clear I didn’t believe there was any actual problem with how Sarah handled the story—and (b) Chris isn’t a douche, and that as much as we care about this serious issue, we can do MUCH better than calling him one.
Jana: you’re going off the rails here a bit. I know you’re joking but let us not begin the discussion of civil vs. criminal law and how the employees of any publishing house are not always responsible for the decisions made by committees or God forbid task forces above their heads.
This blows all around sideways, but the sad truth is, short of saying publicly “There Is Something Very Not Right and Be Ye Warned,” there may not be much redress available. And clearly, giving the warning is STILL needed, as someone up thread said they’d submitted to Dorchester recently.
I think it’s deplorable that they’re embarrassingly late on royalty statements and on paying authors, and yet are still taking submissions. What’s going to stop them? I have no idea, but it ain’t jailtime, and threats in that direction serve only to derail the discussion about what options exist (few) and what can be done about this particular situation (not much) and most importantly, what authors with rights reverted can do (get that book on sale, possibly, asap).
@Ron – The problem is that Dorchester was contacted by Jana AND her Agent, multiple times. Her agent even contacted them to warn them about SBSarah’s post. They did not contact her in return until after the news broke. Thus, Chris’s comment about not being contacted was false unless he meant himself personally and not Dorchester in general.
A note from Jana’s Agent: http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2010/10/taking-it-public.html
I’m not trying to vilify Dorchester, I can understand that individuals are under a lot of strain because of what is happening to the business. But denial is not a good thing for PR. Perhaps Chris simply doesn’t know all the details, which is fine, but he should not have stated they were never contacted if that wasn’t the truth and he didn’t have all the facts.
Sarah – I was just responding to Courtney’s explanation of remedies under the copyright law. Quite frankly, if I were going to pursue that it would be directed at the resellers who refused to pull the books despite DMCA notices.
Getting word out to authors is important. Everyone should go into publishing having all the facts. I’m hoping all this prevents it from happening to other authors who receive their rights back.
Heidi – you are correct. My agent did warn them ahead of time that I would go public if they didn’t act, and they did not respond.
Barnes & Noble has now taken Jana DeLeon’s e-books down.
http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=jana+deleon
@Heidi: I was speaking ONLY to the context in which Chris said that he wished SARAH had asked him/Dorchester for comment before writing and running the piece, which is not the same thing as Jana’s agent telling (threatening?) Dorchester there was going to be a post about all this.
That said, I repeat, in case I was unclear: I don’t have any issue with the way Sarah chose to write about the frustration that these authors feel at the way Dorchester has been treating them, and detailing the causes for that frustration.
For the record, though, THIS is just sad:
How hard can it possibly be to go to Amazon and say, “Hey, those books we were planning to give away? We don’t actually have the rights to them any more. How about we pick some new ones?”
So what I’m getting from his impassioned plea about the greater good is that Chris Keeslar thinks he’s Batman.
Ron – not only is it sad, but it’s not true, either. One of my books was scheduled for that marketing game, and I pitched a fit as rights were scheduled to revert prior to it happening. My agent notified them to remove our books from that offer. Mine made it out, but Leslie’s did not. So yes, it is a lie. Leslie’s book could have been pulled as mine was.
@Ron – Sarah already explained why she didn’t and in my opinion (because that all ANY of this is, opinions), she didn’t need to because Dorchester already made it clear they weren’t going to respond. As she said, she’s not a reporter, she’s a blogger.
Your insinuation of a threat is pretty telling on how you feel about the situation. However Jana’s Agent went about it, Dorchester should have responded LONG before this came about. They ignored communications repeatedly. That the Agent even bothered to inform them of the article was honestly a courtesy on her part and they STILL didn’t respond until the article went public and it looked like they’d be losing sales because of the post.
I do agree about the e-book giveaway nonsense. The whole situation is sad and frustrating for all sides I’m sure.
As it is, however, civility should be maintained regardless of who said what, it should continue to be a civil discourse. Nothing is gained by degrading anyone.
Back to a tangent way upthread, just to clear up a common misunderstanding regarding Amazon DTP:
If Amazon’s web crawlers find a lower list price anywhere else (and they will find it if there is one), they will discount to match. If you’ve selected the old 35% royalty option, even if Amazon discounts to ZERO, you still receive 35% of the sales price you set. Only with the conditions of the 70% royalty option can discounts screw you.
Amazon also has real-time sales reports and pays like clockwork.
Thanks, Kerry. That was my understanding of the policy.
Terrible situation and totally disrespectful of authors. Jana is a great person always willing to help others, and I hate to see her (and Dorchester’s other writers) hurt in this way. Hopefully the negative buzz will force Dorchester to do the right thing.
FWIW, I sent an email to Amazon letting them know that word is getting out about this to readers/customers/authors. They responded with info for authors/publishers on the process to resport violations. I tried to send a copy to their copyright dept, but it bounced. Then I clicked on the NO button when the form asked if the response was helpful. I received a phone call from a real person who promised to forward the info. Yeah, well, the book is still up there. Maybe if Amazon gets enough complaints, they will do something about it. I guess dead white guys (George Orwell/1984) have more clout than living authors.
It’s not about dead white guys v. live authors, it’s about receiving a formal DMCA takedown notice/copyright violation notice from the copyright holder. The authors have to initiate this process, and hopefully they have/will.
Thalia – I did. Twice already.
Sarah, thanks for the blog post.
I hope that those whose books are still being sold without seeing a penny for their work will get satisfaction sooner than later.
Jana: I sent you a contact ping via your website.
I would say ‘a pox on Dorchester,’ but that would apparently be a redundancy, as they have already brought one on themselves. I will, however, say ‘Brava!’ to Jana and Leslie for taking a stand—and hopefully, wiping the floor with Dorchester.
@Heidi: If you had been reading the words that I actually wrote, and have now explained on multiple occasions, you would have seen that I have no problem with the way Sarah wrote her post, so telling me that it’s wrong of me to have a problem, and then explaining to me why it isn’t a problem, is really just a waste of your time as well as mine.
“Your insinuation of a threat is pretty telling on how you feel about the situation.”
Actually, you’re completely wrong about that, too. A threat is a perfectly useful negotiation tool, especially when dealing with a recalcitrant party. It can demonstrate your seriousness… but only if you follow through on it. And kudos to Jana and Kristin for standing their ground. (And, too, thanks for that additional info on the handling of the promotional giveaways.)
Which, I suppose, in the immortal words of Kevin Costner, makes it not a threat, but a promise.
The whole thing is entirely deplorable, but I saw something today that might give Leslie Langtry a direction to go in.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101021/10481211524/comic-book-pirated-on-4chan-author-joins-discussion-watches-sales-soar.shtml
Here’s an author in a similar situation that turned it to his own profit. Leslie might consider offering her books on her own – I bet even if she charges a couple of dollars, a lot of people will buy that instead of the free version, if they know what’s going on.
I’ve been mostly silent since the link to this blog post landed in my inbox. I’ve been reading the comment string with interest, sometimes nodding in agreement, and sometimes shaking my head.
I am a Dorchester author. I am among those who have been questioning things for quite some time. I am among those who are owed royalty statements and answers regarding compensation and contracts. Chris has been my editor from the beginning of my relationship with Dorchester, and I feel compelled to say that he is certainly not a “douche” as someone so eloquently described.
I have not decided whether my relationship with Dorchester will continue, but I am willing to give them a chance to come up to scratch with the new business model. Separate from that entirely is my professional relationship with Chris Keeslar, who has never been anything other than responsive and supportive. The fact that he took the time to respond here underscores that.
I wish the best for everyone involved.
deneane elise
I hate to say this, but being a published author means BUSINESS. Not touchy feeling type stuff, meaning you shouldn’t feel bad going straight to the source—such as Chris, his boss, etc. I don’t feel sorry for them. They know what’s going on within the Dorchester closet. This is when you ask them, “Where’s the integrity?”
These authors deserve their pay, not bullshit.
Bravo to the ladies, bringing this to light.
Oh my Oz, that’s awful. I rarely pay much attention go the publisher but I might start now.
More power to you, dear authors!
Looks like just one of Jana Deleon’s books (Unlucky) is still for sale in the Kindle store.
I have emailed Chris and Amazon with regards to the Kindle edition of LOVE IN A BOTTLE. Hopefully, this will all be settled soon. Thanks for bringing this to everyone’s attention!
What a mess! I am so sorry for the authors caught up in this.
I don’t think I have enough adjectives to describe how upset things like this make me. I am glad that this blog post got you some sort of response, and I hope that there will be tangible actions taken to rectify the situation.
I also agree that name-calling has no place in an intelligent debate. The arguments stand well enough on their own.
I would like to say that the Bitchery has some of the most intelligent and well written comments on the internet.
How many times do you have to be shafted before you decide enough’s enough? They’re not paying you properly *now*. They’re screwing over other authors *now*. ‘Jam tomorrow’ is fine if they’ve giving you bread today, but they’re not.
It’s incredibly frustrating to watch apparently intelligent people act so blindly against their own best interests. If you can sell to Dorchester, you can sell elsewhere – so get out now.
MeowMix, you said everything I was thinking.
What’s happening here is whoever owns Dorchester, along with the execs, are PAYING THEMSELVES FIRST and screwing everyone else.
If you work there and take a salary you are being paid with other people’s money.
If I were you Chris, I’d shut my mouth, take a huge pay cut, and look for a job with morals.
I’m sorry, but “limited staff” is not an excuse for this publisher’s behavior to its authors.
As if authors who request their rights back after Dorchester changes their model mid-stream with no forewarning is the REASON for all the other issues Dorchester has.
That is unacceptable and unethical behavior for any business.