thoughtfood

Obviously I can only give my own experience, YMMV, etc etc. But to answer this question, I looked at my handy list of every book I've ever sold, and figured out which ones are PB and if they are Out of Print (OP). This is obviously a limited selection of titles, BUT, it also covers a pretty wide swath of styles, publisher sizes, author-famousness, etc, so I do think it is probably a relatively accurate snapshot:

PBs of mine that are more than 10 years old but less than 15: (pub date 2010-2015): 50% are still in print. (10 in print, 10 OP)

PBs of mine that are more than 5 years old but less than 10: (pub date 2016-2020): 70% are still in print. (25 in print, 10 OP)

PBs of mine that are less than 5 years old: (pub date 2021 to present): I got bored looking these up after awhile and it was 100%, so let's say 90-95% are still in print just in case I missed a couple.

Mind you, that's the only data I have, bc I just don't have any titles that published before 2010! But if I had to make a fairly educated guess, I'd wager that if we were to keep going in this direction, the chart would look something like this:

So I don't know what YOU consider a long time or a short time. In my experience, though, children's book publishers tend to keep books in print longer than adult book publishers do. That's because they know that even if a book doesn't sell like crazy right out of the gate, there is ample opportunity for a children's book to catch on later through word of mouth, etc.

If a title wins awards, gets on state lists, gets added to curriculums, etc, it might continue to be a steady seller for years to come. None of that can happen immediately upon release, and none of it can happen if the book is out of print!

It is important to remember that, while it doesn't sound as FANCY as a splashy bestseller, a book that backlists well is really a prize! Let's say your book is, like The Outsiders, always assigned to a half a million high school kids, every year. Some will already have a copy, or get one used, but a lot of them will buy it from a bookstore. The rest of them will get it from the library - - but even then, the libraries will have to buy more! That's why The Outsiders sold over 300k copies in 2025. That's way more than most new books. And that happens EVERY year. You get the picture?

Consistent backlist sales are what keep the lights on at publishers.

Roseville, Placer County, California. On the Freights. Five o'clock in the morning in Roseville switch yards for freight going over the Sierra

Record Group 119: Records of the National Youth AdministrationSeries: Study of Youth Photographs

🕷🕸️Happy birthday to E.B. White, born on this day in 1899! Elwyn Brooks White grew up to be the famed author of “Charlotte’s Web,” a timeless story about a pig named Wilbur who befriends a spider named Charlotte, which has charmed children and adults alike since it was first published in 1952. While writing the book, White relied for his research on arachnologist Willis J. Gertsch, a curator at the Museum, even meeting with Gertsch in person with a list of questions in hand. The results are readily apparent in certain details—Charlotte is sedentary, near-sighted, stuns her prey, works at night—all based on spider behavior. White even acknowledged Gertsch’s help in naming his title character—Charlotte A. Cavatica—after a common orb weaver, Araneus cavaticus. 

because theyd rather someone stay terrible or just straight up die than become a better person 

from a compassionate point of view it’s deeply distressing and from a pragmatic point of view it’s outright frustrating

This obviously depends a lot on what the arc is about, what world it’s set in, who the characters are, etc. but there is a branch of redemption arc in stories that is about either bigots or people who were involved in real-world atrocities (see: the At Love’s Command controversy). In those cases, given the nature of the redemption arc, the emotional center of the story is that person, and their victims are often either treated as afterthoughts or used as a mechanism to show that the person has finally Become Good.

Of course, a redemption arc or narrative can be about all kinds of things, on all levels of severity. Someone who used to be an asshole to their friends will have a very different type of redemption arc than someone who used to be a fascist, and the writer would have different considerations.

But when you are writing a redemption arc, especially if it’s more the “bigot to not bigot” kind than the “used to do tax fraud” kind, consider these questions:

Is the narrative framing them as more of a victim than the people they hurt?

Do their victims or victim proxies forgive them, and if not, does the narrative imply that they should?

Do their victims appear in the story at all, or do they just exist in the abstract to illustrate the person’s guilt?

Monsters of Dungeons and Dragons

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

One hundred years ago this month, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway was published. The novel epitomizes modernism’s drive to capture the fragmented texture of early twentieth-century life and to render psychological landscapes with clarity and nuance.

Read more about Virginia Woolf's contributions to modern literature from JSTOR Daily.

Ben Kingsley in 1975 Royal Shakespeare Company production of ‘Hamlet’. Jay Cocks Studio Collection/Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.