Tag Archives: reverted rights

The Dragon Diaries Update

Posted on by under Dragon Diaries YA
Flying Blind, book one of the Dragon Diaries paranormal YA trilogy by Deborah Cooke
1. Flying Blind

I’m very happy to share the news that all of the rights to the Dragon Diaries have reverted to me. Phew! That took a while. Three years ago, most of the rights to this YA trilogy reverted to me, but English Commonwealth rights for the first two books had been licensed to another publisher and that deal was still in place. Those rights have now reverted, so all the rights are mine again. (Yay!)

You might remember that I licensed the original cover art from the artist, so that my editions would look similar to the original editions – and people wouldn’t think they were new books. Here’s a blog post on the Dragonfire site about that.

Winging It, book two of the Dragon Diaries YA paranormal trilogy by Deborah Cooke
2. Winging It

What does this mean? Well, first of all, I’ve made my ebook editions of Flying Blind and Winging It available in all geographic regions (geos) at Apple, Amazon and KOBO.

Secondly, I’ve made those books available via all my usual portals and distributors—some of them allow less control over geographic territories, so I couldn’t publish my editions there in case they infringed on the subrights deal. There are more links on the landing pages now.

Thirdly, I asked Amazon to link my ebook editions with the print editions from the other publishers. They retain the right to sell their existing print stock, which is standard and customary, so the books might as well be linked. There are also reviews on the print editions from their ebook editions, so my Amazon product pages look a little better with more reviews.

Blazing the Trail, book three of the Dragon Diaries paranormal YA trilogy by Deborah Cooke
3. Blazing the Trail

There seems to be a lot of print stock available so I’m not going to rush in to make print editions of these books myself. I’m thinking that next year, I may do a series bundle and make that available in trade paperback. If you have feelings either way about this, please let me know.

Finally, it means I can think about revisiting those characters and adding to their stories. I never add to works to which I don’t hold all of the rights – I learned my lesson about that – so having these books back means I can think about Jared and Zoë again. This gives me joy.

And please join me in a happy dance today!

Winging It

Posted on by under Dragon Diaries YA

Winging It, second of the paranormal YA trilogy The Dragon Diaries by Deborah CookeRecently, the rights to Winging It, book #2 of my paranormal YA trilogy, The Dragon Diaries, reverted to me. This means that the publisher can still sell their existing print stock of the book but not reprint more. It also means that their digital edition has been removed from sale.

In the case of this particular trilogy, the reversion of the books is based upon the number of units sold: when sales drop below a certain threshold, the books are eligible for reversion. Because I’d like to have the rights to other two books in the trilogy revert to me as well, I’ve removed the buy links here on my site to both Flying Blind and Blazing the Trail. You can still buy them, but I’d prefer you didn’t. Once I have the rights back to all three books–whenever that happens, and it might take a while–I’ll republish them in new editions.

Winging It, second of the paranormal YA trilogy The Dragon Diaries by Deborah Cooke, UK edition

UK edition

The interesting wrinkle in this situation is that my publisher had sold subsidiary rights for both Flying Blind and Winging It to a second publisher based in the UK. That UK publisher never did acquire the rights to book #3, Blazing the Trail. Their edition of Winging It is the one on the left. It will remain available in some territories in both print and digital formats because that contract remains in effect. If you think this is a bit strange and confusing, you’re not alone! I’m sure things will be sorted into some kind of coherence eventually, so please stay tuned.