August 2004: World Serpent News
August 2004. The news is, the famous UK based distributor World Serpent appears to have closed for good.While it may come as sad news to many of us for sentimental reasons... it's not necessarily a big loss.
World Serpent was primarily a distributor. They operated as a record label in some capacity, but mainly served to distribute the catalogues of the labels Eskaton, Durtro, United Dairies, Tursa, and so on.
These labels continue on and Strange Fortune plans to continue carrying all of their fine releases.
Details are unclear about the new arrangements yet but it's looking like a good chance many or most of the current in print titles will continue to be available.
Strange Fortune is working hard to make the transition as seamless as possible.
For the moment, we're taking the World Serpent catalogue offline. As titles become available again over the coming weeks they'll reappear gradually, please keep checking back.
In the meantime, perhaps now's a good time to explore the many brilliant non-World Serpent offerings in the Strange Fortune catalogue.
If you happen to have a pending order for World Serpent titles, that means you're first in line to be served soon as possible. You can keep the order open as is if you wish, and lower prices will be honored even if there is any increase. Any orders that can't be filled will be refunded.
Problems and delays are to be expected in this chaotic time but over the longer term this rearrangement is likely to lead to improved service for all of us.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Salo
Strange Fortune