So here’s the news: All Romance eBooks and OmniLit will be closing effective 12/31/2016.
Per the email sent to ARe customers, readers are encouraged to “take this opportunity to finalize any transactions, download your purchases, and back up your library.”
If you’ve purchased ebooks there, you must download them immediately* as the sites will go dark at midnight CST, 12/31/16.
*Of course, all the traffic is making the download and access process very slow. I’m having a plodding time trying to navigate to my library, but it’s nearly 9pm ET. I imagine it may get better the later it gets.
Authors who sell their books through the site as well as publishers received a different message. Per the email statement from Lori James at AllRomance LLC:
Authors whose books were contracted by AllRomance as a publisher are receiving their rights back, and no monetary compensation.
So authors who were published by AllRomance as a publisher will receive no compensation for fourth quarter 2016. Parties who were distributing books through AllRomance can receive 10% of what is owed to them from sales dated October 1 through December 27 — which was yesterday. Any sales made from today until the site goes dark are not included.
RWA posted a response on their site outlining the terms of the closing of All Romance, then adding:
RWA finds it unconscionable for the owner of ARe to withhold information so long and to continue selling books through the end of the month when the company cannot pay commissions. RWA contacted ARe but has not yet received a response.
There are a number of unanswered questions, such as: what happens to pre-ordered books? All Romance hasn’t released any details, but a number of small presses are honoring receipts for pre-orders made at All Romance, including Interlude, Dreamspinner, Nine Star, and Less Then Three Press, via their statements on Twitter:
W/ @allromance closure, if you preordered Dreamspinner title, forward receipt and we’ll honor via our store contactATdreamspinnerpressDOTcom
— Dreamspinner Press (@dreamspinners) December 28, 2016
If you have preordered any IP titles from @allromance, send us confirmation (screenshot or receipt) and we’ll honor at the IP Web Store
— Interlude Press (@InterludePress) December 28, 2016
It seems ARe is not refunding preorders. Send the confirmation email to Raevyn@ninestarpress.com. I will make sure you receive the book(s).
— NineStar Press (@ninestarpress) December 28, 2016
we’re going to make this easy for ppl: if you pre-ordered an LT3 title on ARe, forward the receipt to service@lessthanthreepress.com.
— Samantha M Derr (@rykaine) December 28, 2016
Samantha Derr also mentioned on Twitter that despite All Romance’s offer of 10% of fourth quarter totals owed, “no matter how LT3’s agreement w/ #ARe works out, LT3 authors WILL NOT take the hit. you will get what you are owed.”
I’ve seen conflicting reports regarding eBook Buck balances at ARe. Some folks are reporting they haven’t been able to use them, and others tweeted their transactions went through.
In the meantime, many publishers and self published authors are removing their books from AllRomance as fast as they can, since they won’t be receiving any compensation on sales made today through midnight Saturday. Anyone trying with success to use their AllRomance store credit may not find much by Saturday. Or midnight tonight. I have a small amount of credit, and books I try to purchase yield a notice that “This book is no longer available on our website” despite appearing the catalog.
Many, understandably, are furious about the extremely short notice, and even more infuriated by the 10% offer on fourth quarter monies owed, advising readers to backup their libraries immediately and to stop making purchases there since the authors won’t receive compensation.
Some are not entirely surprised. One individual I contacted said, requesting anonymity, “Anyone who has been distributing via ARe for more than a couple of years will not be surprised – their advertising rates have gone up just as sales have gone down, indicating profitability issues. I just wish they had done the right thing and closed doors before they had to screw authors.”
Speaking for myself, this came as a shock to me, and I’m terribly sad and disappointed, which aren’t big enough words but I’m exhausted so they’ll have to do. I’ve been working with AllRomance since they opened in 2006. They approached me with the idea for the Sizzling Book Club, offering a 50% rebate on the selected titles. They were sponsors of the DABWAHA tournament for multiple years, and have advertised with SBTB as well, though they did not renew for 2017.
To see AllRomance come to an abrupt and contentious end is bitterly sad – for readers, authors, and publishers, and those who are all of the above. I don’t know anything about why this happened or how, but this is not the ending anyone would wish for.
The details are still confusing and uneven, and I am having trouble finding more information for the questions I have. Regardless of the answers, if at all feasible, you should download your purchased books from your AllRomance library as soon as you possibly can.
ETA 12/30/16: Regarding pre-orders, I have received information from multiple individuals that if you pre-ordered a book, you can request a refund but you must do so by 1 January 2017. You can open a support ticket or email service AT allromanceebooks.com and include information about your purchase, such as order number, date, or a screen shot or copy of your receipt.
If I receive any additional information, I’ll post it here.
About an hour ago, I was able to swap out my pre-ordered title for one that’s currently available. I’ve been dealing with ARe a few years now and have always found them quite helpful and the site is so very easy to use.
Regardless of the issues, I’m sorry that they are closing, so sorry that some of my favourite writers are not being treated fairly. This whole business is just sad.
About an hour ago, I was able to swap out my pre-ordered title for one that’s currently available. I’ve been dealing with ARe a few years now and have always found them quite helpful and the site is so very easy to use.
Regardless of the issues, I’m sorry that they are closing, so sorry that publishers and writers some my faves are not being treated fairly. This whole business is just sad.
Thanks Colleen and Sarah – I actually have been able to muddle along with my fixes – I just wanted to point out the slightly out of date solutions in the article.
My biggest issue is that I buy a lot of books direct from publishers and authors and Google doesn’t advertise the 1000 book upload limit. There are also a bunch of the books that won’t read in Play even after going through Calibre. I just wanted to share some of the other options I’ve found as working – and check out any better ones :). I’m disappointed that the answer seems to be give in to the A monopoly.
@SB-Sarah – as far as devices – you’re probably not going to be surprised that I have Nexus tablet and phone, Samsung tablet and usual basic laptop. Ideally I can consolidate all the ebooks into Google Play and Akido – but again, battery hog issues, extremely slowly loading and just overall clunkiness – NOTHING is designed for the thousands of books I want at my fingertips at all times (and I haven’t even gotten into the issues with decent folder sorting!!)
I truly still miss the Sony Reader. THAT was a straightforward device that did exactly what it was designed for. AND let me create the folders I wanted.
Everyone that uses the aRe app – PLEASE make sure you turn OFF auto update after you finish syncing your library. I’m hoping it will buy us some more time before the app crashes.
Seems things have been hinky for about 2 years: http://blogcritics.org/court-documents-regarding-all-romance-e-books-disturbing-business-practices-surface/
I went to ARE tonight to finish downloading my library I have over 600 books and have only downloaded maybe 350 some of the books are not available for download anymore. I finally downloaded all my books I could only got 452 books out of 658. It is sad that they are closing but what is worse is that the authors will not get paid what they should.
This was so disappointing. ARe was like my one-stop-shop for books since they first year they opened. So I had over 1800 titles to back up when I saw the announcement. I have been MISERABLE over the past few days with trying to save as much as the library as I can. No holiday time with friends or family sadly and all of my preordered or DRM titles are essentially losses. I hate that this is what a decade of support gets you.
Jennifer – many publishers are honouring pre-orders if you have proof of purchase. Worth looking into for those.
@KellyNJ
If you strip the DRM, then you won’t have to worry about devices being authorized and they’ll open in Calibre. @Christine Maria Rose stated that you can now get a DRM-removing plug in for Calibre, which I’ve been looking at online. This is the site I’m looking at, but I haven’t installed it yet. I’m being very careful because I worry about ransomware. This site seems to have pretty simple instructions.
http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/06/25/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/
@Booklover – it’s actually the laptop that’s authorized to access my Sony library (long story that part of the answer is I JUST had my last Sony Reader die on me a few months ago so yes, I’ve still been using REALLY old stuff cause it’s STILL better than the new options). For anyone concerned, that’s the link and access to the Calibre tool I’ve been using the last couple of years – it’s a good link, NOT ransomware and effective.
My other issue is that even with the DRM stripping, something happens to some of the books that makes them unreadable on Google Play. No idea what, but somehow it keeps happening with series and middle books, so my solution is to use Akido for loading old series (also keeps me away from that 1000 upload limit Google has) and then reread there and swap to Google when I get current.
If I ever win the lottery on the to do list is finding someone that can make something for all of us non-conformists (no A :p) and FIX all our libraries!!!
This is shocking! I was away on holiday without access to internet and so just read the email today, I have lost access to my whole library!
They only sent one email on Wednesday informing customers that this was going to happen on the 31st! It was not enough time for people to access their library especially during this holiday period when a lot of people are away on holiday and access to their email may be limited and not their first priority…
They should have informed us well in advance, sent several reminders in the weeks leading to their closure…
I have been buying from ARe for years, always trusted that my books were save because they were online, I had two books which I preordered and I can’t believe that this is how we are being treated, I’m really stressed and disappointed.
They could have stopped sales from occurring from this date but should allow customers to access their accounts.
I had hundreds of books in my library that I can’t believe I have lost…
I am sad it has closed. I never received and email stating the closure. I didn’t know until an author sent a mass email to her fans. Due to the high traffic on the site I was unable to download my library. Most of my books were from the free promos they did at Christmas and Earth Day. I should’ve recognized something was wrong when I only received one email this year for the 12 days of Christmas. I am sorry they gave us such a short notice to download everything and treated the authors and publishers this way. It is unfair to us all. Especially the ones who make a living writing.
@KellyNJ
Sorry for the multiple uploads of my previous comment. It kept spinning and not uploading after I hit submit, so I hit stop and tried a different browser. Obviously, it had uploaded every time.
I had a similar issue with some PRC ebooks I’d bought around 2010 or 2011 from Changeling Press and LooseId. They stopped working on any of my Kindles. It turned out that they were made with an early version of PRC (pocket-Mobi) that Amazon no longer supported. I’m hoping that if I can strip the DRM off the Changeling one, I can use Calibre to convert it to Mobi and be able to open it again. Have you tried converting yours to epub in Calibre? I’m wondering if even though they’re already ebubs, they might be formatted in an archaic version of epub.
Thanks for the assurance of it not being Ransomware.
@SB Sarah, do you think you could delete my comments #90 & 91?
No worries – done!
Well this sucks I was never sent a email about this and I had about 100 plus books on ARE!
I was dreading the comments from people who didn’t hear about the closure and came home to find their ebook libraries gone. I am so sad and angry on your behalf and wish there were more I could do to help. I’m so sorry. It just sucks out loud in every goddam way.
I’m so upset right now. I bought lots of books that I didn’t even get a chance to download. Plus books that were per ordered. So now I’m out of books and money. I can’t believe a company would do that to its customers. Especially without any notice. I guess I can only hope they’ll come back online and give us a chance to get our books. Really, really upset.
[…] Romance eBooks has permanently closed its doors as of 12/31/2016. By only providing authors and readers four days’ notice, many […]
I bought some books from All Romance long ago but I ALWAYS back up my books to my local calibre install.
Speaking of reader app:
You can use Marvin for iOS (it has some cloud syncing using dropbox). it supports non-DRMed EPUB only.
or, better, Bookari by French company Mantano (for Android AND iOS). it supports EPUB and PDF, including ones with Adobe DRM support(you just need .acsm file and your login/password). it also supports syncing books between devices if you pay for their subscription.
I’ve lost my entire library with them. I am so angry it isn’t funny. I did not get notification, saw the message but there was no notification at that time the website would be removed by 12/31. I lost hundreds of books.
Readers who lost their libraries should contact the Attorney General’s office in Florida (where the company is ostensibly registered as a legal entity), particularly if you have receipts of at least some of the books you were unable to download before they shut the site down.
For pre-orders, contact the credit card company; most cc companies will refund your money, if you provide enough particulars (in this case, the company you paid has poofed, what more proof they need?)
Good luck.
@SB Sarah, I’ve double posted. Do you mind deleting #81 for me please?
all the book i paid for eve langlais were taking out of my library before i could download them what how am i going to get these book back or get my money bacl i naver recived any e-mail about allromance was closing plese tell me somthing
Didn’t get a notification from ARe and only discovered the news here. Unfortunately, I was away on holiday and had to download my library on my phone – didn’t manage to download everything since it’s pretty troublesome to download the ebooks on phone and save one by one, not to mention the slow loading time. ARe should have at least given us more time to back up everything. So disappointed.
As a customer of ARe since 2006 (I have 34 pages listed in my library) and was really unhappy with how unprofessional they were in giving us such a short notice – 3 days, unbelievable! And to now find out that they are not paying the publishers and authors for the 4th quarter, I’m glad that I hadn’t purchased from them for several months.
I purchased a Kindle, but don’t really use it. I use their free redaer for the PC on both my laptop and desktop. I do a lot of annotations and it’s so difficult to get access on the Kindle and so easy to do on their reading apps.
I have a question for Christine Maria Rose – How do you back up books purchased from Amazon? I have Calibre which is great – it will even convert the hundreds of .lit format books I haven’t yet read. I would always prefer to deal directly with the publisher or author, but while the covers show up on the Kindle itself hey don’t always show on the Kindle reading apps. Plus, I like to have a backup of my books on my computer. It’s the only way I can keep track of the 3,000+ ebooks I have.
As a customer of ARe since 2006 (I have 34 pages listed in my library) and was really unhappy with how unprofessional they were in giving us such a short notice – 3 days, unbelievable! And to now find out that they are not paying the publishers and authors for the 4th quarter, I’m glad that I hadn’t purchased from them for several months.
I purchased a Kindle, but don’t really use it. I use their free redaer for the PC on both my laptop and desktop. I do a lot of annotations and it’s so difficult to get access on the Kindle and so easy to do on their reading apps.
I loved Christine Maria Rose’s comments.I have Calibre which is great – it will even convert the hundreds of .lit format books I haven’t yet read. I would always prefer to deal directly with the publisher or author, but while the covers show up on the Kindle itself hey don’t always show on the Kindle reading apps. Plus, I like to have a backup of my books on my computer. It’s the only way I can keep track of the 3,000+ ebooks I have. And thank you so much, SB Sarah, for the link to Lifehacker which tells me how to back up the books I have purchased from Amazon.
It is sad that they closed their business but what’s most annoying is that they didn’t communicate it earlier. On a side note PublishDrive will also pay to all its publishers their full commissions after the ARe shut down and they offer better financial terms. They deliver books to Scribd so it might worth a try.
Readers beware and a little hard-learned advice. Forget the cloud and download Calibre (or another library software). Don’t buy books from sellers that don’t allow you to save it to your computer. Don’t assume the format you are reading now will be around in 5 years. I’ve seen the demise of more indie ebookstores (and bookstores) than I can remember the names of so when you buy a book download it then not later. Use library software to convert your books into more than one format. You bought the book – take some steps to keep it.
[…] Tymber Dalton BlogCritics Smart Bitches, Trashy Books […]
[…] action may be on the horizon. Some sources have reported that All Romance solicited advertising contracts for 2017 in the weeks leading up to its sudden closure, but no emails or other tangible evidence of this […]
Wow! When we first started producing romantic erotica, I seriously considered ARe and in fact we prepared a couple of bookoids for publication there. We never put them up on ARe, partly because one of my printers had a hissy-fit (he decided the Camptown Races series was porn…it could be, but if so, it’s pretty light-weight) and partly because we suddenly found ourselves with bigger and more profitable fish to fry. Now I’m glad my prissy friend threw a fit…he seems to have spared us from a great deal of grief.
Very sorry to hear of the annoyance and loss for both readers and publishers!
I was an ARe customer since 2006, I did have over 2000 books that luckily were all downloaded and backed up . Thank goodness. The pre ordered books are lost. But what I truly lament is the access to many authors formats and publisers. I have some books that were .lit some mobi and many epub.
My question is what are the best e book retailers remaining? I bought both straight and lgbt – it all depended on the author and publisher. Any suggestions?
I read both on laptop and samsung tablet.
Thanks
I was an ARe customer since 2006, I did have over 2000 books that luckily were all downloaded and backed up . Thank goodness. The pre ordered books are lost. But what I truly lament is the access to many authors formats and publishers. I have some books that were .lit some mobi and many epub.
My question is what are the best e book retailers remaining? I bought both straight and lgbt – it all depended on the author and publisher. Any suggestions?
I read both on laptop and samsung tablet.
Thanks
I never received an email about the closing, and I lost all my books in my library. Most of the books I have backed up on a drive anyway. The thing that I am mad about is the books on my wish list. Just one week before they shut down, I was on and added about 5 or 6 to my wish list, that I wanted to buy. Imagine my surprise when I could not access the site after they closed. If I knew which books, I might be able to find them thru the publishers. Sigh!!!
I now understand why so many authors are no longer putting all their eggs in one basket. No matter how great a publisher is it’s safer to spread your work around. The great news is the publishers who have stepped up and not left their authors or readers hanging. Kudos especially to Dreamspinner. I have many of their titles (that I hadn’t read yet or wanted to read again)that I was able to download previous purchases from the original Microsoft lit format to mobi format for my Kindle. I certainly hope they were not charged for it.
I agree with @Laura that you need to download ebooks as soon as you buy them. I had an experience similar to what she said about formats. I had purchased a lot of ebooks from LooseId in PRC format for my Kindle. After a couple of years, they all stopped working simultaneously. I went on LooseId’s website and downloaded new copies that worked, but a couple of weeks later, LooseId’s server went down, and they lost my library and wish list. I contacted them about getting my library back because I wanted the online backup and access in case the new copies stopped working later like the first copies had. I was told they’d email me copies if I had a receipt this one time, but that they only guarantee downloads for 72 hours and that it’s my responsibility to keep backups. This email from them has made me distrustful of buying ebooks outside of Amazon or Smashwords. I had about 10 back ups of each ebook, but it turns out they were all made with an early PRC formatter, and the format was no longer compatible with Kindle’s new firmware. At this time, I lost an ebook from Changeling Press because of the same issue, and it was DRMed so I couldn’t convert it in Calibre. I don’t think there was a De-DRM plug in for Calibre at the time, or if there was, I didn’t know about it. So now I use Calibre to convert all my non-Amazon ebooks to Mobi just to be safe, and I keep copies on my computer, plus I send them to Amazon as personal docs.
Now that I’ve discovered Apprentice Alf’s De-DRM plug in for Calibre, I plan to de-DRM all of my books, so I have a backup of my entire library.
Received a refund from ARe today for a pre-ordered book. Hoping they are making amends with authors and publishers as well as they close down the business.
Well I don’t recall getting an email – and I just started purchasing again last month!
I didn’t get an email and I want my books that I paid for. How do I get them?