Most people flipping through the April 2 edition of the New York Times Book Review probably didn't think twice when they saw a nearly full-page review of an espionage thriller by cult favorite author Charles McCarry. But if they had looked closer, they would have noticed that the book was a 20+-year-old novel by a writer whose work, just a few years ago, was almost entirely out of print.
The Last Supper, which was reissued and released by the Overlook Press in March, is a recent example of something smaller publishers have been doing with varying success for years: finding out-of-print books, or those languishing on other houses' backlists, and rereleasing them as essentially new titles for fresh readers. For Overlook publisher Peter Mayer, The Last Supper was a book that he brought back as part of a focused effort to revive McCarry. A few years ago, when the political tenor in the country swung so that the intelligence community once again became a topic of interest, Mayer wondered what had happened to McCarry, a lauded thriller writer with a small but loyal following who'd written spy novels in the '70s and '80s published by Dutton and, later, Ballantine. "I didn't know why no new books from him were coming out, and I thought he might be dead," Mayer said.
After finding out McCarry was alive and well, Mayer contacted him and convinced the author to start writing again; the result was the April 2004 Old Boys. The book, which hits in paperback this month, was the spark Mayer said was needed to regenerate interest in McCarry's entire body of work. Now Overlook has 65,000 copies of the author's hardcovers in print, three of which—The Last Supper, Tears of Autumn and Miernik Dossier—are reissues. And another new book from McCarry is scheduled for a 2007 release, while a fourth reissue, The Secret Lovers, is due in November.
Mayer believes that publishing McCarry's out-of-print books on the heels of Old Boys drummed up interest in the author on the whole. "People were waiting for Charles McCarry to write again," he said. "Writers sometimes lose their appeal to large publishers and [those publishers] start to take them for granted. But if you can put the full energy of a small company behind that author, something happens."
At Innova Publishing, the idea of the reissue is approached from a slightly different angle. The startup New York—based operation, which was launched a little more than a year ago by an industry veteran, focuses on nonfiction niche titles in categories like fitness, health and beauty. According to the company's founder, who requested his name be kept out of this piece because of conflicts with other projects, the approach is like an "extreme makeover for books." With distribution through CDS and a seven-title list in 2005, one of Innova's biggest success stories is Secrets of Great Skin (originally called Light Years Younger and published by Virginia-based Capital Books). Though sales figures were not available, the book had a number of major buys from big-box stores like Wal-Mart, which took 6,000 copies.
At the Permanent Press, founded and run by Martin and Judith Shepard, reissues have accounted for some of the house's biggest hits. One example is Clifford Irving's The Hoax. Reissued by the Shepards in 1981 (after Grove originally published it a few years earlier) the book—which is the author's account of his infamous attempt to publish a so-called authorized biography of Howard Hughes—was optioned by a Hollywood producer in 1998. The big payout for the Shepards came last August, when the option was exercised to the tune of $400,000; the movie (with Richard Gere as Irving) is now in production and scheduled for release in fall 2006.
The Shepards, who sold reprint rights for The Hoax to Hyperion, have found rights deals another benefit of the reissuing game. Barbara Holland's 1990 book, Hail to the Chiefs, a droll look at the country's top elected officials throughout history, became a hit when the house reissued it in 2003, updating it to include information on Clinton and both Bushes. After solid sales—according to Martin Shepard it landed on the Book Sense bestseller list—paperback rights were sold to Berkley, which released Hail in paperback in May 2004.
But for some publishers, reissuing is less about money than the storied reason so many people go into this business: a passion for great writing. Dennis Johnson, founder of Melville House, knew he wouldn't make a killing on his 2004 edition of the long-out-of-print writing guide by Frank O'Connor, The Lonely Voice, but that wasn't the point. Johnson, who counts O'Connor among his favorite authors, simply wanted to make sure the book wouldn't fall into oblivion. "It gave me great personal pleasure to publish this book and, with things like this, if you keep them alive, they will make money on your backlist."
Whatever the reason for bringing books back—whether it's a smart financial move or an attempt to "save" great literature—both the media and the public seem open to reintroductions. As Mayer put it: "I never thought that when I became a publisher 50 years ago my role was to publish new books but, rather, good books. It doesn't interest me enormously whether a book is new or old, but whether it should live."
