This sucks. I hate having to post this, but it’s time. Like so many Dreamspinner Press authors, I haven’t been paid royalties owed to me for my Dreamspinner titles. After months of listening to misinformation and lies about the problem, I’m withdrawing from Dreamspinner.
Dreamspinner’s cryptic updates have painted grand pictures of costly business expansions as their only explanation for what happened to those royalties. They spent author royalties on expanding their business—money authors earned for books already sold that should have been held in trust and paid according to their contracts. None of their authors were given any advanced warning, no notification, and no apology afterward. My royalties were used as investment capital, without my knowledge or consent, and their investments haven’t paid out as planned.
I don’t write a lot, because real life gets in the way, so my demanding my rights back is a fairly small act of protest—but it’s all I can do. I won’t do business with a company who will so callously betray my trust.
Their abuse of authors has prompted Romance Writers of America to place Dreamspinner Press on indefinite probation with their organization, removing Dreamspinner from their qualifying publishers, and preventing them from participating in any RWA events. (RWA members: https://www.rwa.org/Online/News/2019/Advocacy_Update_Dreamspinner_Press.aspx).
So I’ve gotten publishing rights to all of my books back from them. Audio books and translations will remain with Dreamspinner for now, because they sold those licenses to third parties for a longer term than they had any right to sell… (because what’s one more breach of contract, right?) Given that Dreamspinner still owes me, and hundreds of other authors, royalties that were due on July 31, 2019, I expect that they’re limping toward bankruptcy, so those rights will likely terminate when the company dies anyway.
I’ve decided to put my books into Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program for the time being. This means that for the next three months, all of my books are included for free with a KINDLE UNLIMITED subscription! I’ll likely make most available for wider distribution in early 2020 and leave some in KU forever. Links on my blog and goodreads are not updated yet, but I’m working on it. However, editions are linked on Amazon so the KU editions should be easy to find.
I’m also still plugging away at my current WIP (a 3 book mystery series I am hoping to start releasing in Spring, 2020, if I can find a home for it) and I’ll post a snippet and a few updates over the next month.
I also want to say thank you to everyone who has reached out to offer held and advice throughout this mess!
