Weird publishing decisions strike again!

[conuly]

It's bad enough when I can purchase 2 out of 3 books in a trilogy as an e-book, but the third isn't available.

But what sense does it possibly make to be able to purchase books 2 - 4 on the Kindle, but not the first one? (That'd be The Birchbark House.)

Or this one: A few years back I picked up two books at The Strand - The Key to Rondo and The Wizard of Rondo. Eva really likes those, wanted the third.

The last one was never printed in the United States. It's solely available... as an audiobook. Or in Chinese. In order to get the printed copy, I had to order it over eBay. From Australia.

Now, I can see a publisher printing out the first two books of a trilogy but declining to finish the series if they think there isn't enough money in it. But why oh why would they publish the third as an audiobook but not in print?

What on earth are these people thinking as they make their decisions?

In other news, I recently discovered that The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks series is back in print. (But not as an ebook.) Man, I loved those books as a kid. You know, the 80s and 90s was really great for a specialized category of children's literature that you don't see too much of - not too long, kinda weird premise. Even just "not too long" is fading away, and kids books keep getting longer and longer. Which is great for kids who like long books, but no doubt intimidating for slower readers.

Comments

[kyrielle]

But the publisher and rights for audiobook and ebook and printed book are often different, especially if the author's not in the US.

Let's say Publishing House #1 (PH1) has the rights to print all three books in Australia. Publishing House #2 buys the rights to print and sell in America...but books one and two don't do as well as they'd like and they don't bother with book three. They still have the rights, so no one else can do it (unless they yield the rights or there's a time period that ends).

Meanwhile, Audio Company 1 (and maybe 2, depending, but let's go with 1) gets the right for audiobook format in Australia and the US. They record them and release them...and okay, books 1 & 2 only do okay in the US, but distributing a recording is fairly cheap once you've made it, and the changes needed for another market fairly limited, I'd guess. Not like a full print run.

Or heck, they just have more faith in the book, or a different margin, or....

Publishing is weird, but if you remember that the three formats are often handled by different companies (and have different costs), *most* of these scenarios make sense.

(Release books 2-4 as eBooks and not book 1 doesn't, though I suppose an oddity in the contracts for an older book might mean a different publisher - the original print publisher - has eBook rights and wants nothing to do with it. But I can't imagine why someone would want to go ahead with 2-4 if they couldn't release 1.)

[conuly]

Okay, well that explains a lot of what was confusing me, although it's even more ridiculous than I thought.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, depending on the age of Book 1, e-books may not yet have been a Thing when it was first published. So the text will have to be edited for e-book publication before the e-book can be made available.
Alternatively or additionally, e-book publication of Book 1 may not have been part of the original contract with the author, so a separate contract will have to be set up. But now the author is no longer an unknown writer of a newbie novel, but the accomplished author of a succesful series. As such, she is going to ask for rather more than the publishing house is ready to spend in order to allow the e-book publication of her first novel. Or she wants to look at different offers first. Or the whole thing simply hasn't been completed yet.

Likewise, the interesting case of "Book 1 and 2 available, Book 3 never even printed in the US" may well have its reasons in whatever contrast the publisher set up with the author. Maybe when Book 1 and 2 were published in print, the author only granted the publishing house the rights for printing these two books. Then when Book 3 was finished, the author didn't like the conditions of the contract. So she may be looking for a different publisher. Or she's happy with the one she found in Australia.
Meanwhile, when Book 1 was turned into an audiobook, the author signed over the audiobook rights for that book and all sequels to the same publishing house. So Book 3 could, based on the same contract, be produced as an audiobook. But not in print or as an e-book, because the publisher doesn't hold the rights to that and couldn't (or didn't want to) get them.

TL;DR: These people may not actually have had a choice. Publishing deals come in all size and shapes, including or excluding publication in different media, translation rights, reprinting, prequels, sequels and what-have-you. If you're looking at really weird buying options, chances are that there's legal reasons behind it.

[conuly]

TL;DR: These people may not actually have had a choice. Publishing deals come in all size and shapes, including or excluding publication in different media, translation rights, reprinting, prequels, sequels and what-have-you. If you're looking at really weird buying options, chances are that there's legal reasons behind it.

I guess. I just want to give these people my money. (Alternatively, I want to have their books on my device for free without giving them any money, but without impoverishing them either.)