Back in 2022, I published my sophomore novel, These Deadly Games, with a Big-5 publisher. When I got that deal, I felt lucky to land another one at all.
My debut had just launched on March 17, 2020, five days into shelter-in-place at the start of the pandemic. It had been poised to break out, but bookstores were closed that week. Despite that, it went to a second printing after two weeks and earned out two months later. Despite THAT, my publisher dropped me because “sales weren’t as high as we’d hoped.”
So that was fun!
Anyway. My agent, being the badass he is, put the proposal for These Deadly Games on wide submission immediately and it went to auction two weeks later, landing at a Big-5 imprint. I vividly remember getting that call; the first words out of my mouth were, “Oh my God, I get to keep doing this.” At the time, I thought COVID had struck down my career before it had a chance to begin. It felt like a gift just to keep going.
I’m going to skirt over most of my experience with that publisher because WHAT CAN YA DO? Long story short: my editor said the book would be a lead title but left the imprint (and publishing altogether) before it launched, and it suffered the orphaned-book experience.
Which, fine. It happens. A lot more often than you’d think!
“So then give it back.” << Me every six months over the next four years.
Well, not at first.
The thing I didn’t realize while signing my earliest contracts was how important the rights reversion clause is. Sometimes it’s based on your royalties over a six month period, other times on unit sales. Sometimes the period is longer than six months. Sometimes the clause doesn’t exist at all. (Authors, do yourself an epic favor and make sure your contract includes reversion terms.)
My particular reversion threshold in this contract was so low it was near impossible to get below it. It went out of print quickly, but made it onto a bunch of schools’ reading lists, so I think a few librarians kept ordering just enough copies each semester to bump it over that number.1
To be completely melodramatic, it felt like my book baby was being held hostage.
It was out of print, never got a paperback, never had periodic ebook discounts or promotions or BookBubs, so it was just… stuck. It was a really helpless feeling.
Then I saw Taylor Swift fighting to get her masters back, working so hard to release her “Taylor’s Version” albums, and it lit a fire under me. (I’m a Swiftie; I wrote These Deadly Games while listening to Folklore on loop.) Every six months, like clockwork, I was in my agent’s inbox asking for the royalty statement—I get the statements automatically from my other two publishers, but not this one—and for him to make a rights reversion request. Every six months, we’d get a “no.”
When Taylor won the fight to reacquire her masters, and I saw the sheer relief in her words as she broke the news, I knew I had to do whatever it took to get my book baby back. Even if I had to pay for it. I needed to feel that relief, too—to get back control over my words, my story, my characters, that I’d worked so hard on. So the next time we got yet another “no,” I asked how much it would cost to buy back the rights.
Those were the magic words.
They relinquished the rights. Free of charge.
Obviously, my journey to reacquire my rights was much less dramatic and hard-fought than Taylor’s. But if I didn’t see her fight, I wouldn’t have asked, would’ve played by the rules and silently waited for that royalty number to finally creep below that threshold line. I’m SO grateful that in the end, this book is back in my hands, and I dedicated this edition to Taylor.
And today, the morning after release, it’s already a #1 New Release on Amazon.2
I hope sharing this inspires other authors who feel like their books are trapped. It doesn’t hurt to ask for them back. Every six months. Put it on your calendar. Make sure you get your royalty statements if they’re not automatic. And even if you don’t quite hit that threshold, ask.
The worst they can say is no.
And eventually, you might get a yes.
These Deadly Games is now back up on Amazon as a brand new edition, and this time, it’s fully mine. (And yours, of course!) I’ve repackaged it with a stunning new cover, with art courtesy of Lauren @cinderlight.art, and made big revisions to the story itself.
Check out my next essay to see what I did to repackage and relaunch it. And if you think you’d love an intense, pulse-pounding thriller where a girl has to pick off her own friends one-by-one to save her sister’s life, I hope you check it out.
Here’s the description:
“Let’s play a game.
You have 24 hours to win. If you break my rules, she dies. If you call the police, she dies. If you tell your parents or anyone else, she dies.
Are you ready?”
When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a video of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper’s game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call.
But then Crystal realizes each task is meant to hurt—and kill—her friends and the boy she’s falling for, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past and now want to make them pay?
As Crystal makes the impossible choices between her friends and her sister, she must uncover the truth and find a way to outplay the kidnapper…before she loses everything.
Next, I’ll work on packaging the paperback and figuring out distribution via Amazon, IngramSpark, and D2D (libraries). Since this is a *surprise* relaunch, not a new release, I’m doing this gradually. Again, I’ll share my relaunch strategy in my next post, so subscribe to see it! 🫶
I don’t begrudge you for this, librarians. 🤣 Love you!
I can’t post about it on social media yet since I promised my newsletter an exclusive on the $0.99 price. This Substack is also my newsletter lmao but keeping my mouth shut is a STRUGGLE!
I LOVE everything about this!!
This is very inspiring! Congrats on getting it back!