All Romance (allromancebooks.com), a romance publisher and an online distributor of romance and erotica, just made the announcement that it is closing in three days—Dec. 31, 2016. If you’ve bought from them before, log in and download your purchases, because you won’t be able to once the site goes dark.
If you have credits there, you’ll be tempted to spend them all out before the site goes dark on New Year’s Eve. But you should know that authors will not be seeing any royalties from your purchases. And please do not give any new monies to AllRomance.com. None of the proceeds will go to authors or publishing companies.
Regarding purchases made through yesterday, Dec. 27, 2016, they are planning to send only 10% of any royalties they owe to publishing companies and self-published authors, and $0 to authors contracted directly with AllRomance. So, for example, if AllRomance owes Dreamspinner Press $100,000, it plans to pay Dreamspinner only $10,000. If it owes self-published author John Q. Pornbody $843.23, it plans to send him only $84.32. If it owes one of its own authors $322, that author can expect to get $0.
Yet another highly unprofessional closing in the romance industry. Interestingly, a note on the AllRomance.com website says that 2016 is its first year operating at a loss. One year operating at a loss, and it immediately closes? Most businesses operate at a loss for the first year or several years, and it’s only wise planning to expect a loss every few years. To shut the doors with virtually no notice because of one year of losses, while refusing to fulfill contract obligations, shows a lack of both ethics and business sense.