How can you be sure a POD is out of print?

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jamiehall

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I've been told by my publisher (since Nov. 17th) that my POD book is now officially out of print. I know it is supposed to take a while to show up as out of print in various places. I've been anxiously keeping track of things with AddAll.com, and so far I've seen my book disappear altogether from the listings in some online bookstores. However, in others, it seems to be still available, or it lists as available but with a very long shipping time (4-6 weeks at Amazon.com). I also plan to call the Ingram stock line in a couple more weeks, to make sure their warehouses don't have any copies of my book.

My question is this: how will I know it for sure when new copies of my book are no longer available? I think I remember reading somewhere that some online bookstores never show POD books as being out of print. In that case, should I attempt to purchase a copy from each online store that still lists it as in print in order to verify that no new copies are available? Of course, I don't want to waste money by doing this too soon in the process. Has anyone else been through this situation, and how did you end up verifying that no more new copies were being produced?

I'm anxious to put the POD chapter of my writing career behind me, so that I can concentrate on the future, but I feel that, until I know for sure that nobody can buy new copies of my POD book, then my attention is divided.
 

Lauri B

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Jamie,
There may well be copies of your book floating around forever, but when your publisher declares it out of print, it means that bookstores can't return it anymore, the publisher won't sell anymore, and it won't be listed in their catalog anymore. Don't worry about it. If your book has been declared out of print, the only thing that happens is that you need to get a letter stating that the rights revert back to you. You're all set, otherwise.
 

jamiehall

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Nomad said:
Jamie,
There may well be copies of your book floating around forever, but when your publisher declares it out of print, it means that bookstores can't return it anymore, the publisher won't sell anymore, and it won't be listed in their catalog anymore.

Actually, none of these were true to begin with (it never could be returned, and there is no publisher catalog), since it's a self-published POD.
 

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jamiehall said:
...I'm anxious to put the POD chapter of my writing career behind me, so that I can concentrate on the future, but I feel that, until I know for sure that nobody can buy new copies of my POD book, then my attention is divided.
Go ahead and concentrate on the future. There is no shame in having a POD book.

Anyway, anything that has or had an ISBN might float around on lists for a very long time, and with misleading information about availability.

--Ken
 
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