Samhain Publishing to close on the 28th

[alex_beecroft]

So, in an email that went out to Samhain authors this morning we were asked to keep this confidential, but as it’s already out in the public here on The Digital Reader I think that part of it is moot.

Samhain has just announced that they will in fact finally be closing on 28th of February (ie in 18 days time.)

If you’re a Samhain reader who’s been storing their books in Samhain’s cloud, this would be the time to download them to your own hard storage so that you don’t lose them the way readers lost books they bought with All Romance Ebooks.

Authors are getting their rights back once the closure has happened, and I intend to reformat my books and self-publish them as soon as I can. But as you know, I’m still recovering from an operation and I have a deadline for a new manuscript which I intend to turn in first, so it may be some time before I can get around to re-launching my backlist in print.

(Ebooks may be faster, depending on availability of cover art. I’m looking into buying some of my covers back from them. All the haggling with the artist that went on to make the cover of The Reluctant Berserker as authentic as possible was in my view 100% worth it, and if I can possibly keep that one I will. It’s gorgeous. But otherwise, making new cover art is quite fun, though laborious.)

If there’s a book of mine you haven’t already bought, but were idly thinking of getting on some future day when you felt like it, let me know and I’ll prioritize my re-release list to get to those ones first. But if I can beg a favour, I would ask you to hold on a little longer and get them from me, rather than buying them from Samhain now. On a callously monetary basis, I will recieve much more of the royalties if you buy from me than if you buy from them – and you will probably get the book cheaper too.

My royalties from Samhain halved during this last year, so I am quite pleased at the prospect of having my rights back from them, but I’m still sad about this. They were an excellent publisher while it lasted – which is why they have so much of my backlist. There was a time when, in my view, they were the best m/m publisher out there. The genre will be poorer without them.

It does seem to me that the m/m publishing boom has finally burst. This may yet have its good side, in that the people who leaped on the bandwagon because m/m seemed like the place to get easy sales will find somewhere else to go, and we’ll be left with the people for whom it actually has meaning. I think that’s been quietly self-selecting inside the genre for a long time anyway.

tl/dr

Download your Samhain books to your own storage now. They’ll be gone on the 28th.

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

Comments

[nos]

Wow, sorry to hear that! I'll definitely check out your backlist and make notes of the ones I'll be purchasing from you. I hope you find more success with either another publisher or through self-publishing. I really enjoy your work - False Colors is still my favourite m/m novel. I'm looking forward to delving into more of your backlist. Best of luck with the future!

[alex_beecroft]

Thank you! Yes, it's a shame, but small publishers seem to be going under all over the place at the moment. (Though I had thought Samhain was going to be immune. I hope Riptide are okay - they're all I have left!) Eee! for False Colors being a favourite :) Thank you!

[green_knight]

Sympathies - I am sorry to hear that Samhain is folding (and why oh why do these things happen with so little notice these days?). Best of luck for the self-publishing project!

[alex_beecroft]

I know! (About the notice, I mean.) They had said they were folding this time last year and then decided they weren't, and hobbled on for a year doing quite badly, but it's still a very short timescale from announcement to actual closure this time around! Thanks!

[green_knight]

The thing that gets me is that most people can't just dump their IT contracts that quickly. Hosting is usually bought on a longer-term basis, and if - like here - the company is 'winding down' and doing a shitload of admin and rights reversions and all that, then why can't they take the buy buttons off and continue to let people log in and download for at least a couple of months? They need to do all of the accounting and paying people for the previous quarter anyway, so even if they DID have to spend another $100 on keeping the lights on for readers for a bit ... that's not exactly make-or-break.

(I completely missed the announcement last year, not being interested in Romance per se, so people in-the-loop had a warning).

My heart goes out to the people who had books in the pipeline, but especially to the authors who will be published on February 21st, and who cannot even in good faith tell anyone to buy their books.

[alex_beecroft]

Yeah, I know. One of the first reactions I saw was from an author going "but I only signed a contract with them on Tuesday!" So it's been a bit of a shock all around. I have no idea why they can't do it over a longer period (the end of March for example) but maybe it's so they don't have to retain and pay their staff for another month? IDK :(

[watervole]

Thanks for the heads up. Luckily, upon checking, I have downloaded mine.

I'm sure I'll be buying more of your books (some of which will be olderones) but currently I'm working through a batch of recent purchases from Riptide.

[alex_beecroft]

Cool! I'm glad you're all set already. And no pressure :) I hope nothing happens to Riptide at this rate, or I don't know what we'd do!