Annoying - Missing Books in Series

[Pinecone]

I do not understand why publishers decide to not epublish certain books in a series. It makes NO sense at all.

Some examples:

Stephen Hunter - Earl Swagger series, Hot Springs (the first) is missing.
Clive Cussler - Dirk Pitt, most of the early books are missing.
Richard Herman - 2 or 3 random books are missing
Dick Francis - All the early books are missing

Makes me think about heading to the Torrent.

[JoeD]

For old series, they may not have the rights to publish the eBook or have yet to get around to converting them. But I agree it's very annoying.

Fortunately it's the kind of issue that will go away with time, I wouldn't be surprised if most authors push to get their entire back catalogs available for sale, it's one of the advantages of eBooks

Best you can do in the mean time is email the publisher/author to see if/when it'll ever be released.

[elcreative]

There's also the minor point that authors can (and do) change publishers over time and one pub, putting out part of a series, might not have the rights to the rest of the series... as JoeD says, it'll pass...

[HarryT]

An excellent example is L.E. Modesitt's "Recluse" fantasy series. Of the 14 books in the series, about half are available as ebooks, but it's a random selection that's available, which is annoying.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JoeD

For old series, they may not have the rights to publish the eBook or have yet to get around to converting them. But I agree it's very annoying.

An example of the rights thing.

With Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak series the author has the rights to books 1-6, 8 & 9 herself and Minotaur/Macmillan has the rights to 7, 10-18.

Now in this case things are OK, or will be soon, because the author has hooked up with some folks to put out the books she has the rights to (she tried self pubbing them, but results/formatting wasn't great) and soon all of them will be out (DRM free too) and Minotaur has all the ones they have the rights to out and available. This wasn't the case not that long ago though and as time goes on other popular series/authors are likely to do something similar to Ms. Stabenow or to work a deal with their current publisher to get their backlists out. Even though ebook availability has come a long way from even a couple years ago it's still going to take time to get stuff out.

[issybird]

The one that's making me crazy is Donald Jack's Bandy series. Books three, four and six of nine altogether are available as ebooks.

[outlander78]

Originally Posted by issybird

The one that's making me crazy is Donald Jack's Bandy series. Books three, four and six of nine altogether are available as ebooks.

That gets me too. I really want to get this series. I can understand people naming a high price for their books, but the idea of people not making them available at all boggles my mind.

[pholy]

Apparently Sybertooth in New Brunswick has recently republished these in paper. I used the contact page to send them the question.

Probably shouldn't hold your breath, but I'll post their reply here.

[pholy]

OK, you can breathe now. Fifteen minutes after I sent my query, this reply was sent back to me, and I didn't notice for yet another fifteen minutes.

Hi Phil,

Yes, the order is a bit eccentric! There's a variety of reasons, more or less sensible. For starters, we began by publishing the last volume of the series (in paperback), because it was the first one we got publishing rights to (the other volumes were then in print with another publisher). As volumes went out of print with the other company and we acquired the rights, we started doing additional volumes, such as Hitler vs Me, but not in the series order. The e-book situation is a little different, because we used more than one method of typesetting the print volumes, and some of the volumes were more amenable than others to conversion to e-book format. We were also testing to see if there was enough of a market for the e-books to justify the conversion process.
I expect us to eventually have them all available as e-books, but because we're a small company it may take a little while. We're actually planning to go back to the beginning (way back) and publish an e-book of the original 1962 version of Three Cheers for Me this coming fall. That was the version that won the Leacock medal, but it is very rare these days, since the revised edition from 1973 was printed in far greater numbers. The revisions were mostly done to help lead the book into a series, the original being a stand-alone novel. I think fans will find it interesting to read the original.

Cheers,
Chris Paul

[anamardoll]

I'm very interested in buying up the old Deathlands books, but I'm afraid it won't happen anytime soon. Though they are nominally attributed to "James Axler", there are really several authors in the series, and some of them are dead. What a nightmare in terms of publishing rights. *sigh*

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pholy

OK, you can breathe now. Fifteen minutes after I sent my query, this reply was sent back to me, and I didn't notice for yet another fifteen minutes.

Fantastic news! Hot diggety. I lurve Bandy.

[pholy]

Originally Posted by issybird

Fantastic news! Hot diggety. I lurve Bandy.

Happy to be of service, ma'am...

[DAHayden]

With older books the publishers simply don't have electronic rights.

Publishers are trying to snatch up those rights now.

Some authors are putting those books out themselves.

And some authors, I hate to say, are completely clueless about their electronic rights and what they should be doing with them.

As for random ebooks in a series where the publishers own the rights, some publishers are clueless. And some of it is because they're paying for ebook conversions and have a huge backlog of titles that need to be converted, requiring time. And if they bother to proof the ebooks, which so many unfortunately don't do, it takes even longer to get them all out. Yeah, you'd think they'd go in order, but the conversion company may be the ones doing it randomly.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

An excellent example is L.E. Modesitt's "Recluse" fantasy series. Of the 14 books in the series, about half are available as ebooks, but it's a random selection that's available, which is annoying.

Heh. 21st century dictionary.

Macmillan.

n. Publisher. Annoying luddite recidivist pain in the arse working hard to reduce the number of books sold.

[crossi]

There was one triology all from the same publisher where the middle volume was missing for quite a while. Did someone just forget that it hadn't been done? They remembered and published it eventually but it was a couple years after the first and third of the series. It was Lackey's Mage Storms series. There are a lot of odd oversights.