Old Books Becoming New Again

My first book was published in 1984. Those were the days when I wrote my novels long hand on yellow legal pads, then typed them on a borrowed typewriter (using carbon paper and onion skin paper for the second copy). The resulting fat stack of 400 pages was then sent to the publisher at a rather hefty shipping price.

When my books released, I had four to six weeks for sales in the bookstore. Then the book was gone, available only in used bookstores and garage sales. Of course, major New York Times best selling authors had much longer shelf time and their books got additional print runs. But for most other authors, our selling time was brief.

Much has changed in thirty-plus years, some good and some bad. One good thing that has come from the invention of decent electronic readers has been that publishers and/or authors have the ability to keep a book available to readers long after bookstores will no longer carry print copies on their shelves because of its age. Many new titles are released every month so they naturally get priority in bookstores.

I have the rights back to a number of my books (including The Forgiving Hour, my first novel for the Christian market), and this summer, I am slowly proofing, correcting, and making more of them available again for the Kindle and Kindle app. This summer’s releases are (or will be) keeping the same covers that the previous publisher used for them so if you already own them, it shouldn’t be confusing.

This past week, while traveling on vacation, I was able to proof Catching Katie. I published it on Amazon yesterday, and it became available this morning.

I had forgotten just how much I love this story. I always knew Katie was one of my favorite characters because of her passion for gaining the vote and other rights for women in 1916. But weaving the suffragette history, including the part that Christian women played in that movement, into the novel made the book more than just an entertaining romance for me. I hope it does for readers as well.

Catching Katie is now available for $2.99 for the Kindle and Kindle app.

And if you are in the mood for a bit of whimsy that has to do with a lonely “spinster,” an angel, and a white cat, check out my novella, A Wish and a Prayer, also available again and priced at $2.99.

I am in the final stretch of writing a book that will publish in June 2019. But my first-pass pages for my December 2018 release, Who I Am with You, came by email this week, and so I have paused in my writing to proof these pages. First-pass pages are an author’s last chance to read and catch any errors in a manuscript before it goes to press.

So now, back to reading/proofing/correcting.

~robin