The important legal stuff

Before I began the process of publishing my novel as an ebook, I had to be sure I had all of the publishing rights returned to me. You can't publish your book if you don't own the rights.

As it specified in my contract, following a specified length of time after my novel went out of print, I was able to write to the publisher and get the rights back.  Since this was several years ago, all of my rights were returned to me. 

I mention "several years ago" because I have heard from others more recently that the ease of getting the rights back often depends on the particular publisher.  I'm happy to report that mine was very easy to work with.

My "rights," by the way, consisted of a single legally executed form that was held by the publisher.  This original form is what was sent to me.

So now that I had my electronic (and other) rights to my book, I was able to start looking for an artist/illustrator to create a new cover for Evangeline Brown and the Cadillac Motel.  I couldn't use the original cover from the hardback book because the person who had designed it for the publisher owned the copyright to it.  Essentially, I owned the words, but not any artwork that went with them.

What would my new cover look like?  I could have it be anything I wanted, look any way I wanted.  The possibilities were endless!  However, I needed to narrow them down to something workable before I contacted the person who would make them a reality.  I was excited!

 

The Adventure Begins

Years ago, few people had heard of ebooks. We discussed them in my writers group and dismissed the idea as something that would never happen. "Who wants to sit in front of a computer to read a book?" "I want to feel the paper, turn the pages, and sit with a cup of coffee while I read." "It'll never catch on." (In fairness, e-readers were not available yet.)

One of our group's members had had over 30 books published by a major publishing house. Louise was in her mid 80s, and the only one of our little group who didn't own a computer, still tapping out her stories on her typewriter.

Yet she was an adventurer. "I'm going to make my next novel an ebook," she said. True to her word, in 2001 her novel, The Last Cruise, came out as an ebook as well as a Print on Demand paperback (POD was also in its infancy).

Fast forward to 2012. Ebooks are everywhere. Now it's my turn. If Louise could embrace the new, so can I, a technologically challenged senior in my own right. My award-winning book, Evangeline Brown and the Cadillac Motel, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin USA, has gone out of print.

It needs to be an ebook. I want it to be an ebook. It WILL be an ebook.

Let the adventure begin!