How can I get that book that’s out of print, Piper?

out of print Heart's Sentinel cover art

Every once in a while, a long time reader asks me how to get a hold of an out of print title, especially now that I’ve been re-releasing some of my older titles originally written under the pen name of PJ Schnyder.

The thing is…

That was a long time ago and my writing skills have developed over the years. It would be a big difference from my voice and writing style now, so many of those stories are in need of a rewrite before they could be re-released. Books like Heart’s Sentinel and Hunting Kat come to mind.

There’s also higher priorities.

I’ve got contractual commitments to write new books – there’s the Darke Consortium (working title paranormal romance) and The Missing (romantic suspense). Those take priority.

How to carve out the time to devote to re-writing an out of print story?

I’ll be doing the re-writes slowly, one chapter a month, and posting the revision on my Patreon with annotations so readers get insight into my stream-of-conscious thought process as I was revising. Patrons at the Trail Buddies tier or higher will have access.

It’ll be important that these don’t become another form of procrastination. I won’t sacrifice my progress on my new works because it’s really important to me to ramp up on writing the new series. So I’ll be balancing the benefits of doing this with the time I need to write new words. Still, I think it will actually help me write more.

Revising some of my out of print work will help me in a lot of ways.

I’ll be accomplishing something each month, where drafting new words on a new novel is great but tends to take me months and thus I go several months without celebrating accomplishments. Celebrating more incremental accomplishments will lift my spirits, increase positivity, and help me gain momentum to write more.

Revising is easier for me than new words, so using this as a writing exercise or prompt will also help me dive into writing new words for my contracted work.

Falling in love with my old stories will be encouraging too, which again, leads to me wanting to write more new works.

Overall, I hope this will be positive and fun. It may also lead to those out of print books eventually becoming re-released and available to you all again, with improved writing craft and maybe even additional content. There would definitely be shiny new cover art and wow, I do love new cover art!

1 reply
  1. library addict
    library addict says:

    I’ve read them all except Drowning Tides. Or I should say I purchased them all way back when. I haven’t read the London Undead trilogy yet. Planning to do so in 2021.

    Sounds like a good plan. And if you should get inspired, I would love a romance for Marcus (from Terra’s Guardians). Eventually. No pressure, just putting that out there.

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