Mine Again

I'm not really here, I'm still hammering away at the deadline. At least, tell my editor that if she asks.

What I stopped in to post is some interesting news: the rights for my three Gena Hale romance novels (Paradise Island, Dream Mountain, and Sun Valley) have reverted back to me. This means the publisher no longer owns the rights to them -- they're mine again -- so I can pretty much do whatever I like with them.



These three novels were my first published romances (I'd classify them as old school contemporary/romantic suspense) and have been out of print for at least seven years. I've heard it's difficult if not impossible to find used print copies of them. Aside from possible bootlegs, there are no electronic copies of the books.

Lately a lot of authors have been self-publishing OOP or backlist titles with rights that have reverted back to them via Amazon or services like Scribd.com's new online store.* I thought about doing that, and it's still an option, but I don't know. I'm not convinced that's the way to go. Maybe it's the thundering of the herd in that direction that is scaring me off. *Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I have removed my free library from their site, and no longer use or recommend using their service. My free reads may be read online or downloaded for free from Google Docs; go to my freebies and free reads page for the links. See my post about this scam here.

I could see if I could publish these again in some sort of limited edition via a small press (or do it myself via Lulu or what have you) but that's going to make them expensive to purchase -- another thing I'm not crazy about.

I also thought about posting at least one of them for free on the internet (Paradise Island, the first one, was the most popular, so that would be my choice.) That would be cool, and a way for me to give something back to the romance readers who followed me as Jessica Hall (before I went all Darkyn on them.)

Not sure what I'm going to do, so I thought I'd ask you guys for some opinions. If you were walking this mile in my moccasins, what would you do with these three books?