Today we’re going to take a look at The 2008 Cemetery Dance Book Club. Because of the nature of this book club, there is no special sign up page to send you to. Check out the reasons below.
About Cemetery Dance
Richard Chizmar started Cemetery Dance as a magazine and the first issue was published in late 1988. Cemetery Dance started publishing books in 1992. As a magazine publisher and a small press, Cemetery Dance has been around for a long time. By 2006, Cemetery Dance was publishing 30 titles a year.
Cemetery Dance has seen some highs and some lows and won every major award for its category. Currently they’re recovering from a serious low point. Due to a family tragedy, the publisher Richard Chizmar hasn’t been as involved in the company as he once was. Cemetery Dance had severe printer problems which threw off the entire schedule. To make matters worse, the 2008 Cemetery Dance Book Club was so popular that it also created several problems. You get a picture of how the company was struggling in 2008.
In February of 2009, Richard Chizmar explain what had happened in his Words from the Publisher column and vowed that he was back with both guns blazing. Since that time, Cemetery Dance has been catching up its schedule. They still have a ways to go — some books are still waiting publication — but they’ve made headway and things are looking better already.
About the Book Club
This book club operated differently from any other I’ve known. You pay the subscription price up front. I don’t have the cost for 2007’s book club, but in 2008 it was $150.00 and about $50.00 in postage and handling. $200.00 total and you got 12 hardcover books, one published each month.
In addition you get a few perks such as a free signed bonus advance review book. All books are limited editions but two editions are Not for Sale editions that only book club members get.
By the time the sixth book arrived, we had over $200.00 worth of books with six more books to go.
Since many of the books were a secret when we enrolled, we received periodic e-mails informing us of up-coming projects and letting us know which ones were club books and which weren’t.
The problems that hit Cemetery Dance pushed the 2008 Cemetery Dance Book Club from a one year to a two year program. I believe there are two more books to ship before the book club ends.
How to Join
In December of 2007, Cemetery Dance announced they were taking orders for the 2008 Cemetery Dance Book Club. I found out about it in the Cemetery Dance Insider Newsletter. It is a free e-mail newsletter and you can sign up for it on Cemetery Dance’s home page (in the right hand side sidebar).
Here is the rub — Cemetery Dance may not offer a book club for 2010. If they do, it may be in a different format. The 2008 Cemetery Dance Book Club proved to be so popular that it helped create some of the company’s problems. A fresh batch of problems (from a new book club) is not what the company needs next year.
My best advice is to sign up for the Cemetery Dance Insider Newsletter. Then check to see if there is an announcement about the fate of the book club. An announcement one way or the other will probably come out in Fall.
If you want to be proactive, you can send an e-mail to Cemetery Dance, letting them know you would a book club for 2010. Be polite and put “Cemetery Dance Book Club” in the subject line so it doesn’t get caught by the spam filters.
You can e-mail them at: info AT cemeterydance DOT com (replace AT with @ and DOT with . )
The Customer Service
Their customer service is excellent and it was put to the test this year.
We were notified by e-mail when delays and problems decimated Cemetery Dance’s publishing schedule. I’d like to thank CD staffer Mindy Jarusek for keeping us informed of problems. It made the wait easier to take.
The Book Selection
Cemetery Dance publishes several different types of books in limited edition hardcover formats. They publish:
- Original, never before published horror novels.
- Reprints of out-of-print or hard-to-get books, either books considered classics or ones that deserve another chance.
- Collections — Collection of short stories, novellas and even anthologies.
Original: I got my first Ray Garton novel The Folks 2: No Place Like Home and my first Ronald Kelly book called Midnight Grinding which was also a collection.
Reprints of out-of-print or hard-to-get books: House Infernal by Edward Lee, Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark and Afterlife by Douglas Clegg.
Collections: include Halloween and Other Seasons by Al Sarrantonio and Midnight Grinding by Ronald Kelly.
One delightful surprise — and a reprint — was Night Cage by Andrew Harper (aka Douglas Clegg). The paperback is long out of print and I never got my hands on it, although I did get the two sequels. I was glad to get Night Cage and it was one of the two books that were available only to book club members.
In Conclusion
I highly recommend the Cemetery Dance Book Club if they continue it next year. Despite the problems they have done a Herculean effort to get the books to us. It took longer than expected but it is still a great value.
Cemetery Dance was one of the fist small presses that stepped up and helped revive the horror genres — giving writers, who absolutely needed to scare us silly, a place to be published and read. Twenty years later they’re still bring us the best in horror.
The Horror Book Clubs Series:
Part 1 — An Introduction to Horror Book Clubs
Part 2 — The Leisure Horror Book Club
Part 3 — The Delirium Books Horror Paperback Book Club
Part 4 — The 2008 Cemetery Dance Book Club
Part 5 — The Stephen King/Doubleday Book Club
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