...Again.
A friend and regular reader of this blog (hi, Lynne!) pointed me to this lovely bit of name dropping in an article on io09.com called Science Fiction Angels Who Are Really Aliens in Disguise. The article briefly discusses my AngeLINK series, and mentions Archangel Protocol and Fallen Host specifically.
While I absolutely love this recognition, it frustrates me deeply. Let's say someone gets really jazzed about me and my work after reading this article and they think, "hey, I'll go over to Amazon.com right now and buy seventeen thousand copies." Well, guess what? They're out of print.
You can still buy them used via Amazon, and, if you're willing to do some searching, you can find my books new from both Dreamhaven Books and Comics and Uncle Hugo's. (Why do they have new ones? Well, because I sell them copies!)
I think that one of the most frustrating things about being published with a large New York publishing house is this issue precisely: their idea of what constitues a "profit" vastly differs from what I consider a profit. Add to this the tax laws regarding inventory (which I have to comply with as well, but, perhaps obviously, I don't have billions of books in my basement, only hundreds.) Despite moderate success, my books weren't worth the space to store them.
I didn't make a million dollars for my publisher when my books were briefly in print, but I might have given enough time. Archangel Protocol earned out and made what constitues "significant" royality payments to me, so the book wasn't a complete business bust for my publisher even while in print. But who know what would have happened given several more "shelf years"? From what I can tell locally, my books still go out the door at a decent clip. It's not boxes of books a month or even a year, but these out-of-print books continue to sell.
This is an old rant for me, and I apologize if I'm being a broken record. I realize books come and go and that's just the nature of the publishing industry. It's the great mystery of the publishing industry -- why is it some books strike a cord with readers and become run-away bestseller and other books don't? But I wish that the industry had more wiggle room for us "mid-list" authors and we still lived in a time when a good that only sold moderately well, but sold consistantly could continue to be ordered new. Alas! Alack! Oh, the humanity!
Seriously, I guess this is the niche that smaller presses try to fill. But there are problems with small presses as well -- namely distribution. Although Amazon and other electronic media help solve that problem as well. I don't know. Maybe in a couple of years I'll have some perspective on all this.
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8 comments:
I was very disappointed when I tried to pick up your books, and I found out that they were already out of print. I would understand it if they were printed decades ago, but we’re talking about books that came out in the last few years. You are not alone either. Jo Walton won the frickin’ World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw way back in 2004, and now it’s also out of print.
It’s frustrating and ridiculous. After everything an author goes through to create a novel, they’re just not given a real chance to build that market. Unless an author already has the big following, they need that time for word of mouth to spread.
Brian Keene's "Terminal" was released one May and was pulled from the shelves in early October of that same year. Ridiculous.
A travesty! I feel your pain. This is not an easy way to make a living. More and more authors are taking control back, defying the stigma of self-publishing and doing their own marketing. I despise having to do my own marketing, however. I like the control, but at what point do I start sounding like an Amway salesman? I'm pubishing through Unlimited Publishers. I have to do a lot myself to promote my book and generate sufficient sales in the "first phase".
I wonder where this train will stop?
You can still buy them used via Amazon, and, if you're willing to do some searching, you can find my books new from both Dreamhaven Books and Comics and Uncle Hugo's. (Why do they have new ones? Well, because I sell them copies!)
Indeed, I was only able to find copies of the rest of the "Archangel Protocol" novels at Uncle Hugo's.
I need to stop by Dreamhaven one of these days and pick up spares of your books for loaners. I'm too attached to my first copies and they're mostly signed (all but Apocalypse Array), so if a friend lost one I'd be forced to disown her.
If I ever end up with hundreds of copies of my own books sitting around, I'm going to make a fort out of them. From this fort, I will record supervillainish rants and readings to post on Youtube.
Lyda,
In a recent Harpers article called "Staying Awake," Ursula LeGuin has very similar comments about publishers and the obscene way they treat their backlist and rip the covers off of anything that isn't an immediate blockbuster success.
Jonna
It's good to know that Ursula feels the same way. At least my ranting is in good company. :-)
And for the rest of y'all, thanks for the support. It is a crime how quickly books "die" -- I hadn't heard about Keene's book. That's insane. I guess I should feel lucky my books lasted as long as they did!
Lyda:
While it certainly is disappointing that mid-list authors don't have more wiggle room and that your novels are out of print, I thought I'd offer a ray of hope. They may not always be.
I saw Charlaine Harris at a signing one evening and she mentioned to a fan that all her backlist is finally in print again. I'm sure that the publisher's decision was based on the popularity of her Sookie Stackhouse series. So while it is sad that sometimes wonderful books go out of print, there's a possibility that they can be resurrected. As you continue to write and build your readership, hopefully your first novels will see print again.
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