Well, it’s better than giving readers three days between Christmas and New Year’s, but not by much.
Samhain Publishing owner Christina Brashear announced today in an email that Samhain will close effective 28 February 2017:
Due to the declining sales we’ve been experiencing with this changing market we’ve come to the sad conclusion it’s time to call it a day.
The last of our new titles launch February 21st; I hope you will check them out and support them as you have so many other Samhain titles through the years.
The last of our new titles launch February 21st; I hope you will check them out and support them as you have so many other Samhain titles through the years.
Our site will go dark at the end of the day, February 28th. Please take a few moments and visit, buy what you might have been planning on getting someday in the future, but download and back up your bookshelf because you won’t have access to it after February 28th.
So readers, you have about eighteen days to login to your Samhain account and download any and all books in your digital library there. The good news is they won’t have DRM so they should be easy to download and transfer to whatever storage you use for ebooks. The bad news is, if you’ve got a lot of books, it might take awhile. Bring some wine.
Spread the word, folks – you’ve got a little over two weeks to go download your Samhain books.
Serious question: Why launch books on the 21st with only a week left for any sales?
Because unreleased books mean unfulfilled contracts — not releasing those books leaves them open to trouble, legally.
Oh man, that sucks. 🙁 I think I have only one title in my library released through Samhain, and I didn’t buy it directly from them, so I’m good. But many sympathies to Samhain’s customers, authors, and staff!
I was able to log in and download my small library (about 20 books) in about 10 minutes. Easy and fast.
Do we know whether authors are going to be OK?
Didn’t they make this announcement last February, too? And then in June they said they had changed their minds and had a longterm plan to become profitable again. I feel terrible for the authors who have had to go through this fuckery twice now. I wish them the best and hope that they’re able to recover after being dragged around for the last year.
I feel sorry for these orphaned authors. Will their copyrights go back to them so they can at least place their past titles online as self-published at Amazon? This is the pits. I hope they all find new “homes”.
@Dread Pirate Rachel:
Yeah, I also remember Samhain’s announcement last year. I particularly remember as it was being held in comparison to “other e-retailers who limped on sucking money into their Cave”. What is going on in there?
Poor authors.
This is awful. There are some truly extraordinary authors who work with Samhain – Rose Lerner and KJ Charles are among my favorites. My heart goes out to them and everyone else with books placed there, and I hope they all get their rights back ASAP.
I’ve had KJ Charles on my tbr for a long time. Still I think I’ll get them from Amazon. I don’t want to make a new purchase now. A little more expensive on Amazon, but still less than a grande latte.
We’ll get our rights back. Samhain has always paid me every month, on the nail. I’ve had a great time with them. They published some of the books I’m most proud of, including Richard and Rose, Secrets and The Triple Countess.
I’m really going to miss them. And what a contrast to Ellora’s Cave who clung to everything they could for as long as they could and didn’t bother to pay us for the last two years!
Still, between the two publishers, I have around 40 books to reissue. That’s a lot of editing, formatting and cover art. I have all but 6 from EC back out there, and now I have to start work on the Samhain ones. The market isn’t great right now, but I don’t want people to look for those books and fail to find them.
Life sucks sometimes.
Again? This is the second time they’ve done this to authors. That really sucks.
As Lynne said, Samhain will be giving us (their authors) our rights back. They did their best to keep going, and always paid the authors on time. They kept us informed every step of the way. I’m really sorry to see such a great publisher close their doors.
@Julia – I would buy any Samhain books you want now (from whichever store) because there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find them after Samhain closes. Even if authors self-publish their books or find new publishers for them, it won’t happen immediately.
Am I right in assuming that any Samhain ebooks that my local library has won’t be affected, since the library has already purchased them?
So those authors who have books releasing on 2/21 only have a week to sell their books? Or will they still be available on other retailers like Amazon?
@Emma- If your library uses Overdrive, they’ll likely disappear. Libraries are really just renting the rights to Overdrive titles; things get pulled or changed frequently based on the publisher’s whims.
[…] Samhain Publishing is closing February 28. […]
I hate to see them close. Each small press that folds means less publishing options for romance writers and readers.
I hate to see them close. Each small press that folds means fewer publishing options for romance writers and readers.
Are ebook publishing companies failing because the market has changed or because they did not maintain control of their overhead and personal compensation?
Honestly, the market’s changed massively since the likes of EC and Samhain first came on the scene. You have to remember they predate most ereaders and the whole explosion of self epublishing. You used to get pdfs emailed to you to read on your computer. When people started to shift to buying through device specific retailers rather the sideloading books the brand recognition started to fade. With higher overheads than self pubbed authors they can’t afford to drop prices as low. Many of the smaller epresses are already gone, and though a lot of the big names have found ways to make it keep working for now I don’t think in the long run many will survive.
Oooh, though, returning now I’ve clicked through to save my library and there’s nothing on the home page, blog or even on the bookshelf to say they’re closing. I never got the email (never got the ARe email either, so lost those books) and I’d have no idea they were closing if I hadn’t seen it here.
I am really sad that yet another publisher is going.
Not sure if you can do it, but now might be a good time to write up some advice to readers on managing their ebooks: purchase > download > strip any DRM > Calibre > backup > offsite copy of backup.
It sounds far more technical and complicated than it is, but losing your library is no joke and is a *very* expensive exercise.
There are no guarantees of being able to redownload from any store. I have had more stores die under me than (no, don’t go there… 0.o).
KJ Charles has a nice piece about Samhain – http://kjcharleswriter.com/samhain-closure/
And she says that Samhain ebooks will disappear from 3rd party vendors beginning of March, although print books may be available a little longer
Maybe a dumb question, but I’m pretty sure I have some Samhain titles that I bought through Amazon. Since I purchased them, does that mean my Kindle library is safe? At least for now?
@Brandi- Do not assume that any book you buy through any vendor, including Amazon, will always be safe in your library. Download Kindle app for for PC or Mac if you haven’t, connect it to your account, and download all titles you want to keep safe. a DRM’d copy will be backed up to your computer’s hard drive. But if Amazon pulls the license to that DRM copy, you won’t be able to read it.
It is advisable for ALL frequent readers of ebooks to learn how to back up their libraries and remove DRM for their private use. I don’t know SBTB’s policies on posting about that, so I’ll just say there are some step-by-step, safe, free instructions to be found on Google.
Dear Author has several articles about how to use Calibre to backup and organize your ebooks. And I agree – if you own ebooks, you absolutely should back them up.
I just downloaded my Samhain books. I am shocked that they don’t have this listed on their site. You go to the site and their blog and their is nothing about it being shut down. I would have no idea if it weren’t for this site. Rather appalling treatment of its customers.
Yikes! I need technical help, please. I bought my Rose Lerner titles through Amazon. How do I “download and backup”? Does this mean to make sure they are in my iPad kindle app “Device” and not “Cloud”? And how do I determine which other titles purchased from Amazon were published by Samhain? There may be 1623 ebooks on my iPad…