on canceling book distribution

(Read my last post, first.)

So, since I pay for each book’s digital catalog fee a year in advance and LSI doesn’t refund a prorated amount based on what wasn’t used, I’ve decided that -for now- I’m going to cancel each title in the month before the pre-paid distribution-availability runs out. I’ve gone through my records to find when I was billed last for each title, and created calendar reminders 11 months after each came up, so I have 4-8 weeks to actually get around to sending the email (rather than actually waiting for the last minute). As I said before, it may take several months (or forever?) after I tell LSI to cancel the title before other sites recognize them as out of print (even though I’ve been (and will continue to be) updating Bowker with their out of print status at the same time), and LSI may even allow book stores (Amazon included) to order them for quite some time after I tell them to stop. Not that I expect anyone to order. Here’s a quick breakdown of the schedule:

• January, 2012: Cancel Forget What You Can’t Remember
• January, 2012: Cancel More Lost Memories
• March, 2012: Cancel both Untrue Trilogies
• April, 2012: Cancel Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut
• June, 2012: Cancel Time, emiT, and Time Again
• July, 2012: Cancel Lost and Not Found
• September, 2012: Cancel Dragons’ Truth
• September, 2012: Cancel Unspecified
• October, 2012: Cancel Cheating, Death

Please keep in mind: These books won’t actually be going away. They’ll still be available as eBooks, for free at modernevil.com and for purchase through eBookstores and on eReaders (and tablets and phones) everywhere. They’ll still be available as audiobooks, for free through Podiobooks.com and for purchase through Audible/iTunes. They’ll even continue to be available in paperback for a long while, exclusively through modernevil.com – I have up to 45 copies of some titles, and not fewer than a dozen, and if I feel the need, I may order a few copies of anything I’m running low on before canceling them. Likely you’ll be able to order all my books from me for years to come – knowing that when you do, they’re now part of extremely limited print editions. (Perhaps I’ll calculate the edition sizes for all my books and note it on my site.)

Also keep in mind that my future books aren’t going away, either. I’ll still be writing them, and I’ll still be publishing them. They’ll simply become available as eBooks and audiobooks first, and paper if/when doing so makes financial sense. I’m really hoping I can find a way to do a limited print edition of the books I’m currently writing, as I’m quite enamored with the idea of putting the two books out in a single binding, as a flipbook (the two books upside down & reverse of one another) – and being limited-edition rather than full-distribution makes that easier, as both covers can look like covers if I don’t have to put a barcode “on the back” or any marketing copy there, either. Whether it makes sense to do it as a hardback (and then put the marketing info & barcode on the dust jacket flap) or not will depend on what the financial situation surrounding the book turns out to be. Will the cover art sell? Will people want to pre-order? Will I do a Kickstarter? (And will anyone pledge, if I do?) We’ll have to wait and see… I’ve still got a long road to go before we get there. Half the text left to write. Then the editing, the beta-reading, the audio version… all before I’m ready for fundraising, let alone publishing.