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Originally Posted by ATDrake
The author can sit upon and not-release her work for as long as she pleases, but publisher should certainly not be able to do so, at least not without paying significant compensation for it and with the author's explicitly granted consent, which they would have to keep "renting".
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Paul Kearney had something similar to this happen with his Sea Beggars series. Bantam abruptly dropped the series after the second book of a planned four book series. They had no intentions of ever publishing any further installments in the series (in any format), but they still wouldn't relinquish (or sell) the publishing rights to the series. It was a very weird situation.
That sort of thing shouldn't happen. If you don't want it... sell the publishing rights—or at the very least, have the rights revert back to the author after a reasonable period.
Thankfully, Bantam finally allowed the publishing rights to be sold and an omnibus book (with a new one-book conclusion) is due out in 2012... six years after Bantam decided to bail on the series.