Popular Philly author Beth Kephart gets surprising publishing news

Beth Kephart is one of the most prolific authors I know, both in quantity and in genre. Her new book, One Thing Stolen, due out in April, will be her 19th book. She has written memoirs, young adult (YA) fiction, and even the innovative Flow, a story of the life and times of the Schuylkill River. I'm proud to claim her as Philly's own.

And while writing in different genres can have its drawbacks — it's harder to build a reputation when writing for multiple markets — of late Kephart has been reaping acclaim for her work. To name just a few recent kudos, Going Over is the Gold Medal Winner/Historical Fiction/Parents' Choice Awards and an ABA Best Books for Children & Teens, Handling the Truth, a book about writing a memoir, won a Books for a Better Life/Motivational Award, and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent garnered a Kirkus 2013 Best Middle Grade Book of the Year.

But every silver lining must have its cloud. Recently Kephart learned that the publisher of two of her YA novels, Egmont, is closing. Egmont, a publisher of elementary, middle grade, and teen books, is a subsidiary of a Danish company with a large U.K. division, Egmont UK Ltd., with such major titles on its list as Winnie-the-Pooh and Thomas the Tank Engine. After putting its U.S. branch up for sale last October and failing to find a buyer, the company announced last week that it would be closing the division and letting go of its six staff members.

Kephart received a letter telling her that the rights to her two Egmont books, the Centennial Philadelphia novel Dangerous Neighbors and the Byberry Hospital-inspired novel, You Are My Only, would be reverting to her.

What exactly does this mean? When an author sells rights to a publisher, the author signs a contract that gives the publisher various rights for the property, including the right to publish the work in book form, as well as, potentially, other rights such as book club, serialization, merchandising, TV, film, etc. This means the author cannot pursue any of these rights on his or her own so long as the contract is in force. But if  the publisher reverts rights to the author, the author gets everything back.

You might think this was a good thing, but often it's not, because it means that book that was formerly placed in a secure publishing home has been jettisoned from there and is now, for all purposes, out of print.

What to do? Kephart is pondering that question. She says: "There are, of course, options. I could self-publish, I could seek a new publisher, I could learn more than I know about e-rights and e-tools, I could post the PDFs to the books permanently on my blog, for interested readers. But how hard should one push? I wonder. How hard will I push—I, who have always been far more interested in creating something new than in promoting something old. The promotion, indeed, has never interested me. The making has."

These days, with improvements in printing technologies and the advent of digital, authors have more options than previously, more routes to publication. And this is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes, all these choices can be paralyzing.

Whatever route Kephart chooses, she says she's grateful for the time these two books were in print and where they led for her. Dangerous Neighbors led to its prequel, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, which is still in print. You Are My Only eventually led Kephart to Chronicle Books. The San Francisco-based Chronicle published her book Going Over and will soon publish One Thing Stolen. Another young adult novel is set for publication in 2016.

Kephart remains optimistic and forward-thinking, saying: "The life of my Egmont books may in some way be over. But the life of my career is not."