Publishers Weekly is reporting that Dorchester has hired a new CEO. John Prebich has departed the company, and is being replaced by Robert Anthony, who was most recently CFO and CEO at Backe Marketing. In a statement, the company said Anthony will “revitalize” Dorchester.
In the last few months, Dorchester announced it was dropping paper publishing in favor of e-books, and then back-pedaled a bit to aim at simultaneous publication. Recently has come word that royalties have been late in coming to authors, and recently, we heard that one Dorchester author had reclaimed her rights to self-publish a book, rather than leaving it under the company’s aegis. Dorchester was the oldest independent mass market publisher in the US, and published most of their sf is published under the Leisure imprint. The company is now down to only six staffers.
Concurrent with the CEO news, we also hear that Dorchester’s previously unavailable backlist titles will now be available online at www.dorchesterpub.com. They plan to release their winter e-book list on 23 November. The company’s head of sales, Tim DeYoung, reports plans to release five or six reissued paperbacks monthly, from January through April, and then commencement of original publishing (in both trade paperback and electronic formats) in May. They expect to release 5-10 titles per month.
Anthony said he’ll be keeping the company’s core staff in place, said his first goal is to “reorganize and improve the accounting and internal financial reporting structure… [to] shore up revenue sources and paying off creditors.” He also said “We will create an atmosphere of transparency and efficiency that was heretofore lacking.”
Related articles previously published on SFScope:
Dorchester author Angie Fox reclaims book rights to self publish (10 November 2010)
Is the “shift to e-book publishing” a death knell for Dorchester? (20 August 2010)