Re-Writes… AFTER Publishing

So I’ve gone back to an older work I’d already published to fix up all the typos, as I planned to re-release it with its new cover and, while reading through it, found… things. Not just typos. Inconsistencies that me and my editor missed (make a note to get a better editor). Places I didn’t think the prose was clear enough. Passages I thought went on too long.

That gets me thinking… should I change it? Should I take the opportunity to alter something I’d published so long ago and alter the story?

Part of me says: “Yes, go ahead and do it, it’s just making things clearer. Besides, you’re not fundamentally altering anything. It’s just aesthetic.”

The other part of me says: “No, leave it alone except for the typos and spellos. It’s just as bad as re-working the same story over and over so that it never gets published.”

Yup. Of two minds on this. I’m leaning toward the former, and just assigning a new ISBN along with its new cover, with the warning caveat that it’s a Second Edition. Might even give it a new title and add to the warning that it was “Previously Published As…”

Have others done this? I don’t know. I honestly haven’t thought too much about it before now and may append this article if I find out some tasty tidbit on the Do or Don’t of it.

Right now, my gut says go for it.