Dorchester Signs with LibreDigital for e-Book Distribution

By Craig Morgan Teicher -- Publishers Weekly, 1/12/2009 2:07:00 PM

Dorchester, a leading independent publisher of romance, horror, thriller and western mass-market paperbacks, announced today that LibreDigtial will handle the distribution of its content through digital channels, making all of Dochester's frontlist and selected backlist titles available as e-books on a wide array of devices and formats. Dorchester president and CEO John Prebich said that HarperCollins—which distributes Dorchester’s print titles—introduced him to LibreDigital. Signing with LibreDigital "is a real giant step forward, and we’re really excited,” Prebich said. When nailing down the deal with LibreDigital, Prebich said he asked for “the same capabilities that HarperCollins has, and that’s what we got.”

Prebich feel confident about Dorchester’s business, and about his audience’s willingness to embrace e-books: “60% of our business is romance. That audience has a voracious appetite and reads a lot.” For 2008, he said, “our units are about 2% less than last year, but our revenue’s up 3%. We had a decent year. We’re happy about the numbers. The concern for me as a CEO is how to get growth. We have been working with Amazon—we’ve given them close to 1,000 books that they’ve made Kindle-friendly. We’ve seen very impressive numbers. Now, we’re taking the leap and going with LibreDigital.  We’re expecting nothing but good things and the opportunity to sell more books less expensively.”