When your publisher hands you lemons out of print books, after you finish wailing and gnashing your teeth, you figure out what to do with them. And the thing is, you definitely have options.

Two of my novels had gone out of print: The Bean King’s Daughter and Close Encounters of a Third-World Kind. With the assistance of Rhody Cohen Downey, who is smart, savvy, and a #1 NYT bestselling writer to boot, I got them up as e-books, available at Smashwords, for Kindle, and for Nook. If you need help with your e-book formatting, or editorial services, you won’t go wrong calling Rhody.

Then, since I wanted to still be able to sell physical books rather than e-books at school visits, I started investigating getting them reprinted. I thought I could swing a modest paperback print run for each.

I engaged in talks for months with a company that does printing in Tucson (I wanted to go local), but ultimately decided it wouldn’t suit me. It wasn’t because of the storage space issue; it was because of quality. The interior of my books had been formatted so prettily by Holiday House, and although the local company said they could match all the formatting, the examples of books they had done for self-published authors all had ugly blocky formatting. Read, no formatting. I ultimately listened to my gut which said, “Run away!”

Ultimately, I went with print on demand through Createspace. I can order as many books as I want, when I want them. Is it perfect? No, but it will do for now.

For Close Encounters of a Third-World Kind, I purchased the right to reuse the cover art. For The Bean King’s Daughter, I wasn’t sure I wanted the same cover. I think it captured the story’s essence well, and it amused me, because the cartoony girl looks exactly like me when I was twelve-years-old. But every so often, kids would ask me, “What’s wrong with Phoebe’s leg?” As adults, we can infer that the girl’s leg is crooked back behind her as she gets out of a limousine (it’s a poor little rich girl story). But to kids, she looks like she’s an amputee. I think it’s one of those developmental things. Kids can’t imagine the crooked back leg, and adults can’t not imagine it.

After trying a number of designs, I came up with putting my heroine’s photograph inside a million dollar bill. I also decided that while I was giving the book a new cover, I would give it a new title. So it is now The Girl Who Has Everything. I like this title better. I wish I had thought of it earlier.

Close Encounters of a Third-World Kind was nominated for Arizona’s Grand Canyon Reader Award, Connecticut’s Nutmeg Book Award, and Maryland’s Black-Eyed Susan Book Award, and still shows up on recommended reading lists, because it’s quite an unusual book, set in Nepal. And there aren’t many books set in Nepal for children. Like I can count them on one hand, and not use all my fingers.

I am under no illusion that I am going to sell thousands of copies over the internet, but it is nice to have both books back in print (on demand), and at an affordable price, $7.99 each.