FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dorchester Publishing Names New CEO With an Eye to the Future

NEW YORK, New York (November 16, 2010) – Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc., founded in 1971, and what was until this year the oldest independent mass-market publisher in the U.S., has changed leadership in its mission to revitalize Dorchester and blaze a path as an exciting independent digital and trade publisher of genre fiction.

Taking over the role of Dorchester’s CEO will be Mr. Robert Anthony, current CFO & COO of Backe Digital Brand Marketing, who brings with him more than 25 years of experience in financial and operations management. Prior to his time at Backe Marketing, Anthony was the president of The Blue Sky Financial Group, which provides business consulting services on operational strategies and business development. As a CPA he has worked in public accounting, gaining exposure to a wide variety of business models, and he was the controller for one of the largest investment management organizations in the United States, Federated Investors, where he held an integral role in the planning, restructuring, development and growth of that company.

“My first goal with Dorchester is to reorganize and improve the accounting and internal financial reporting structure. This will include a complete review of the royalty system and other vitally important internal procedures, all of which are intended to focus on shoring up revenue sources and paying off creditors. We will create an atmosphere of transparency and efficiency that was heretofore lacking,” announced Anthony after taking charge on Friday. He is importing new staff to handle the tasks, though Dorchester’s remaining core will go unchanged.

Dorchester is known for having built such stars as Christine Feehan, Katie MacAlister, Connie Mason, Lynsay Sands, and numerous others, and its authors have been bestsellers of The New York Times, USA Today, Barnes & Noble, and many more. Earlier this year, Dorchester changed its focus from mass-market paperbacks to e-books and trade paperbacks. While the trade line was planned for some time, the mid-August shift to e-books was predicated by financial difficulties stemming from the contracting mass-market industry and came with a significant reduction in Dorchester’s staff, which caused some missteps in the implementation of the new company strategy. Mixed messages to media outlets and unpredicted procedural changes also contributed, undermining author confidence and leading to rumors of imminent bankruptcy.

“We are going to reinvigorate this company,” declared Anthony. “I’ve quickly learned that the employees at Dorchester are a talented and professional group. We’re going to do whatever it takes.”

Some steps have already been taken: After a deal with Offset Paperback Manufacturers, previously unavailable mass-market copies of Dorchester’s author backlist are once again available to some vendors and through the company website —www.dorchesterpub.com— and after a short hiatus in new-book production, the company intends to release its Winter e-book list on November 23, 2010, just in time for the holiday season. An arrangement has been reached so that Ingram will be distributing Audio Realms audio versions of popular Dorchester books as well as the trade releases, and the company’s Web site will be revamped and launched right before the end of the year. Writers groups such as SFWA, RWA and MWA are being contacted to help spread news of the changes.

Contrary to mistaken previous reports, Dorchester intends to produce all titles in both e-book and trade paperback form, using both Ingram’s regular trade printing ability or advanced inventory technology as orders dictate. The trade paperbacks will begin appearing in January 2011 and be distributed through Ingram Publishing Services, who will sell Dorchester’s product into standard retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, BooksAMillion, Powell’s, Wal-Mart, Target and K-Mart, among others. A recent changeover from LibreDigital to Core Source, Ingram’s digital warehousing and e-book sales arm, will also facilitate forward growth and the expedited availability of popular authors’ backlists in e-book form.

It’s always darkest before the dawn. Just when the prospects for recovery seemed bleakest, Dorchester has come roaring back onto the publishing scene with a determined new CEO and a turnaround plan that wastes no time in restoring the confidence of authors, agents and retail partners.

Here are the highlights of Dorchester’s just-issued press release:

The new CEO is Robert Anthony, an experienced executive in digital brand marketing, with “more than 25 years of experience in financial and operations management.”

Anthony’s first goal: “To reorganize and improve the accounting and internal financial reporting structure. This will include a complete review of the royalty system and other vitally important internal procedures, all of which are intended to focus on shoring up revenue sources and paying off creditors. We will create an atmosphere of transparency and efficiency that was heretofore lacking,”

Clarification of previously announced strategy. Anthony stated that “previously unavailable mass-market copies of Dorchester’s author backlist are once again available to some vendors and through the company website.”

Hit the ground running: “After a short hiatus in new-book production, the company intends to release its Winter e-book list on November 23, 2010, just in time for the holiday season.”

Apology for mixed messages: “Mixed messages to media outlets and unpredicted procedural changes also contributed, undermining author confidence and leading to rumors of imminent bankruptcy.”

Determination to be a player: “We are going to reinvigorate this company,” declared Anthony. “I’ve quickly learned that the employees at Dorchester are a talented and professional group. We’re going to do whatever it takes.”

We welcome this news and speak, I’m sure, for an author and agent community that wants to see Dorchester’s turnaround succeed and wishes it and its new leader every success.

The full press release may be read here.
Richard Curtis

Hey Penguin – Hyman Rosen is mad at you and you just lost a sale of a William Gibson book. You could have $12.99 but now you’re getting nothing!

Attention Bantam/Dell: Helen Burgess has a bone to pick with you. Mary Ballogh’s A Christmas Promise isn’t available in her country and you just lost a 5.99 British pound sale.

Yo, Scribner. Check out what “Katie” has to say about your book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee: “I can’t bring myself to pay nearly the full price of the print book for the e-book, knowing that the marginal cost of the e-book is almost zero.”

Too bad, Scribner.  You could have had Katie’s $14.99.

Are you as frustrated as these folks are?  Well, here’s your chance not just to vent but to let the world how ticked off you are.  It’s a website called lostbooksales.com.  We love it but we’re afraid to gush over it because we suspect that sooner or later someone’s going to post a complaint about us. It’s an incentive to keep our nose clean, so we wish more power to Lost Book Sales.

It’s sponsored by an attractive and delightful blog called Dear Author run by a staff of first-name-only ladies and a few males. Its mission is to “read and review romance books (with a smattering of other genre and non fiction books) from the readers’ point of view” but it’s so much more, with lots of cool features for readers and authors. Check Dear Author out.

Thanks, Jane and Jayne and everyone else at Dear Author.  But please, when you talk about us – and you will – be kind?

Richard Curtis

Screw you, Google. And you, publishers.  And you, authors.

That’s the underlying message in an announcement published by ClubFreebie, a website offering free books by Clive Cussler, Anne Tyler, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Janet Evanovich, Anne McCaffery, Robert Coover, Neal Stephenson and Gina Showalter. And that’s just one package. There are over two dozen of them.

Taken down by Google, ClubFreebie boasted it was back in business one hour later.  “I honestly don’t know why they bother!” the club admin sneered, issuing a new URL to find the reconstituted website.  A click on the URL  (not provided here) takes you to “The Free Book Guide. Click Here to Collect Your Complimentary Books!” The link takes you to a page with over 25 links to audio, video and book mixes offered to members free. “Use the menu on the left to view the book collections, when you find something you like, click on the link and download it. It’s as easy as that!”

“Please note,” the message concludes, “Our pages get shut down on a regular basis (the book companies do not like us!) so join the club (form below) and you will never miss out on the latest goodies!”

Is ClubFreebie legal?  Here’s its disclaimer: “Please note that we are not the ‘hosts’ of any books, neither did we upload them to any hosting provider. We simply find links to books that were freely available on the web and share our findings with our members.”

Here’s the message in full:

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CLUBFREEBIE

The Complimentary Books Site has Changed Location!

Dear Members

It would seem that Google finally took down the ‘Books’ site (due to terms of service!… which means that some book publishers complained!!). Anyway, after just an hour, the new site is ‘live again’

I honestly don’t know why they bother!

Please use the following url to find the new site as this will always point to the new Google pages as they are created

The Free Book Guide. Click Here to Collect Your Complimentary Books!

It’s always fun and games trying to get these nice ‘goodies’ to the membership!!

Regards

Club Admin

This message is being sent to you because you or the author are a member of ClubFreebie, a network created using SocialGO. If you are interested in creating your own network, please click here.
Click here to unsubscribe from future emails

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For full coverage of book piracy, click on our Pirate Central feature

Physicist and tech blogger Eric Hellman has an annoying habit of knocking his knuckles on assumptions to see if they are hollow.  In a blog recently posted on his go to hellman website (See Attributor eBook Piracy Numbers Don’t Add Up) he tapped his knuckles on a statement made by Attributor, a leading company in the field of monitoring unauthorized use of copyrighted material, and he didn’t like the sound it made.

We wrote up Attributor a while back (See Attributor Badge Proclaims Your E-Book is Kosher) and reprinted its assertion that “Daily demand for pirated e-books can be estimated at 1.5-3 million people worldwide.”   Our guts told us it sounded right.  It sounded credible.

But Hellman begged to differ. He begged to differ by 90%.  Relying on Google Trends, AdWords  and keyword search data plus analysis of some other metrics, Hellmann said he considered “…the truth to be about 10% of the number they claim.”

“All in all,” he wrote, “I estimate that about 210,000 searches made on Google per day represent possible interest in pirated ebooks. About 30,000 of these come from the US. The ‘real’ number for all countries could be as high as 300,000 or as low as 100,000. The 1.5-3 million numbers reported by Attributor are not within the range of plausibility.”

When Attibutor stood by its original figures Hellman crunched the numbers again and produced a second article entitled Consumer Interest in Pirated eBooks is Even Lower Than I Thought. We asked Attributor CEO Jim Pitkow to comment and he wrote us as follows:

“Our study’s rigorous methodology ensured highly accurate results that align with actual consumer behavior. We analyzed 89 titles, using multiple keyword permutations per title, across different days of the week, with very high bids to ensure placement – each of which is fundamental in guaranteeing accuracy and legitimacy. Each of these variables impact the findings, and analyzing all variables together produce highly accurate results. We stand by our research, and we’re confident that the study addresses an accurate portrayal of the consumer demand for pirated e-books.”

So now what?

Hellman’s arguments are compelling and for all we know he is technically correct. But they don’t take into account the less quantifiable but devastating damage wreaked by piracy: the culture of entitlement, the climate of outlawry, the institutionalization of copyright ignorance and disrespect, the bleeding of profits, and the toll that piracy exacts on the incentive of artists and musicians and writers to create and sell their work. There is also a leverage factor to be considered: one successful customer search for a torrent pirate site can yield a trove of thousands of stolen e-books such as the one we displayed recently (See A Bootleg E-Book Bazaar Operates in Plain Sight).

So, even if one is willing to grant that Attributor based its claim on ambiguous stats, we still believe with bedrock certainty that piracy represents the Number One threat to the success of the digital book industry. You can knock your knuckles on that one until they bleed, we won’t change our minds. Nor do Hellman’s cogently reasoned arguments mitigate our support for Attributor’s goals and activities on behalf of aggrieved copyright owners.

For in-depth coverage of piracy visit our Pirate Central page regularly.

Richard Curtis

In an ominous turn, Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch reports that Dorchester CEO John Prebich left the firm last week.

We described Dorchester in August as “The Incredible Shrinking Publisher” after Jim Milliot of Publishers Weekly broke the news that “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.”

We had hoped that Dorchester’s initiative would turn it around and we still do.  But a few weeks ago the Mystery Writers of America delisted the firm for a variety of reasons, another blow to the publisher’s hopes to right itself.

It will take a visionary and energetic leader to take the helm of a publisher that seems to be shipping water.

RC

Many people don’t realize it but the phrase “push the envelope” was created by test pilots. The “envelope” was the stratosphere and “pushing” it was a colorful phrase for testing the altitude limits of their aircraft.  The phrase has been broached recently in connection with another rocket ride, the explosive growth of the e-book industry. As it approaches the $1 billion threshold – roars up to it is a better phrase – the issue of when it will crash and burn or even just slow down has been raised.  But a study by Forrester Research, the respected consumer study firm, reassures us that there’s plenty of fuel in this rocket and we have a long, long flight ahead of us before the envelope starts pushing back.

Speculation began last March (See Can E-Book Sales Bubble Burst?) “The next year,” said futurist Mike Shatzkin, “will see a continuation of robust retail growth” which he puts “conservatively” at 3.5%. That means that “the e-book minimum expectation by next Christmas would be between 15 and 20 percent of the sales of a new title… And then it can’t really continue the same growth rate the following year because that would take us to a great majority of books read being e-books. And I don’t think you’ll find anybody expecting 60% or more e-book penetration in two years.” The saturation point? “It won’t start slowing down until e-book sales are 20-25% of what a publisher expects on a new title.”

Shatzkin concluded that the topping-out moment would occur at the end of 2012.

Forrester’s just-published five year e-book report is more expansive. Indeed, its authors assert that digital books will become the default for publishing. “The punchline,” writes analyst James McQuivey, “is this: 2010 will end with $966 million in e-books sold to consumers. By 2015, the industry will have nearly tripled to almost $3 billion, a point at which the industry will be forever altered.”

The key to Forrester’s optimism is the untapped potential of the e-book buyer, who currently represents only 7% of the book consumer pool. “Did you know that the two most common ways people get books today,” McQuivey informs us, “is borrowing them from a friend or getting them from the library? ” The 7% who read e-books “happen to be a very attractive bunch: they read the most books and spend the most money on books. And here’s the kicker – the average e-book reader already consumes 41% of books in digital form. Oh, and that includes the people who don’t have an e-reader yet, which is nearly half of them. For those that have a Kindle or other e-reader, they read 66% of their books digitally.”

“And that,” he concludes, “is why we pause to commemorate the crossing of the billion-dollar threshold, because from here things will move so quickly that by the time the dust settles, the book business may actually be the most digital of all media industries, even if it got the latest start.”

Read Why The Book Business May Soon Be The Most Digital Of All Media Industries and you may conclude it’s time to recalibrate your projections in the direction of a comfortably distant envelope.

Richard Curtis

At long last The Forge of God, one of Greg Bear’s greatest science fiction masterpieces, is available as an e-book.

On July 26th, Arthur Gordon learns that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, has disappeared. Not hiding, not turned black, but gone.

On September 28th, Edward Shaw finds an error in the geological records of Death Valley. A cinder cone was left off the map. Could it be new? Or, stranger yet, could it be artificial? The answer may be lying beside it—a dying Guest who brings devastating news for Edward and for Planet Earth.

As more unexplained phenomena spring up around the globe—a granite mountain appearing in Australia, sounds emanating from the Earth’s core, flashes of light amongst the asteroids—it becomes clear to some that the end is approaching, and there is nothing we can do.

In The Forge of God, award-winning author Greg Bear describes the final days of the world on both a massive, scientific scale and in the everyday, emotional context of individual human lives. Facing the destruction of all they know, some people turn to God, others to their families, and a few turn to saviors promising escape from a planet tearing apart.

Will they make it in time? And who gets left behind to experience the last moments of beauty and chaos on Earth?

Nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1987 and for Hugo and Locus Awards in 1988, The Forge of God is an engrossing read, breathtaking in its scope and in its detail.

Forge of God garnered so many superlative reviews it coruscates like a diamond…

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“…Never have I read another novel that changed my outlook on the world the way that The Forge of God has. I read the book a little over three years ago and I still remember it vividly. Bear’s portrayal of mankind’s reaction to Earth’s inevitable destruction is disturbingly true to reality. Despair, apathy, quiet rage, hopelessness, its all painted into this magic work with morbid mastery.”

*

“Simply the most stimulating novel that I have ever read.”

*

“Literate hard-science or alien invasion novels are no longer rare, but a book such as this, which effectively blends these concepts and is also compellingly written, is a joy to behold.”

*

“Novels don’t get much better than this. Bear really penned a true classic here. I’ve read many different versions of the end of the Earth, but this one truly spooked me…. This book affected me in ways thousands of other novels could not, and has left a haunting impression. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys great writing at its absolute best…”

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If you prefer to read The Forge of God in Tor mass market paperback click here.

And don’t miss the incredible sequel, Anvil of Stars, published in paperback and e-book by E-Reads. Here’s the description:

The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet’s mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.

Now the small group of human survivors is determined to track down the criminal race who launched the planet killers. Humanity is given a starship by The Benefactors, and driven only by revenge they set out to find the unknown beings who are responsible for the destruction of Earth, and many other worlds.

Yes, it’s upsetting to discover your book has been hacked and is being sold or given away on a dozen pirate sites.  But sometimes it’s consoling to know that others are worse off than you.  In the Sunday New York Times Magazine James Verini reports on a cyberthief whose crime beggars the imagination and even makes Bernard Madoff look like an amatuer.

Vernini writes:

“Over the course of several years, during much of which he worked for the government, [Albert] Gonzalez and his crew of hackers and other affiliates gained access to roughly 180 million payment-card accounts from the customer databases of some of the most well known corporations in America: OfficeMax, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Dave & Buster’s restaurants, the T. J. Maxx and Marshalls clothing chains. They hacked into Target, Barnes & Noble, JCPenney, Sports Authority, Boston Market and 7-Eleven’s bank-machine network. In the words of the chief prosecutor in Gonzalez’s case, ‘The sheer extent of the human victimization caused by Gonzalez and his organization is unparalleled.’”

You can read the complete gripping story of the electronic plundering of department store chains, the Department of Defense, NASA and the heart of America’s credit card system in Verini’s The Great Cyberheist.

RC

The sickening menace depicted in William C. Dietz’s science thriller Ejecta sees the light of day for the first time ever in this Kindle original debut.

In Ejecta, an infected university professor commits suicide in order to leave a message for an ex-student named Sara Devlin. She returns home to discover that her old friend had been host to an alien parasite. Her attempts to expose the danger take her down a path that leads to a computer called the Crop Circle, research suggesting that human heads have been exploding for thousands of years, and an on-again off-again affair with a professional meteorite hunter who has secrets of his own. Together they battle the government and the alien menace while the future of the human race hangs in the balance.

Regarding other William C. Dietz books Publisher’s Weekly says, “A genuine adrenaline rush.”

Booklist says, “Breakneck pacing, strong characterization, alien-invasion buffs should enjoy, enjoy!”

And Romantictimes.com says, Mr. Dietz’s “… portrayal of ordinary people fighting for their lives and freedom is a touching tribute to the human spirit, demonstrating that life goes on and love doesn’t die.”

If you enjoyed Ejecta you can choose among many other Dietz science fiction adventures published on E-Reads.

RC