Why don't you re-print your books?

other Aug 05, 2021

There has been quite a lot of chat recently about my book Appliqué Mastery and so I'm going to explain my position and the history on this.

I wrote it in 2014 and lovely Kim was the outstanding graphic designer who assembled all my text and photos into the beautiful book it became. I personally bought, from the publisher, 1,500 copies. These came to me from China, where it was printed, and I was responsible for selling all of these books through my teaching and via my website. I do not know how many copies the publisher took but however many there were went to her in the USA, and were sold by her through book distributers and through her website.

For 6 years I stored these books in my home, took boxes on teaching trips and every time one was bought through my website I packaged it up and took it to the PO. It was a lot to store and to sell - and after the extensive job of writing, making all the samples and taking pretty much all of the photos it felt like a big task. My husband was a huge help in proof reading and editing (he did a lot of work with Kim, when I was away on teaching trips, when there were deadlines to meet) and never complained about all the boxes.

In the USA stores like JoAnnes bought from the publisher. They don't keep your product on the shelves indefinitely as they continually want to be offering something new. I know that quite a lot of books were returned unsold and that also quite a lot were destroyed by them because they were unsold - so they were out there!

The legal position is that after a year of the book being out of print, and if the publisher is not going to reprint, then you can as the author re-print yourself. I have thought about all the options, including print on demand, but have decided not to go down this road. In all honesty the demand is, at best, a few hundred copies. I know this because it took me 6 years to sell the 1,500 that I had and because copies were returned to the publisher or even destroyed. Whether it is print on demand or a reprint it is definitely not a small task, and involves much administration, sourcing a company to print and distribute and so much more.

I feel I really do not have the time to do this. QQT is one of the most rewarding parts of my entire career and has become the most amazing community, far greater than David and I ever imagined. Because of the incredible 'thing' that QQT has become David and I put many hours into developing, editing, administrating and answering creative and membership questions. We love to do this because we know we are reaching all of you in such positive ways and it is a joy to see and read about your lives. So I choose QQT as a new, exciting and much more stimulating area to put my creative resources into. The good news is that all the techniques I teach in the book (and so many more) are in all your QQT classes, and they are covered in so much more depth. My hope is that we give you the skills to make all your work so much more enjoyable and successful, and to enable you to adapt designs or create your own original projects. So if a copy of my book comes up at a good price than that's super. And if it doesn't then no matter. We all have so much more to share here.

Thank you all so much for reading all that and for being a QQT member. We really do appreciate all you wonderful support of us and of one other - and we love what we have become and what we will continue to be!

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