Dorrance Publishing Scam: New Developments

On the 19th of January 2012, I wrote a report about Dorrance Publishing which you can view here if you missed it.

And again much to my surprise I have received a reply, and this is what the person said:

“Work from Home Watchdog should be thanked for alerting authors to potential publishing pitfalls.

However, there are errors of fact in this posting in regards to Dorrance Publishing.

When an author selects Dorrance to provide publishing services (pre-press, press, e-book creation, marketing and distribution) a Dorrance ISBN is assigned to the work to allow for distribution and sales. However, at no time does the author give up his or her rights to the work. The copyright is taken in the author’s name and the author has complete control over the sale of any subsidiary rights (that is rights to the work in any form other than in book form in the English language.) Each Dorrance publishing services contract contains a Subsidiary Clause that clearly outlines how the sale of such rights would be handled and how the author would be the beneficiary of any payments received.

At any time, the author can terminate his or her publishing agreement and receive the digital printing files that the author paid for Dorrance to create. The author is then free to market and distribute the content in any manner.”

For me, there is one thing in the reply that does concern me and that is this:

“…a Dorrance ISBN is assigned to the work to allow for distribution and sales.”

But why a Dorrance ISBN because that still means that the Author is not the Publisher?

Quoting myself from the original report:

“Without being the publisher then the ISBN is not registered to you and you are at the mercy of what the Publishing House is willing to share with you.”

It doesn’t matter how you look at this, Dorrance Publishing holds the Publishing Rights because the ISBN number is assigned to them.

The other thing I talked about was the scary costs involved and how it isn’t necessary to pay any company anything to Publish your own material because they should be paying you the Author and not the other way around.

Here in the reply above is the sting in the tail for any would-be Author…

(that is rights to the work in any form other than in book form in the English language.)

What they are saying here is that Dorrance Publishing holds the rights to the book, however, you only hold the Digital Rights.

This means that any sales made in book form – for example, numerous book stores and the most famous online store, Amazon – can legally sell your hardback copy because they own the publishing rights to your work. Quite simply because the ISBN number is in their name and not yours.

Now I have had this confirmed and I would advise that you consider this if you are looking to use Dorrance to publish your work.

Our aim on Work From Home Watchdog is to provide comprehensive reviews on sites whether good or bad because we have ourselves been caught out in the past and we don’t want you to do the same.

However, if in the process we discover products or services that do not live up to their promise, or mislead potential customers in any way, we will make sure that our visitors know about it.

Please note that my aim is to give detailed facts on the information that I originally researched. I spent quite some time looking into this to make sure I got my facts right.

I am not trying to discredit any company, I am simply pointing out any concerns, mistakes, and/or misgivings.

Neil – WFHW