The Dreamspinner Press Controversy

The true story of a publisher that stopped paying its authors — and is somehow still in business

Dr. Casey Lawrence

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Promotional image for the author’s two YA books, Out of Order (2015) and Order in the Court (2016), with the Harmony Ink Press imprint of Dreamspinner Press (link now defunct)

On July 16, 2021, I made the following announcement on my public Facebook page:

“I have made the hard decision to part ways with Dreamspinner Press and their imprint, Harmony Ink, who published Out of Order (2015) and Order in the Court (2016). The fate of these books — which I still love dearly, though they were written when I was a very different person — is somewhat up in the air. It is my eventual plan to re-release these titles along with a previously unreleased third book in the series after some editing and rebranding. Whether I will self-publish them or offer them to a new publishing company is yet to be determined.”

This decision, though it seemed to come out of the blue for many of my family, friends, and followers, was a long time coming. For the past two years, the publishing world has grown ever more weary of Dreamspinner Press. Once a leading indie publishing house in LGBT+ romance, DSP has lost all credibility and, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, the house’s big name authors — and many of its smaller ones — have been pulling their titles from DSP’s virtual shelves.

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Dr. Casey Lawrence

Canadian author of three LGBT YA novels. PhD from Trinity College Dublin. Check out my lists for stories by genre/type.