I noticed today that the bookstore at the University of Waterloo has a print on demand book machine. This thing will take a PDF file, print the pages for a book and have it bound in about 6 minutes. The big problem is a $50 set up fee plus between 5 to 8 cents per page if you print your own PDF. However, if course textbooks are printed the price drops. For example, a text that goes for $100 now sells to students for $70. In your case, this could be a very good way to start making money again. As always, the problem is pricing. I'm an economist, so let me explain using the jargon why I think the current situation will not prevent piracy. The answer is obvious: the final unit price is still too high.
The sales pitch I received tried to convince me that consumer surplus increased by $30 because of print on demand. What was not mentioned was that the producer surplus of the firm (O'Reilly and others) also increased dramatically. No longer does O'Reilly have to worry about shipping costs, wholesalers, retailers, inventory etc. They simply have to ensure that their PDF gets to the printer securely. We as consumers know this. We know that we should get more of a break if the producers are getting a deal. Let's face it $70 isn't cheap even if you have a job. (Also, O'Reilly isn't exactly a a brand I associate with quality anymore, either.) That $70 price tag is going to (hypothetically) encourage me to look for a pirated copy and read it on my laptop. If it was, say, $30-40 bucks then I would think again. For $20 bucks I wouldn't even hesitate...
So, in my humble opinion consumers ("pirates") are simply being rational. Everyone would prefer to have a proper book. No one likes getting gouged on price if they can't see the value added. Is the publisher really adding that much value to your book? What do they do? Proof read and edit? Most books today seem to have barely passed through either process, so it becomes hard to support the argument that much value is added. (In my humble opinion, O'Reilly is one of the worst on this count. Their newer books are often barely readable.)
But let's say we both disagree on this count. Instead, let's look at the history of publishing in the USA. For a long time, there was no copyright because the USA had a largely uneducated population and the government wanted to ensure that the population could have cheap access to materials for self-improvement. For example, Dickens would publish in the UK, and "bootleg" copies of his books would be circulating in major US cities within days after copies of his books were received from overseas. How did authors combat this? Often they would serialize their works in newspapers or magazines because they knew that they couldn't stop copies from being made.
Where does all this leave you? In a nutshell: innovate or die. If your publisher is smart, maybe you could both set your prices low enough so that: Price = materials + labour + publisher profit + writer profit is still low enough for consumers to want to buy. Since you are currently making nothing on this item, I would say there is tremendous room for some profit on this item right now.
Other options may be to rebundle key chapters with other "classic" works to make a useful course primer. Also, it may be that very cheap but out of date print-on-demand copies will sell well enough to encourage the publisher to pay you for a revised edition.
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I noticed today that the bookstore at the University of Waterloo has a print on demand book machine. This thing will take a PDF file, print the pages for a book and have it bound in about 6 minutes. The big problem is a $50 set up fee plus between 5 to 8 cents per page if you print your own PDF. However, if course textbooks are printed the price drops. For example, a text that goes for $100 now sells to students for $70. In your case, this could be a very good way to start making money again. As always, the problem is pricing. I'm an economist, so let me explain using the jargon why I think the current situation will not prevent piracy. The answer is obvious: the final unit price is still too high.
The sales pitch I received tried to convince me that consumer surplus increased by $30 because of print on demand. What was not mentioned was that the producer surplus of the firm (O'Reilly and others) also increased dramatically. No longer does O'Reilly have to worry about shipping costs, wholesalers, retailers, inventory etc. They simply have to ensure that their PDF gets to the printer securely. We as consumers know this. We know that we should get more of a break if the producers are getting a deal. Let's face it $70 isn't cheap even if you have a job. (Also, O'Reilly isn't exactly a a brand I associate with quality anymore, either.) That $70 price tag is going to (hypothetically) encourage me to look for a pirated copy and read it on my laptop. If it was, say, $30-40 bucks then I would think again. For $20 bucks I wouldn't even hesitate...
So, in my humble opinion consumers ("pirates") are simply being rational. Everyone would prefer to have a proper book. No one likes getting gouged on price if they can't see the value added. Is the publisher really adding that much value to your book? What do they do? Proof read and edit? Most books today seem to have barely passed through either process, so it becomes hard to support the argument that much value is added. (In my humble opinion, O'Reilly is one of the worst on this count. Their newer books are often barely readable.)
But let's say we both disagree on this count. Instead, let's look at the history of publishing in the USA. For a long time, there was no copyright because the USA had a largely uneducated population and the government wanted to ensure that the population could have cheap access to materials for self-improvement. For example, Dickens would publish in the UK, and "bootleg" copies of his books would be circulating in major US cities within days after copies of his books were received from overseas. How did authors combat this? Often they would serialize their works in newspapers or magazines because they knew that they couldn't stop copies from being made.
Where does all this leave you? In a nutshell: innovate or die. If your publisher is smart, maybe you could both set your prices low enough so that:
Price = materials + labour + publisher profit + writer profit
is still low enough for consumers to want to buy. Since you are currently making nothing on this item, I would say there is tremendous room for some profit on this item right now.
Other options may be to rebundle key chapters with other "classic" works to make a useful course primer. Also, it may be that very cheap but out of date print-on-demand copies will sell well enough to encourage the publisher to pay you for a revised edition.
Up to you.