While the next hearing in the Diggory Press court case in the UK is not set to go ahead until November of this year, there has been a very significant development on the publishing side of matters for Diggory Press, Exposure Publishing, their self-publishing wing, and all their contracted authors.
A quick browse through the online bookstores of Amazon.co.uk, Borders.co.uk and Blackwell.co.uk will reveal that hundreds of listings of Diggory Press and Exposure Publishing titles are now showing the publisher of origin to be a company called Authors’ Chance Ltd. Some of the online listings, at best, cite Diggory or Exposure as simply an ‘imprint’, with Authors’ Chance Ltd as the primary publisher. What is perhaps even more disturbing is the amount of Diggory authors I have contacted since early yesterday who were entirely unaware of this change of listing or any ownership sale of Diggory Press and its self-publishing wing, Exposure Publishing.
I have included some of the online links below to former Diggory Press and Exposure Publishing titles. If you are a Diggory Press author you might want to also take this opportunity to log on to these online retailers and check your own book’s listing there. I will be waiting right here for your return!
http://www.borders.co.uk/published-by/authors-chance-ltd/72088/
http://www.borders.co.uk/book/all-the-trees-crying/554778/
http://www.diggorypress.com/trees-crying-p-674.html
Blackwell UK online store for Authors’ Chance Ltd.
So is your book showing under a different publisher listing? Were you made aware of these changes? Do you believe as a contracted and paid up author to Diggory Press that you should have been informed? I think it would have been nice if you were told. As of yet, there is no communication from Diggory Press about the sale of the business on their own website. I have contacted Diggory Press today and asked if they might like to enlighten their authors and us here at POD, Self Publishing & Independent Publishing. But, perhaps, even they were not aware of this change, and like Amazon’s ghostly hand in the night taking back its customer’s Kindle copies of Orwell’s books – it just happened and they are now mortified and soon to be filled with floods of woe and heartfelt apology. We’ll wait and see...
While we are waiting, we might as well take a look at these new kids on the block – Authors’ Chance Ltd. The UK Company Records (no. 05384346) list them as having an address at Haslemere, Surrey, and in fact the company only recently changed its name (July 2009) from Blueshack Ltd, a relatively dormant company since its first registration in 2005. The company has one director listed, Michael Thomas Gordon.
http://www.ukdata.com/numbers/05384346.html
Incidentally, the fact that Authors’ Chance Ltd has chosen to list the Diggory/Exposure titles with their originally published dates does tend to give unfamiliar authors the impression that they are not a new author solution company. I may also be jumping the gun here in calling them this as Authors’ Chance Ltd does not have its own website as of yet, though, the Company Records do list it as ‘non-trading’ as of this time. This may very well be simply part of the gradual change over. They are also entitled to use the currently existing ISBN’s until a new edition of each book is actually issued, though, because they are almost all published through POD (print on demand) with a digital printer, there should actually not be any need to re-assign new ISBN’s, unless of course that it the wish of Authors’ Chance Ltd. Their unwillingness to do this is perfectly understandable. Making changes to a digital file can cost £50+ per title, and even on just 200 titles, which amounts to £10,000! It is an option publishers using offset print methods do not have if they wish to introduce a new edition. I have often wondered what happens when one publisher takes over another publisher’s lists. Here is the official take on it from Nielsen Bookdata.
“We have recently acquired a list from another Publisher. Can I put a sticker over their ISBN with mine?
No. Publishers must use the ISBN of the original Publisher until they reprint, at which point the ISBN and imprint can be changed, thus leading to a new edition and a new ISBN. Name & address changes, mergers and acquisitions should be notified to the ISBN Agency as soon as possible. Bibliographic Information providers should also be notified of changes to distributor arrangements.”
http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk/controller.php?page=159
We can only hope that this new development with Diggory Press will take its authors forward and it will be interesting in the coming days and weeks to learn what the true relationship is between Diggory Press and Authors' Change Ltd.
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