Now It Can Be Told

Now that my publisher's difficulties are being openly discussed at the Absolute Write Water Cooler and Writer Beware's Facebook page, I won't be telling tales out of school if I mention them here. (For the record: What has gone wrong at Drollerie is, by all accounts, an honorable collapse, not a scam.)

Now that thunderpigeon and I have emailed all the authors in our anthology with an update about the troubles at Drollerie, I don't have to worry about any of those folks being put out about seeing something on my blog that they should have heard about from us first.

The short version:
The publisher has offered a blanket reversion of rights and termination of contracts to all authors who request them, with apologies for the long delays in publication and payment. We have decided to take Drollerie Press up on that offer. We've pulled the anthology, and we hope all the authors whose stories we accepted will allow us to keep our lineup as we shop the book around to other publishers. Once we hear back from all our authors and know what our table of contents looks like, we'll be in a position to start querying. We're brainstorming up a list of prospects. I believe something good will happen. I just don't know yet exactly what it will be.

Now that I've formally terminated my contracts for the Rugosa Coven novellas...

Damn, I wish I'd seen a better option. I'm pretty sure there wasn't one.

Okay, I'll talk about the implications of all this for the Rugosa books in a later post.

It's nobody's fault, ultimately. The proprietor of Drollerie Press, and my editor for the Rugosa stories, has been struggling all along with a chronic illness. Many months ago, it knocked her into the hospital, and though she's been home a while, she's been unable to work. One thing I have observed over the past couple of years is that everybody is just one health crisis away from incapacitation. Deena had a grand vision. She made it happen, for a while. I just hope she can recover.

In more than one place online, I've seen it said that Deena is hoping to sell Drollerie Press. I have that from a reliable source, too, though I've been unable to confirm it with Deena. I hope it's true, and I can think of a few small press publishers I like and respect whom I'd love to see expand by picking up Drollerie. (And to the ones who read this blog, please take this as a hint!) For the right new management, with a credible plan, I'd seriously consider bringing my books back. Many of the Drollerie authors who are taking Deena up on her offer of rights reversion would say the same.

State Of The Rugosa Series: Last Chance To Buy, Maybe For Some Time

In theory, Drollerie Press has thirty days in which to keep selling Closing Arguments and Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply. As I explained in my last post, the press is in a state of collapse due to the publisher's health crisis. With profoundest regret and with abiding good will toward everyone at Drollerie, I have found it necessary to terminate my contracts with them.

That means you may only have thirty days to buy copies. If you've been thinking you'd like to and just haven't gotten around to it, you can find them at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, and at Drollerie Press's own site, and most other reputable places where ebooks are sold.

In actuality, the same health crisis that is slowing down all of the press's key processes may slow the takedown of books they no longer have the rights to. Also Amazon and B&N are slow to respond to small publishers, so even if Drollerie does everything properly from here on out, there may be delays. You might have longer than thirty days. But please don't bet on it. My odds of getting my tiny sliver of payment are much better for sales that happen legally.

The word on the street is that Drollerie Press may be sold. I hope so, because that looks right now to be the only way the press will survive. If it sells to someone reputable who has a credible plan for the press, I may offer the Rugosa series to the new management. Certainly, I'll give the situation a little time to settle before I seek to publish the series elsewhere.

That said, I am researching my options, and one way or another, these stories will be available again someday soon. The series will continue.

As a side note, Drollerie Press also published the e-zine that hosts my one venture into podcasting: How the Grail Came to the Fisher King. I don't know how much longer that zine has before it evaporates into 404 Not Found. The podcast itself is under a Creative Commons license, so it's legally a trivial matter for me to post it in other places. I'm not sure exactly when I'll get around to doing so, though. If you want to download the story, that's probably worth doing soon, too.