If you’ve been around Hope Bolinger or my social media for a bit, you’ve probably heard us talking about The Dear Series, three chat fiction rom coms with quirky premises. If you’ve been here for even longer, you may be wondering, “Wait, didn’t those books release already a while ago?”
This post is about re-releases, how they happen, why they happen, and specifically, how it all shook down for us now that we are with our THIRD publisher for Dear Hero.
The History of The Dear Series
It all started back in 2018, when I made a parody Twitter account pretending to be a supervillain tweeting about my daily life. Hope made a parody hero account, and we bantered on Twitter. This gave us the idea for the book that became Dear Hero. We signed a contract for Dear Hero at the end of 2019 with a brand new small publisher.
All seemed to be going well; we had interest from a few different production companies who reached out to us for film rights (unfortunately none ended up signing in the end), and it looked like the publisher we were with was growing rapidly. Dear Hero came out to some decent-sized press interest in September 2020, though the pandemic did not help, and we were contracted for Dear Henchman.
Unbeknownst to us, our publisher was not doing so well. Shortly after Dear Henchman’s very rocky release in May 2021 (our publisher was so behind I had to make our own cover myself), in July 2021, we were notified that the publisher was closing its doors and our rights would be returned to us to take our books elsewhere. Henchman had been published for only two months.
We were freaking out and scrambling a bit, but luckily L2L2 Publishing picked up our rights, as well as offering a contract for a third book (which would become Dear Hades). It seemed things were on the right track again!
Unfortunately, none of us foresaw how much work the transfer would be. The reformatting was a nightmare process that L2L2 valiantly undertook. New EVERYTHING was needed. Our first publisher had done practically no edits to our drafts before publishing them, so our editor at L2L2 did the important work of actually copyediting the books. And getting our old publisher to stop selling the old versions of the books turned into the biggest nightmare of all, with literal years of phone calls, emails, texts, DMs, legal consultations, etc. We were able to stop any more of the print versions from being printed and sold before the re-releases, but they only stopped selling the ebooks on the ‘Zon and KU in July 2024 (after I may or may not have threatened the platform itself with a lawsuit for aiding the illegal distribution of copyrighted work). And no, we never received a single cent for any royalties after December 2020 from that first publisher, which means they never paid us for Dear Henchman at all.
Because of the sheer amount of work, Dear Hero and Dear Henchman didn’t re-release until October 2022, with Dear Hades following in October 2023. Hurray! On the right track…right?
Unfortunately, L2L2 needed to majorly downsize and offered most authors their rights back in January 2024, three months after Dear Hades’ release. The process was bittersweet and handled very well, but of course Hope and I were sad to go. What now? Who would pick up a series to publish it a third time? I knew enough to self-publish on Amazon if we had to, but the amount of work and lack of wider distribution had me hesitant.
That’s where Torchflame Books came in and saw the vision for a rebrand. We’d been marketing the books heavily as superhero chat fiction, but first and foremost, these books are rom coms! The rom com market was almost entirely untapped, and Torchflame knew that’s where our most appreciative readers would be.
So we signed a contract for all three books, and this time, we led off with Dear Hades as our flagship in September 2024, to a huge amount of success I couldn’t have expected with everything from brick and mortar bookstores to BookTok excitement. They’re rompy, funny, irreverent, but ultimately sweet stories.
With Dear Hero releasing for the third (and, I hope, final, at least for a while) time on October 29, 2024, it has been four years since the first time this book released. Our publishing journey has been a chaotic rollercoaster for this series, but we’re hoping that these books are finally home.
Advice for Writers
Hope and I have grown so much since September 2020. Dear Hero was my debut and Hope’s third published book, and I didn’t know what I was doing. With ten published books and multiple book awards under my belt now, I know a lot more about what works, what doesn’t, and what to look for when it comes to publishing.
If you’re a writer, here are some key takeaways I learned from this process:
- Independent publishers just getting started are a risk to publish with, ESPECIALLY if you see them taking on dozens and dozens of books all at once and spending tons of money. Most small publishers fail within the first five years, and the ones that succeed usually start with just a few very carefully curated releases each year. These brand new publishers may have grand plans and even connections, but unless you’re a veteran who knows what you’re doing or you’re willing to take the risk, it’s best to wait for an offer from an established publisher. (That doesn’t mean it has to be large! There are plenty of wonderful established publishers who only put out a few books a year.)
- Some publishers (like L2L2) are upstanding, professional, fair, and generous when returning your rights. Some, whether by design or because of lack of knowledge, are not. Carefully, carefully comb your contract to learn (and negotiate) what happens to your rights and your royalties in the event that the publisher closes, changes hands, or downsizes. It happens far more often than you would think.
- When you know people in the industry, getting your rights returned isn’t the devastating nightmare I thought it would be. Publishers WILL pick up books for re-release from authors they trust, so build meaningful connections!
So to celebrate the release of Dear Hero and Dear Henchman once more, please enjoy the progressions of these covers! Each new version published is even better and has more bonus content than the last. And feel free to comment your questions about re-releases, and I’ll answer if I can.
Also, check out all three on the Dear Series page here: The Dear Series
Alyssa Wrote 