Reversions

Back in the seventies and eighties, when I was launching a new life as a commercial novelist, the gospel was to revert your titles as soon as possible, and work hard at it because it was good business. It's your title; you own the copyright; as soon as a publisher is done licensing it and it's out of print, get it back and resell it.

It made a lot of sense. I assiduously applied for reversions when licenses expired, and usually got my titles back. On a rare occasion, one mass-market publisher reprinted a three-book series rather than surrendering rights, but usually I was able to retrieve, and resell, my titles.

Series were a different matter. Publishers nurture series because they have built-in readerships and can be republished over the years. So publishers rarely revert series titles. All that made sense; it was part of operating a writing business. When the internet offered self-publishing opportunities at sites like Amazon and BN, it seemed to make even more sense. The author could package the titles, get them out, promote them. The publishing world was full of stories about successful self-publishers.

I have kept about thirty reverted titles in print at various sites, and have made a few of them available in paper as well. But they don't earn much.

Meanwhile, Forge has reissued my Skye's West series as doubles, thick paperbacks listing at ten bucks, and I am starting to see returns on those as well as reissues of other titles.

Guess what. These Skye's West paperback and other reissues will eventually earn more than the combined income from all my reverted titles through all the years. I'm not talking about a few thousand dollars. I'm talking about many thousands more by the time these reprints have run their course.

It was the wisdom of the day, at one time, to revert titles, get rights back. But times change. If I had left these titles in the hands of their publishers, I would be more affluent than I am now.