I went down to Barnes and Noble because for some reason lately I’ve been thinking about My Friend Flicka and the other Mary O’Hara books I loved as a child. I’m aware that there was a Flicka movie, saw the trailer, saw they changed the gender of the protagonist, bleached my brain, forgot it, moved on.
So, even though there was an execrable movie, the only edition I could find at the store came with a charm necklace. I mean, the necklace is taped onto the book and deforms the cover! Also, I’m not actually an eight year old girl anymore, thanks. There wasn’t a “classic edition” or anything like you can find with some of your childhood favorites - Barnes and Noble does some nice ones of, say, A Little Princess or Black Beauty, but Flicka gets the shaft.
The really weird thing is, they didn’t have the other ones, Green Grass of Wyoming and Thunderhead. I mean, these are horse books. Do horse books for girls ever go out of print? Seriously? I looked on Amazon when I got home and, yeah, it looks like they’re definitely out of print. Can’t even buy them with a necklace! They’re classics of the genre!
So, while I untape my necklace from my book, tell me what you were surprised to find is out of print. Not obscure stuff you expected to be hard to find. (Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages is in print and popular, but her other volume of family memoir humor, Raising Demons, isn’t just out of print - it’s pretty hard to find!)
There’s a new paperback edition of My Friend Flicka out in April - no jewelry, either! ISBN 9780061374630
Loads of sf & fantasy goes out of print within a few years - I was surprised to find that all of Michael Swanwick’s books, except short story collections, were o/p - even the one he’s just got a h/c sequel out to! (It has a UK ed, though).
And his Nebula award-winning Stations of the Tide, as well…
I was shocked to find that “The History of Architecture Through the Comparitive Method by Sir Bannister Fletcher” was out of print. I wanted to buy my brother a copy many years ago when he started his Part II qualification as it’s the architect’s bible. They’ve just announced a 100th anniversary edition though, so he’ll get it for his 31st birthday as he’s starting his Part III qualification this year.
My father (also an architect) had a copy that was given to him by an Arab prince in the '60s, but he lost it about 20 years ago.
A while back I went looking for Joan Aiken’s Mortimer books, and found they were out of print, which is a crime. Those books are great classics. Happily they’re coming back now, but IMO all of Aiken’s books should always be in print.
I’m shocked that Don Robertson’s Paradise Falls is out of print. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a classic American novel, a picture of an age, a turning point in our history, similar to Gone With the Wind, Lonesome Dove, etc.
I’m surprised that Bobby Fishers, "My 60 Memorable Games " is out of print (as far as I know).
It’s a good book, and it’s by the most famous chess player in America. I wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow kept it out of print, but I’m just speculating.
Several of J.G. Ballard’s books are out of print in the US. He’s one of my favorite writers, but I’ve had to take out several of his books from the library, where they were filthy, stained and foul-smelling. Checking on Amazon, I see some of them have come back into print since I last checked, like Concrete Island. However, High-Rise stills appears to be out of print. Not only is this one of his most famous books, but it’s also been in film-development limbo for several years. (IMDb claims it’s coming out this year, but I know Bruce Robinson wrote a screenplay for it sometime in the late '70s.)
That’s why SF and Fantasy fans are such avid book collectors. Mystery fans, too.
Most of Arthur C. Clarke’s books are, I think, out of print. The same for Isaac Asimov. (Although I think all of Heinlein’s output is still in print). And most of Jules Verne’s, for that matter.
There are plenty of Classic science fiction authors out of print, although, on searching, I’m surprised at how much has recently been put back into print.
Most of Truman Capote’s oeuvre is out of print other than his biggest titles like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. All of his travel writing (previously collected in “Local Color”), his essays, and his weird almost-horror early short stories - completely out of print.
Not a book, but it irks me that the Disney film Song of the South is out of print (in the U.S.- it’s in print in countries where it’s public domain). Disney refuses to re-release it due to controversies over whether or not its racist.
As a Civil War student I was surprised to find that many of the memoirs of Civil War generals are out of print (Joseph Wheeler, some of Longstreet’s writings, etc.). I’d think their value as primary sources and the public domain property of them would generate enough demand to keep them in print for a small but lucrative audience of college students and Civil War buffs. (The works of John Smith of Jamestown [and Turkey and Poland and England, etc.] were out of print for years as well, though there are a couple of print and several editions online.)
My mother and aunt were both major fans of the writer Frank Yerby, who was possibly the bestselling author of the 1950s (though his sales famously decreased when his readership learned he was African-American [actually he was tri-racial and more white than anything else]). Considering how many tens of millions of copies he sold and how many films were made of them I was surprised that none of his books are still in print.
Several Dorothy Dunnett books were out of print when I developed an interest a few years ago, which was quite bad since they were connectors in a series I was reading.
I was particularly shocked that The Muses are Heard, a fantastic book about his trip through the Soviet Union with a touring production of PORGY & BESS at the height of the Cold War & Civil Rights Era, was out of print.
Any good bookstore will be able to search the Books In Print database or an equivalent for you. Don’t assume that just because it isn’t on the shelf it isn’t still available. There are well over a million English-language books in print today, and even a large bookstore stocks less than a tenth of them. A good store (even a small one) can order almost anything even if they don’t stock it.
Just for the record, “not available at Barnes & Noble” is not the same as “out of print.” There are at least four good “non-jewelry” editions of My Friend Flicka in print and available, ranging in price from $6.99 for the HarperTrophy paperback to $37.95 for the Buccaneer Books hardback.
My database shows 61 editions of Truman Capote books in print. Some are duplicates, like 8 different editions of In Cold Blood.
Well, yeah, but I wanted it RIGHT THEN. I mean, I’m a librarian, if I want it I can get it, but I wanted it now and I wanted all of them and I didn’t want to have to go through the hassle of out-of-print. And I wanted to own them - I think most librarians are like that, which is funny. You’d think we’d borrow books.
PS - it’s one of those books that’s completely different to an adult, if you haven’t read it since you were a little girl, FYI.
A load of John Cheever books were out of print in Britain when I discovered him a three or so years ago - I think I saw a few in a bookshop recently though. Also, anything by TF Powys.