Dorchester/Leisure Press is near bankruptcy, has been not paying its authors, and several of them are
calling for a boycott. They've also been putting up ebooks that they don't have the rights to--this is the real book piracy, the kind that copyright law was designed to counteract. Brian Keene says:
Since January of this year, unauthorized digital editions of my work have been sold via Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and Sony. These digital editions were not made available for sale until well after the rights had reverted back to me. Dorchester’s response, in each case, has been to blame someone else and assure me that “they are looking into it” and that I would be “financially compensated” and that “it wouldn’t happen again”. Except that I haven’t been financially compensated and it keeps happening again.
His post goes into details and the history of the problems, with links to more posts and a list of authors, editors & others who are supporting the boycott. He's been asked why he hasn't taken legal action--and pointed out it's hard to hire a lawyer when you haven't been paid in a year. He's reclaimed his rights and will be able to start collecting money on new sales soon, but Dorchester is still selling his books without the legal right to do so, and isn't paying several of its other authors, and is ignoring their demands to reclaim their rights.
They're running a contest to decide which 20 books they'll next convert to digital, and
Montilee Stormer says,How about any 20 titles where the author actually receives compensation per their contract? How about 20 titles you actually own the rights to publish and distribute?![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
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