YA LGBT Books discussion

Harmony Ink's YA books are an imprint of Dreamspinner Press, which has had financial difficulties recently.

Dreamspinner put out the following statement:

"Question: Are you closing down Harmony Ink Press? That is absolutely awful if you are. LGBT teens need to have representation in the book world, which means Libraries and Schools need to feel like they know who to shop with. Dreamspinner is not it. How can you merge an erotica/romance book site with Teen fiction?

Elizabeth: We are not closing Harmony Ink Press. Harmony Ink exists to provide teens a change to see themselves inside a book and not have to turn to adult fiction to do so.

What we are doing is consolidating our e-commerce accounts to one site. It is simply too expensive to maintain a separate site when our statistics show that more then 95% of the shoppers on the Harmony Ink site make their purchase from Kobo, iTunes or Amazon. Recent notifications are to let people who have shopped in the past know that their downloads will still be archived on the Dreamspinner site. Their bookshelf can be accessed directly without having to browse through the store.

The Harmony Ink site will look much as it does now, but instead of seeing one option to add a book to your cart, you will see multiple options to purchase the book at Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, B&N or the Dreamspinner store for the crossover customers.

Not having to maintain the cost of a store that processes very few sales directly, will allow us to funnel that money into more outreach for libraries and the production of audiobooks which is where we are really connecting with teens."



- There is a lot of discussion in the adult gay romance community right now about the issues with Dreamspinner, including non-payment of royalties, and authors taking back book rights. The way the future will shape up for the press, including Harmony Ink, is unclear, although they are seeking a loan to cover the shortfall.

If you have purchased books waiting for download on Harmony Ink (or Dreamspinner), I'd urge you to make sure you have copies downloaded, since any transfer can screw things up. If there are books you wanted to buy from Harmony Ink authors, you may want to purchase them now. Some authors are also removing books from Harmony Ink, and they may be unavailable for an extended time, pending rerelease.

I'm going to close this thread for comments, since the topic of what authors are doing or should be doing, and what the pub owes and should offer have become contentious on the adult side.

As someone with a book through Dreamspinner, I do want to assure readers that this isn't your responsibility. The pub and authors will work through their choices. If a book is still available for sale, you are not being unsupportive to the author by buying it, and you don't have to worry about whether the author will get royalties. Alternatively, if you choose to wait and see if things turn up in self-pub or are fixed down the road, that's also fine. Just make sure any books you have paid for are in your possession as the pub reorganizes.

How this will work out for Harmony Ink and its authors and stories remains to be seen. I hope they can thrive eventually, since the avenues for YA LGBTQ stories outside of a narrow mainstream press are limited.