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Tayari's Blog: Out Of Print?

Posted by TayariJones on May 18, 2007 11:55 AM
Filed under The Writing Life

As I have always understood it, a book goes out of print when the publisher not to print any new copies and this usually happens when the book fails to sell a minimum of copies each year. Of course, it's a bummer when your book goes out of print, but it means that you can have the rights back and maybe get another publisher interested in it and that publisher may give you a revival. (That's the best case scenairio, of course.) For most out of print books, that's just the end of the road. The novel goes to that great book section in the sky.

Well, Simon and Schuster has decided change things a little. Now, they are not taking books out of print in the usual way. The books with sluggish sales are now going to be available by print-on-demand. In a sad way, this is good news because it means that no books will ever be truly unavailble.

The Author's Guild is up in arms, and rightly so. I was orginally on the fence. Afterall, isn't better for your book to be available in some form? And how many authors really have that up-from-the-ashes experience of being brought back into print?

But at the end of the day, I am going to side with the Author's Guild. It's not right for Simon and Schuster to keep authors from being able to seek a better deal. The print on demand should be an option, not the only policy.