For the past four years, I have been living with a mystery—a real-life mystery about some things that weren't supposed to happen but did anyway. Today I will share with you what has been going on, at least to the extent my limited knowledge—and my fear of a libel suit—will allow. Like any good mystery, this one offers more questions than answers. I am prompted to write by a posting to the forum riskchat.com directed to me by a professor based in the Philippines:
The professor is referring to my book Value-at-Risk: Theory and Practice. I devoted six years of my life to writing that book. It published in 2003, and at the time, Christopher Culp wrote that the book was "bound to become the standard advanced text and reference work on value-at-risk." That didn't happen. Instead, e-mails started arriving from people frustrated they couldn't get copies. Within three years, the book was taken out of print. Elsevier is one of the world's largest publishers, with distribution channels in pretty much every geographic region. There should have been no problem, but there was. There were many problems, actually. I detailed these in a letter to Duncan Enright, publishing director at Elsevier.
Essentially, the letter said that Elsevier staff, rather than marketing the book, had presented would-be buyers with misinformation, denied them information or otherwise put up roadblocks in about every distribution channel I could think of. If a would-be purchaser had the wrong ISBN number, she would be frustrated searching for a copy online. Any acquisitions librarian would have reservations about buying a book whose publisher didn't bother to catalog it with the Library of Congress or list it in Books in Print. Someone browsing in a bookstore for a book on value-at-risk would reasonably look in the finance section, and not find my book shelved under radical economics. There were really two reasons why I approached Elsevier to have rights in the book returned to me. One was the marketing issues detailed in my letter. The other, which I did not mention to Duncan, involved the author of a competing book on value-at-risk. Let's call this author Junior. Junior had had previous business dealings with one of the editors at Elsevier. That relationship was not disclosed to me until after I had signed a publishing contract. Normally, such a relationship wouldn't be a big deal. Any editor should know a lot of potential authors. However, Junior wasn't just any competing author. I knew things about his attitudes and ethics that would have kept me from signing that publishing contract. When the editor sheepishly did acknowledge the relationship, it was too late. I had signed the contract, and there was no backing out. All I could do was assume the editor would act professionally and hope for the best. As my letter to Duncan indicates, my hopes were dashed. Were the marketing problems and the relationship with Junior somehow related? It is hard to say. I certainly know more about both than I will relate here—a lot more. However, if pressed for a definitive answer, I would have to say I am not in a position to know. I have many questions but few answers. I apologize to everyone who was inconvenienced by what happened. In particular, I received numerous e-mails from professors who never received review copies of the book, which they had requested from Elsevier. I interceded for all of them with the publisher, but I suspect none ever received copies. Those professors could probably have obtained a review copy of any other finance book from the publisher—any but mine. Despite considerable interest, I believe this prevented my book from being adopted for a single finance course. If it were, the adopting professor would have been disappointed when the publisher temporarily took the book out of print over September 2004, as there would have been no copies available for students anyway. As it turned out, Duncan Enright responded favorably to my letter, commenting
Duncan's conditions were just a few loose ends, which we soon cleared up. Today, I again own all rights in my book. I need to find a publisher to re-release the book. My main problem is time. I am so busy I don't know when I will get around to it. Until then, there are still copies available for sale. A good place to look is amazon.com, which lists new or used copies available from third-party vendors. Some of those vendors will ship internationally. The last time I checked, copies were selling for around $115, which is $20 over the list price. I am flattered the books are selling for so much, but I don't want readers getting gouged. If prices rise too much, I have a number of personal copies which I will list on Amazon to put downward pressure on prices. Glyn A. Holton
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