Leisure/Dorchester Publishing

[Crowfan]

I don't know if anyone else has heard about this. I've bought Leisure Horror books since high school. Last fall, I had planned to buy two books that were advertised, "Funland" by Richard Laymon, and "Valley Of The Scarecrow" by Gord Rollo. To make a long story short, I was told when I went to my local bookstore that those books were only available on e-readers.

Apparently Leisure/Dorchester had fired their horror editor, stopped sending books to book club members, and not paid the authors that were under contract with them.

I'm a fan of several authors who published with Leisure, including Edward Lee, who sent an e-mail to fans saying that he hasn't been paid by Leisure since 2009, so he got the rights to his books back, but he says that Leisure is publishing he works on e-readers without his permission(since they don't have the rights to his works)

He is asking that people should boycott Leisure/Dorchester. I am willing to do this, because I think that authors should be paid for their work. Many authors are in financial trouble because Leisure isn't paying them and I know how tough it can be when you're not getting paid, even though you're working hard.

Just wanted to pass this along.

[mummifiedstalin]

I've heard similar stories about authors not getting paid for e-books because their initial contracts didn't specifically mention them. It's a loophole that seems common with particularly shoddy publishers, or ones that are in financial trouble (which sounds like the situation here).

I know there are various lawsuits underway, but e-publishing is still new enough that stuff like this is cropping up. I have a friend who just signed a contract with a small-publisher, and her agent insisted that the contract be explicit about both print and electronic publication for precisely these reasons.

[Crowfan]

Yeah, I guess the e-reader thing would create loopholes, since it's pretty new technology, I guess. I don't know that much about it; I'm not real computer savvy.