So, the big talk on the internet today, at least with romance writers, has been the closure of the All Romance Ebooks (ARe) website. This morning, a message went up on the site that says:

“It is with a great sadness that we announce the closing of All Romance eBooks, LLC. For the first year since opening in 2006, we will be posting a loss. Despite efforts to maintain and grow our market share, sales and profits have declined. The financial forecast for 2017 isn’t hopeful. We’ve accepted that there is not a viable path forward.

All Romance has always been a labor of love. Over the years we’ve developed wonderful relationships with the vendors we’ve worked with, the publishers whose content it’s been our pleasure to sell, the authors who supported us, and the customers who it’s been our honor to serve. On midnight, December 31 our sites will go dark. Between now and then, we encourage consumers finalize any transactions, download purchases, and back up libraries.

If you directly publish content for sale through our platform or All Romance has acted as your publisher via our Publishing in Partnership program, you should be in receipt of an email from us with additional information. If not, please contact us at info@allromanceebooks.com.”

So, I got an email this morning basically telling me that my royalties for Q4 1016 will be paid $0.10 on the dollar earned. The website is basically trying to avoid bankruptcy fees and is hoping all the authors will help out in this. The email also states that answers to the email to settle accounts and money owed will take priority of answering questions about the whole closing of the site.

It’s sending shock waves through the romance writing community. Speculation of why it is closing down is running rampant. Authors that were published by them will only get their rights reverted back to them, and that is all. In the world of self-publishing and dealing with small presses, this is something to be on the look out for. Who you decide to publish with and how it’s done can matter down the road.

ARe also had been sending me info on promos for Boxing Day and even an email to advertise in 2017, adding a comment that space was filling fast. I have since been really budgeting my money for ads and using mostly Facebook and doing my own promotions. So, I really wasn’t interested in those offers, especially since my books hadn’t really been doing all that well over the last year. Basically, ARe owes me $0.59 or $0.05 if I claim it under the terms they’ve sent me.

What is a take away from this? Watch who you publish with, and really investigate who you self-publish with. Of course, ARe has been considered a very good website in the past. So, this seems a little unexpected. But speculation does center around how it couldn’t keep up with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program and that the website wasn’t being kept updated with the newest technology. But who is to say what really happened.

I’m about to release my first full novel, Everything For Love, exclusive to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited for the first three months. I’m going to see how it does, and have it go wide if it warrants it later. We’ll have to see. I want to try to see if it does well, but after seeing something like this happen, I’m not hesitant much anymore. It seems like a sound way to release my book to my readers. With the way the ebook industry changes on a dime, this new turn of events could be the start of a new phase, Amazon taking on a bigger share of ereaders.

Here is the link to All Romance Ebooks. It will only work until December 31, 2016. If you’re a reader, you have just a few days to go and download your library to your computer or ereader. It will go dark at midnight Jan. 1, 2017.

Personally, this is kind of a horrible thing to do to writers, but business is business. It’s sad to see a place that specialized in romance ebooks go. Good-bye ARe! It’s been nice knowing ya!

UPDATE 12/29/16: Romance Writers of America has blogged about this as well. They basically think it stinks for the website to be open until Dec. 31 selling books, but will pay royalties up through Dec. 27, and $0.10 on the dollar if you settle.

Here is the link to the blog post:

https://www.rwa.org/p/bl/et/blogid=20&blogaid=1721

Plus, here is the email sent to publishers that I got yesterday morning. After reading different blogs and other opinions, I decided it should be posted, as a red flag to retailers or publishers or anyone else that thinks that scaring authors and asking them to sell themselves short is an option. Don’t. This shouldn’t be a precedent set on how to end a retailer business relationship with readers, authors and publishers.

“To Whom It May Concern:

UPDATES Continuing: Jan. 1, 2017

All Romance Ebooks and OmniLit are no longer working. But the AReCafe, a site similar to a blog and full of author interviews, reviews,etc., is still up and functioning.

http://www.arecafe.com/

Don’t know what this means. But ads and features are dated from Dec. 28, 2016 in some of the features. So, at least some writers still got their money’s worth for those features. Still keeping an eye on things. I’ve been updating and compiling all the information in updates on my original post. Sorry if it seems messy. But this story grows each day.

UPDATE Jan. 2, 2017

The publishers/authors portal is still working. I just logged into my account, and it all works. You can’t delete files, but can deactivate them. Reports can still be downloaded if you need to back things up.

Here’s the link: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/publishers.html