Okay, I’m finally going to spill the tea about what the hell has been going on with THE LIVING. It’s dumb, and you’re going to hate it, and I hate it too, but stay with me because there’s good news at the end. (Spoiler: you can buy print copies from me.)
Previously, on Isaac Marion: [Skip Intro] the publisher of Warm Bodies books 1-3 refused to publish the final book because book 3 didn’t sell spectacularly. Yes, you can have a globally published #5 New York Times bestseller with a major movie adaptation and still get thrown out on your ass after a single disappointment. This industry is insane. So I said “fuck it” and published The Living the old fashioned way, printing 2,500 copies and selling them on my website.
The plan was always to sell that first run of hand-crafted hardbacks and then put out a paperback through more accessible channels—ideally through a new publisher, but at least through Amazon. But then my agent realized we had a problem.
It gets confusing here, so feel free to skip ahead, or stick with me if publishing drama interests you…
That first run of books was published “invisibly,” meaning they had no ISBN and wouldn’t be counted within the system that tracks my sales record as an author. The whole thing was very much a DIY “for the fans” operation, just a way to get the story’s conclusion out to my most dedicated readers, without any expectation of selling a lot of copies. But if I try to release it through visible channels like Amazon or even a proper publisher…THE LIVING will suddenly appear on my sales record as a “paperback original” and its sales will be counted as my most recent release. And being a reissue of a book I actually released 5 years ago, it’s unlikely to sell explosively. So prospective publishers for my next REAL release, THE OVERNOISE, would check my recent sales and think, “Oh, this guy doesn’t move copies.” They wouldn’t consider the context and understand that it’s a reissue of an old book—context and nuance are lost technologies in 2024—they would just look at the numbers and walk away.
So basically, I can’t do anything with THE LIVING until I get back into publishing’s good graces, get another hot book on my record, and earn a real conversation about my back-catalog.
I know. What a petty reason to keep a book out of print. But as ridiculous as it seems, I can’t afford to do anything that could jeopardize my comeback. I have a lot more stories in my head, and I want a career that allows me to write them. So for now, I must let THE LIVING rest.
GOOD NEWS AREA:
The copies of THE LIVING that I sent to the distribution company are all gone, and that company itself is now defunct, so my “official” shop is closed. But I did keep a few for myself, intending to hand-sell them at book events. In fact, I kept a lot more than I remembered. In a recent dumpster dive through my storage unit, I exhumed SEVERAL boxes, and I’ve decided once again…fuck it. Distribution be damned, I’m going to sell these myself. So for anyone who missed this book the first time around, now is your chance—possibly your LAST chance—to get your hands on a physical copy.
