Ever Forward

By Jamie DeBree 2023/02/21 Talkin' Books, Uncategorized, Weekly News, Writing Notes

We have a local bookshop here (linked below!), and I’ve been a supporter since it was just a conception. When it opened, they agreed to carry my print books, because I’m a shareholder (so basically, I bought shelf space…and then I literally bought shelf space for awhile too). I think I gave them two copies each of Tempest and Desert Heat, the first books I published. My memory is sketchy, because it’s been several years, but I think they may have sold one of those at some point, plus a copy of Indelibly Inked which they ordered directly from me when someone requested a copy, because at the time, I was only publishing paperbacks through CreateSpace (which is now part of Amazon Kindle). Independent bookstores don’t like ordering books through Amazon, which is completely understandable.

A couple years ago, I thought I should publish those books through Ingram so they’d be easier for independent bookstores (or bookstores in general) to order. So I took Tempest and Desert Heat out of expanded distribution at Amazon, in anticipation of setting up print copies at Ingram. I had to wait a bit for them to be delisted from places that weren’t Amazon, so I could register the ISBN with Ingram as well, so I waited, and then set up the title record for Tempest at Ingram.

Problem is, by then, the book had been out for nearly ten years, and I’d switched computers several times. Long story short, I lost the original print file I’d uploaded to CreateSpace all those years ago. I had also decided to update my ebook covers for those books, so I figured I’d wait until I had that done, so I could update the cover for those paperbacks too. Needless to say, designing the new covers took longer than I thought it would, and then I was still facing a complete reformat of the print file before I could put the paperback on Ingram.

I put it off for quite some time, got busy, etc, and this whole time, the paperbacks were only available on Amazon, and not even out in expanded distribution for places like the Book Depository (which apparently has no issues listing books from the Amazon catalog). Last week, I decided I really needed to finish this whole book migration project, and I spent the majority of a day reformatting Tempest, only to have it end up at a different page count that the original file. Then I started digging into ISBNs and when to use a new one, and as it turns out, doing the reformatting and clean up and new cover all together basically qualified as a “new edition” of the book…which would require a new ISBN.

I have exactly one ISBN left in my coffers at the moment, and won’t be able to buy more for a couple of months (they’re expensive here…if you live in a country where they’re free, consider yourself lucky!). And I was still facing fixing the cover, which was what I had planned for today.

The whole time I was working on this redo, I asked myself why I was spending so much time updating old books that I haven’t sold a copy of in years. Yes, the remaining copies at the bookstore were purchased, but it was a “thank you” purchase of sorts, not a purchase by someone who just thought they looked interesting and wanted to read them. Which is fine, and I appreciate it, but I also have to take into consideration the fact that…those books aren’t generating interest or sales for other books. Nor are people buying them currently, and putting new covers on the ebooks didn’t change that, so…why was I spending all this time on them, instead of working on getting books that haven’t been in paperback published in that format, and working on writing and publishing new things that might be more appealing to readers, given my growth as a writer in the twelve(?) years since those first books were published?

Then I took a shower today before I was going to sit down and finish the new paperback cover for Tempest. As I’ve said many times before, the shower is an excellent place to think.

There’s a marketing school of thought that putting new covers on your old books, rewriting the blurbs, and generally bringing them up to date can breathe new life into sales for them. And that may be true, but with the limited time I have, I think the time I’ve been spending on old books could be far better spent on writing and publishing newer stories that might appeal more to today’s audience. Not that there’s anything wrong with the older books, but they are dated, and while I did the best I could writing them (and I still like the stories, personally), I know I can do better now.

So today in the shower, I decided to stop spending time on my old paperbacks. It’s okay if indie bookstores don’t want to order them from Amazon – they can still order from me, and I’ll put up a way to order from the BSB site directly so they don’t have to really deal with where it’s coming from if they don’t want to. I doubt I’ll get many orders for those anyways, because as I said, they aren’t selling.

I’m going to put my energy and time into my newer books instead. MacKenzie Saves the World has never been out in paperback, and neither has When She Cries by my alter-ego, Alex Westhaven. I can publish those paperbacks through Ingram to start, and they’re pretty close to ready. And I want to keep moving forward with the books I’m setting in the Magpie, Montana world – I have a couple drafts written that just need revisions, and the draft in progress that I’m really excited to finish and get published.

Someday when I have time and energy, maybe I’ll go back and revise, reformat, and recover some of my older books. Heck, maybe I’ll even pick up where I left off with the Fantasy Ranch series, after revising the first of those – I have several more story ideas for that particular world.

But for now, forward, not back. Prioritizing books that might appeal to more readers, over things that are…well, largely sentimental at this point.

As for Tempest and Desert Heat, they are available again via Amazon’s expanded distribution, which means the paperbacks should be available in most online stores again soon. I’ll set up a simple way to purchase directly from my Brazen Snake Books site in the next month or so, and let everyone know when that’s available.

In the meantime…back to my little community of Magpie, where the secrets kept by people are deep, but the secrets held in the mountain are deeper.

Tagged on: books, desert heat, energy, progress, publishing, tempest, updating, writing