I hope this is the right place for my question about regaining the rights of out of print books so another publisher can publish the ebook editions. Yeah. Very timely topic right now.
I met an author at a book fair who has two fantasy books published with Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin. One was published in 1996 and the sequel in 2006.
First off, here's the current status of the two books. The first book, as far as we can tell, is out of print. The second book is still in print and is also available on Kindle and selling rather well there.
The author is concerned that her book is on Kindle without any notification (or contract re-negotiation for ebook royalties--I know, that would be asking too much), and she hasn't actually seen any money from these ebooks sales.
It's also rather odd that Penguin has Book 2 of the series on Kindle and not Book 1, which would logically mean they consider Book 1 to be truly out of print and no longer hold the rights to it.
The author is interested in putting out a Kindle edition of Book 1 but has never received notification from Penguin that the book is indeed out of print. She says she has not been able to get any information about the book's status from Penguin.
So does anyone know how she can go about getting some kind of official word that her book is out of print? And if the publisher insists on hanging onto the book, how she can wrestle the rights from them?
Thanks,
Casey
I met an author at a book fair who has two fantasy books published with Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin. One was published in 1996 and the sequel in 2006.
First off, here's the current status of the two books. The first book, as far as we can tell, is out of print. The second book is still in print and is also available on Kindle and selling rather well there.
The author is concerned that her book is on Kindle without any notification (or contract re-negotiation for ebook royalties--I know, that would be asking too much), and she hasn't actually seen any money from these ebooks sales.
It's also rather odd that Penguin has Book 2 of the series on Kindle and not Book 1, which would logically mean they consider Book 1 to be truly out of print and no longer hold the rights to it.
The author is interested in putting out a Kindle edition of Book 1 but has never received notification from Penguin that the book is indeed out of print. She says she has not been able to get any information about the book's status from Penguin.
So does anyone know how she can go about getting some kind of official word that her book is out of print? And if the publisher insists on hanging onto the book, how she can wrestle the rights from them?
Thanks,
Casey
