Despite this, our book got great reviews and tons of publicity. We were featured in Playboy, the Star and In Style and interviewed on a number of radio and TV shows, including Inside Edition. And the book still didn't sell, I think because the publisher misprinted it, miscategorized it, overpriced it, failed to publicize it and didn't even get it into stores. This was the Internet infancy days, so Amazon was no help.
I was getting letters from people who said they'd had to go to five different bookstores, even in major cities like Chicago, trying to find a copy. Naturally, the publisher put it out of print after about a month, claiming the low sales proved nobody wanted it(apparently, they expected people to fly to New Jersey and pound on the warehouse door for a copy). One magazine even named it "The Best Hard-To-Find Book of the Year," not exactly the honor I was hoping for.
We now have the rights back to it and would like to bring out an updated version, but can't find a publisher. They assume it must be a bad book because it didn't sell well the first time, even though I'm still getting fan mail from as far away as Australia, begging us for an updated edition. So we're working on creating a website to promote it and selling a better quality self-published version. That's what I did with my last book, and the best part of having to do all the work myself was that I didn't have to deal with any publishing industry morons.
The big publishers are like dinosaurs with three feet in a tar pit, and they don't even realize it. It's not surprising to me that none of them saw the potential in "Harry Potter." If they weren't mostly owned by big multinational corporations that use them as PR arms for their movie & TV branches (another Paris Hilton book, anyone?), most of them would've been gone long ago. /rant.
Do what I did and self-publish it as a POD (print-on-demand) book at Lulu.com. It's absolutely free (you must handle pre-press and publicity yourself) and Lulu will print it as it's ordered, ship it and handle payment through major credit cards and Paypal. You set the price and Lulu takes a 20 percent commission; any books you order are shipped to you at cost. I recently published a special-interest book, "The Unabomber and the Zodiac," and have been one hundred percent satisfied with the results. With POD a self-publishing author need no longer pay for huge press runs; in fact, you don't need anything up front unless you wish to purchase a distribution service for about $100 that will make your book available through online retailers like Amazon.
It really is like the lottery now. Good luck finding a new home for your book :)