With publishers still feeling the pinch of the economy, brand names (read: guaranteed sales) are more important than ever.  Everyone is mining their backlist to repackage sure hits. 

Coming up, we have:

September

princess_and_the_pea

Originally published by Dorchester in 1996.

October

    

Originally published by St. Martin’s in 1996.  Parts have been rewritten and updated.

A trade-size edition from Harlequin containing Outrageous and Riley.

There are a bunch of others as well–Grand Central is redoing  some Jayne Ann Krentz futuristics in early 2010, Harlequin is packaging some Nora Roberts’ books into double trade-size editions, and Bantam is re-releasing the movie tie-in of The Bourne Identity.  And these are just ones I noted from recent kits.  We don’t receive sales info from Kensington or Penguin (Berkley/Jove/NAL), but I”m sure they’re doing it as well.

It’s a big advantage to be able to get out a lot of copies for not much money.  The advance is already paid, and depending on how old the book is, the publisher may not have to pay to re-typset it.  So usually it’s just new art and the printing costs. 

For readers, the best way to tell whether a book is new or a reissue is to check the copyright page.