Your Book Legacy

Why to keep your book in print (if you can)

An early marketing lesson I learned during my time at Seal Press was that there are two types of content: medicine and vitamins. Medicine is the stuff people need, whereas vitamins people seek out for other reasons: enrichment; betterment. When it comes to books, I’m a vitamin reader, by and large, though one could argue memoirs and novels can be medicine too. After all, storytelling saves lives.

But today’s post isn’t about storytelling. Like much of my content, it derives from situations, encounters, and questions that come up week over week with the authors I publish. I strive for my Substack to be a medicine cabinet, with some vitamins thrown in there for good measure. One of the wonders of book publishing is that there seems to be no shortage of things authors need to know, should know, could know. I’m 26 years in and still learning—and grateful for that!

This week allow me to take you on a journey into Land of O/P. O/P stands for Out of Print, the place where content (and by extension your book legacy) goes to die. There are two ways your book becomes O/P: 1) you initiate it, or 2) your publisher initiates it.

Why would you initiate this process? You might pull a book from your publisher because you’re unhappy with your publisher, or you want to reissue your book on another imprint or self-publish. You might also decide you don’t want your book to be available for sale anymore, for any number of reasons. Maybe it’s outdated, or maybe it’s simply time to sunset.

Why would your publisher initiate this process? Publishers declare books O/P all the time, generally because they’re not selling. Typically excess stock (inventory) is involved, and publishers give authors the opportunity to purchase those books before they get pulped. This is how authors can end up with a lot of books they don’t know what to do with sitting in boxes in the garage.

Because of the nature of the books I trade in (standard trim sizes, largely black-and-white interiors, evergreen stories), there’s not really a need to declare books O/P. For She Writes Press and publishers like us (trade paperback programs), moving a book to print on demand (POD) status after inventory dwindles down is easy, with little overhead. Setting up a book for POD (also called PTO, print to order) is a choice publishers make that changes a book’s status—from holding inventory to not holding inventory, meaning the book is available for sale but books are no longer fulfilled from existing inventory in the warehouse. Instead, they’re fulfilled by print-to-order platforms (Ingram or Amazon) that print and ship while sidestepping the cost and space issues involved with storage.

The problem with POD is that it’s not for all kinds of books. If you’re an author of a beautiful four-color book (cookbook, lifestyle, gift)‚ a hardcover, or a children’s book, POD is dicey. Yes, print on demand is capable of printing these genres and kinds of books, but the quality will be compromised simply because POD printing is not on par with offset printing, and consumers know the difference.

That said, most books can have a very long and good life as a POD title. At this point, all of my own books are set up as POD. It’s also the natural lifecycle for most books because there comes a point (starting for many titles, sadly, as soon as six months to a year post-publication) when sales start to taper off. Between my five POD titles published between 2011-2018 (What’s Your Book?; Green-light Your Book; Write On, Sisters!; and Magic of Memoir and Breaking Ground on Your Memoir that are co-authored with Linda Joy Myers), I probably sell around 100-150 books a year. Not bad for books that are seven to thirteen years old.

Sometimes authors ask me to add a clause in our contract that automatically reverts their publishing rights to them after five years. Some publishers have this clause in their contracts as well. While there might be a good reason for publishers to do this (probably due to the fact that nine times out of ten they’re ready to cut their authors loose by then), I can’t see any reason why an author would want this or agree to this unless the contract they’re signing doesn’t have a favorable termination clause. Another reason to read contracts carefully. If you have a solid out that allows you to leave when you’re ready and with understandable parameters, that’s all you need. Beware that if your publishing contract insists on cutting you loose after five years, that time may come more quickly than you anticipate, and you may be left feeling like a choice is being forced upon you.

I’m a fan of keeping work in print. Over the years, She Writes Press has occasionally republished titles by authors whose publishers declared their books out of print when the authors weren’t ready. Sometimes big publishers screw authors royally by publishing a hardcover edition, and then if/when that edition doesn’t perform as well as the publisher had hoped, the hardcover is declared O/P and the publisher refuses to publish the paperback. This is double-whammy bad for the author because they have no recourse, and no chance to see if their paperback version (cheaper, more accessible) might have found more readers.

Print on demand (for those books it makes sense for) is a blessing of modern publishing. I’m thrilled to sell my 100ish copies a year of books that no longer sell the kind of volume that would merit doing an offset reprint. Keeping your book in print (even through POD) keeps your content and stories alive, and you can always have a spike in sales for reasons unforeseen and unanticipated. Like someone finds your book and recommends it (which is the story of how Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening became an international bestseller ten years after it was published, when a yoga teacher recommended it to Oprah Winfrey), or you have a new book coming out that will breathe life and sales into a previous book.

I have a handful of authors who are publishing anniversary editions in the next couple years, a gratifying part of being a publisher who’s been around long enough to have authors contacting me to commemorate (and celebrate) ten-year anniversaries with a revised edition.

Another important thing is this: Once an author, always an author. I’d rather be an author who’s still in print because books are miraculous in how they find their readers. They’re a bit like water that way—always carving a path toward readers. Books with long lifespans are the gift that keeps on giving, too, because as authors our perspective changes over time. Whereas in the early days of a book’s release almost nothing can satiate the beast of expectation and desire for what’s possible for your book, or how many people you hope it will reach, four or six or eight years post-publication, a single email or review from a new reader can bring tears of gratitude. Perspective.

Your book is your legacy, so if you can, why not let it live on indefinitely?

A closing note on the nature of “indefinitely”: If you’re getting up there in years, or if your thoughts tend toward morbid possibilities (and hey, I’m with you), make sure you consider your book legacy in your will. Also make sure the person you’re turning your work over to knows your wishes (i.e., to keep your book in print?) and take the step of contacting your publisher simply to let them know who you’re turning over that stewardship to.