I’ve been a Strange Chemistry fan from the beginning. Its editor, Amanda Rutter, was one of the first friends I made when I discovered the blogosphere, at the time she was still blogging at Floor to Ceiling Books, and she helped me out a lot when I decided to start blogging myself. So to see her move into publishing herself was exciting and witnessing Strange Chemistry publish some of the most innovative and wonderful books in the field of YA in the past two years has been a pleasure.
When this morning the news broke that both Strange Chemistry and Angry Robot’s crime imprint Exhibit A Books were the cease operations immediately, followed some time later by the news that Osprey is looking to sell Angry Robot, I was shocked, to say the least. My first thoughts were for the wonderful authors published by both these imprints, some of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to meet in person, and for Amanda, Caroline, Lee, Mike and Marc, who do such excellent work bringing us these books. My second thoughts were that now I’d not find out how the stories I’d been waiting for to continue would end. Well at least not in the near-future.
Of course there are all sorts of ramifications to this news, not in the least what will happen to those titles that were contracted but now won’t be published and for those authors who were in the midst of a series. And as you’d expect reactions have already been starting to appear online. I’ve tried to collect them below and I’ll keep them updated for the next few days. Meanwhile I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that everyone impacted by these closures will quickly and squarely land on their feet and find new publishing homes.
There is no reason why an author with a series unfinished cannot self publish the rest of the series. She/he already has her audience and followers.
But at the moment it’s unclear whether rights are reverting etc. So that’s what might cause a problem. In addition, not every author has the time or the energy for the hard work that goes into promotion and publicity. But you’re right that the option is always there fortunately.
By rights, the rights should revert back ASAP (Hey I made a pun). Yeah … self pubbing is the only option methinks.
SC and EA wouldn’t be part of the Angry Robot package as they don’t exist anymore. For unpublished titles the rights would indeed revert back, but I’ve seen one of the SC authors say that AR will still be selling the books already out there (and presumably in storage) until they’ve all sold out before letting the books go out of print. So might be more difficult in those cases, especially where they concern unfinished series?