Today I donated the last box of my book Focus on Healing to the church fair. It was published just before print-on-demand paperbacks and ebooks became widespread, and although it was well received by readers, more copies were printed than were sold. I didn’t want to be like the author I once heard about whose garage was full of his own books when he died, and whose heirs gave the books away at his funeral.
Just as new cars start losing value as soon as they are sold, books on medical and healthcare topics start going out of date as soon as they are published. The content of Focus on Healing is still valid, and the ebook version is still available, but there is new information that could be added if I wrote a second edition. I’m not intending to do that, because I no longer work in the healthcare field.
Novels do not go out of date in the same way, although most sales usually occur in the first few months after publication. My own latest You Yet Shall Die is certainly selling better than my earlier ones, the Dr Peabody series which provide a somewhat cynical picture of medical practice in the 1980s, and the Three Novellas which are mystery/romances set between England and New Zealand. Some readers dislike older novels simply because their content seems out of fashion, or because they convey racist or sexist views, intolerance of minority groups, or other attitudes that would be indefensible today. Other readers accept these things as representative of the time the novels were written, and find that the historical aspect adds to the interest of the story.
A few older books become classics. Most of them fade into obscurity unless, rather sadly I think, they only become popular after being mentioned in the author’s obituary.
For details on the books mentioned here, please visit my Amazon author page.
Jennifer Barraclough 