Rights Reversion by Paul May

About six months ago I decided that it was time I did something about getting back the rights to the books I published back in the early years of this century. Most of them remained technically 'in print', though in practice they were 'print on demand' and available as ebooks, and as I hadn't received any cash for any of them for at least ten years there seemed little point in their presence on the colourful Penguin Books website.  

I asked the Society of Authors how to go about getting the rights back and they told me to write to the publishers. I thought I'd ask the agency which did the deals for those books who to contact, and they were happy to do the job themselves, so now I have the rights to my work back, and I'm wondering what to do with the books. Of course, they shouldn't really still be there on the Penguin website. Another job to do.

I'm not interested in making them into ebooks, so that simplifies things a little, and it looks to me as if, for a relatively small investment, I could produce paperback books for a reasonable price. I wouldn't need to sell very many books to make more from them than I have done in the last ten years from the traditionally published versions.

I'd got that far in my thinking when it occurred to me that I don't have any digital files of those books. Well, only of one of them, and that is the book I somehow managed not to put on the list for rights reversion. So if I want to publish them I'll have to type them all out again. That's not the end of the world. I could do that, and fix a few things at the same time. But then there's the question of the illustrations. Four of the books are heavily illustrated, if that's the right phrase, and I suspect it wouldn't be straightforward to use the illustrations. But I can look into that, contact the illustrators, and if necessary the books could be re-illustrated. I have a candidate in mind!

There's a lot to think about. Being me, I'd want to do as much of the design and layout as possible myself. I'd need the right software and I'd need to learn how to use it. A quick look around on the internet suggests that this is one of those situations where, even though you only want to do a relatively simple task, you need to have a vast and powerful piece of software like Indesign in order to output a print-ready document of a quality you're happy with. Let's hope I'm wrong about that. 

However, none of these things really matter if I don't think the books are worth re-publishing, and about two of them I have serious doubts. My first book, Troublemakers, went through a lot of changes that I've written about before and it certainly isn't the book I originally set out to write. It was meant to be a tough but funny story about racism and misogyny and contained some splendidly vile baddies, but in the editing process everything got toned down. I understood why, but although racism and misogyny have not yet been banished from football I don't think I'd want to republish this one.

I also think it's interesting that I've seen very little discussion lately of something that was central to my original conception of the book. Having seen that the fittest pupil in the school where I was working was a girl (AND she had Type1Diabetes, AND she was great at football) I wondered how good a female footballer would have to be before a top football club like, say, Barcelona or Liverpool, would want to challenge the structure of world football and sign her on. I still wonder that. And, by a strange piece of serendipity, I was looking through some old photos yesterday and noticed this picture which I must include, especially after Penny Dolan's post about notebooks the other day. This is the very moment I had the idea for what became that first book. The dream noted underneath has something to do with being a school governor at the time!

The other book I have doubts about is called Nice One, Smithy!, and the trouble with this book is that it has dated because of the contemporary football references. The class guinea pig called Ronaldo I might just about still get away with, but the references to the  Brazilian style of football are probably at least 40 years out of date, and as for Michael Owen . . . On the other hand, I can easily update those references, and if I'm publishing it myself I guess I can update them as often as necessary. So that one goes on the 'possible' list.

I wrote a second football novel, Defenders, which still seems fresh to me. Again, a few footballers' names need changing and I think some of the characters will need mobile phones. The landline phone in the hallway was on its way to being a thing of the past even back when I wrote the book. Luckily 'The Magic of the FA Cup,' is still a thing. And, as a small sidetrack, How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup by JL Carr is a hugely entertaining read.

Then I have two Norfolk novels which I definitely want to republish. Green Fingers has lovely illustrations by Sîan Bailey, but as three of them are on my wall, specially altered for me by Sîan I think it's unlikely I'll be able to use them. In any case, as the book contains a character based on my daughter, and is dedicated to her, it might be fun to get her to illustrate it. 

The other Norfolk book is Rain, and I'd love to have a new edition of this if only to change the cover, which I've always disliked (sorry, designers). Both Rain and Green Fingers may need a little adjustment to the phone/tech aspects, but luckily Rain's mother, Max, is a New Age Traveller who wants nothing to do with tech.

Then there are two more books, both of which, it seems to me, work as well today as they did when I wrote them. Cat Patrol is very short, about 2000 words, and was illustrated by Peter Bailey. Again, I have some of these illustrations on my wall, and I think it may well be too complicated to use them. The original cover by Guy Parker-Rees was, I think, the publishers' third attempt to find something they were happy with. I guess there will now be a fourth. 

Finally there's the book I wrote about a few months ago, Billy and the Seagulls. This had the same illustrator, Kate Sheppard, as Nice One, Smithy, and it would be fun to have new editions of these with the same pics, but who knows? 

In all this I take heart from the example of the above-mentioned JL Carr who made a habit of buying back the rights to his books, along with as many copies as remained in warehouses, and published his two final novels himself. The Quince Tree Press, which he founded, is still going, and publishes its own very fine editions of all Carr's novels.