James D. Macdonald said:
Assuming your publisher only bought United States rights (rather than North American rights or English language rights), why not resell it to a Canadian publisher?
Long story... I hope you don't mind if I share it, since there are a number of PA authors lurking who ought to now how the small and mid-sized niche presses work when one is a new author like myself.
Basically, the publisher actually has the North American rights since they had a Canadian distributor when my co-author and I signed the contract with a smaller American niche publisher in my genre. This smaller publisher was then bought out by my current publisher, which is much larger and has been around a lot longer (and has probably the best distribution system in the US when it comes to the Catholic genre.) Nevertheless, the relationship with the Canadian distributor was discontinued for some reason. Since there is little demand in Canada for Catholic books, especially from new authors, and since the American publisher really got behind our book in the US, my co-author and I were quite happy to let this slide. I think part of it was the fact our new publisher sold more copies in pre-sale than our old publisher had anticipated for the book's lifetime.
Where it got more complicated is that the new publisher has a longstanding relationship with the French Canadian publisher that is buying the French rights, the latter of which also has an English division. The two have co-published books in the past, and they're seriously considering doing so with the English edition of the sequel. (Such a deal will likely also involve picking up the rights for a French translation of the sequel.) So the more likely scenario is that the French publisher may buy in on the reprint of the first English books in the series, or they might simply pick up on the distribution. Regardless, to negotiate with another Canadian press would actually limit the potential of a package deal with the French publisher.
Until this is worked out, however, my co-author and I are in a strange situation where we're using the commercial model in the States and the vanity model in Canada. Of course, over 95% of our sales are in the US, of which well under 1% are eyeball sales. In Canada, however, I would place eyeball sales at no less than 50%, although this would include booksignings where the store purchased the copies directly from the publisher.
Given the 60% discount off of case lots from the publisher (50% for any other quantity) plus strait shipping (no handling), it usually only comes out to around $4.15 to $4.50 a book, depending if it is stopped at customs or whatnot. Additionally, I've got up to 90 days to pay and any unsold quantities are returnable, so overall I would say the opportunity to publish with the American market is a blessing from God and that the system is for the most part working for us rather than against us.
Put another way, according to my friends who publish in the Canadian Catholic market, my co-author and I are still selling more books each month in the American market than what most Catholic books sell each year in the Canadian market. Nevertheless, the latter still sell more books than the average PA author. Which brings me back to my original point, namely, PA authors deserve better.