BookFinder.com Report Fall 2008

Out-of-print and in demand

Out of Print Books Trends

At BookFinder.com, we track demand trends for a wide range of out-print titles. Most of those books went out of print because of low demand or ailing publishers, but some have more interesting publishing histories, involving factors like suppression or controversy. Several of the titles in this year's BookFinder.com Report fall in the latter category.

We've been fascinated by the story of David Ellsworth's Smith County Justice, a long nonfiction account of police corruption in Smith County, Texas. The book carefully documents alleged widespread police perjury, entrapment, and murder during the 1970s and 1980s. The book had a print run of only several hundred copies, and according to Ellsworth's supporters, "all unsold copies were ordered returned to the publisher and burned." The book went out of print immediately thereafter. As of the time of this writing, four copies are available for sale on BookFinder.com, and another four are located in Texas libraries. Given the book's relative rarity, and the importance of its allegations, supporters have been helping keep the book in circulation by issuing an unauthorized ebook distributed online via sites like Wikileaks—generating even more demand for the print edition.

The Autobiography of Howard Hughes has a very different kind of history. In 1972, novelist Clifford Irving came close to pulling off one of the most ambitious literary frauds of the 20th century. By the 1970s, iconic industrialist and aviator Howard Hughes had become one of the most famous recluses in America. Irving tried to take advantage of the situation by convincing McGraw-Hill that he was working with Hughes to write his autobiography, backing up his story with a series of forged documents. Irving subsequently negotiated a $765,000 payment, which he deposited into a Swiss bank account opened under an assumed name. Hughes surfaced in 1972, shortly before publication, to repudiate the book; Irving went to prison for fraud. The work first saw the light of day in 1999, with the publication of a small private edition of The Autobiography of Howard Hughes; the book has since remained out of print in the U.S.

Featured Titles

The Jerusalem Bible illustrated by Salvador Dalí

The Jerusalem Bible was a new Catholic Bible translation released in 1966, produced directly from the original Hebrew and Greek. (The team of translators included J.R.R. Tolkien.) There were many editions printed, but only one included art by surrealist Salvador Dalí . The 32 images were part of Dalí's Biblia Sacra series, his visual responses to the Old and New Testaments, commissioned by a patron hoping to draw the artist back to his Catholic roots.

Escape from Laos  by Dieter Dengler

As Americans discuss the role of torture in times of war, this striking biography of an American fighter pilot captured during the secret bombing of Laos gives a sense of the brutal torture of POWs—and how one man managed to escape, and survive his ordeal.

Raven: The Untold Story of The Rev. Jim Jones and His People by Tim Reiterman

With the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre approaching, and several recent documentaries on the topic, there's been increased interest in Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Raven is one of the most respected books on the topic, written by a then-San Francisco Examiner journalist traveling with the delegation investigating the organization.

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