Wow, it's SO interesting to skim my page on Amazon. It's a complete history of publishing-run-amok, right on a single page. Diane's and my first title, Arco Test Your Cultural Literacy, was a fun book. It's still the best edition (see product photo), because it has my original preface, which reveals my personal attitude toward the concept of cultural literacy (not particularly positive), and it is NOT disguised as a test-prep book. Arco, a division of Simon & Schuster, was gutted and the product was sold off shortly after we published Test Your Countercultural Literacy (with an even better preface) and What Do You Know About Sex?--both now out of print, but loads of fun and still available via Amazon's used books--check 'em out! (It's fascinating to note that some of the used booksellers refer to the "hardcover" edition of WDYKAS; I'm 99% sure there was never any such thing.) Anyway, the rights were sold and then sold again and then resold once more, and Diane and I had to track them around the country before rediscovering the title at Peterson's. No one there or anywhere else, mind you, had bothered to tell us who owned our book. Peterson's published a "test-prep" edition that did not sell nearly as well as the original, and then they sold the mass market rights to--wait for it--Simon & Schuster, the original owner. S&S repackaged the Peterson version and sold that in a new size with a new cover. I'm not entirely sure the editors there ever knew that it had been their title to begin with.
Meanwhile, two titles that I really loved, the two Arco 50 Simple Things titles, were in limbo, but Peterson's decided to pick up 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Raise a Child Who Loves to Read, which they repackaged but left mostly intact. I believe they have now gone back to press with a new title for the same book, but I don't really know, because I'm just the author. You can still find the Math book used on Amazon, so if you have a child with needs in that area, do look for it.
When I first entered the world of publishing as an editor in the school division of McGraw-Hill, it was a stable world that made some kind of sense. Mergers and acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s changed everything. My story is not unique, nor is it particularly instructive. It just is the way it is--the brave new world of publishing
Kathy Zahler sent the following posts to customers who purchased 50 Simple Things/Child Loves to Read 1e (50 Simple Things Series)