Sold Out/Out Of Stock Books

Does anyone know what the FS's policy is in terms of the 'sold out' and 'out of stock' books that are listed on their website? Are they eventually removed after a certain number of weeks or months, or are these the titles for which we can expect new stock to arrive at some point?

For example, when viewing all of the books in the 'non-fiction' section, including the non-FS titles, 40 of the 121 books listed are unavailable (4 are out of stock, 36 are sold out).

I'm probably being fussy, but it would be useful to know whether titles that aren't coming back will eventually be removed from the website so that I can try to source the ones that I'd like from elsewhere.

Thank you in advance for your help.

If a page has a spot where you can enter your email to be notified when it's back in stock, then it'll definitely be restocked. The rest depend, could be soon, never, another release years later; you can always ask customer service or the social media person about if there are plans to restock a particular title. Limited Editions as in the name are limited and won't be restocked, though a standard edition may or may not be eventually released.

Limited Editions may show up as out of stock if they haven't bound the whole limitation yet. Then it comes back into stock when they bound the next batch.

Thank you both, that makes sense.

I'll give it a little longer to see if the FS either replenish or delete their 'out of stock' entries, but I may contact customer services about one or two titles.

>1 Caput_Lupinum: In addition to what >2 sdg_e: said (which is true - no good way of telling whether a title will be reprinted other than asking FS reps - and even they are wrong sometimes, although it's safe to say that the vast majority of sold out titles will not be reprinted in the near future), yes - titles that are not coming back will eventually be removed from the website. To find out when that happens for each particular title you will have to consult a good fortune teller. But you don't have to rely on FS website to refer to OOP titles: FSD wiki has a list of all books ever printed by FS along with brochures for almost every single collection since the 40s.

You would have thought it would be in the Society's interest to state whether a sold-out title is going to be reprinted and when. That would tell the would-be buyer of the sold-out title that they can still buy their wanted book from the Society even if it might be a few months to wait before it is back in print.

>6 English-bookseller: They actually do this with a small number of the titles that go out of print and that they know they are sending straight back to press, and those are classified as "out of stock," instead. They also let you sign up to be notified by email once those books are back in stock. I think the ones that are marked "sold out" (certainly the majority) may or may not be reprinted at some uncertain time in the future.

An example of "out of stock":
https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/little-women.html

As above, I think “sold out” means they’re unlikely to be re-stocked, whereas out of stock means they will be printing another run. As an example The Left Hand of Darkness originally said “sold out” but has since changed to “out of stock”. This seems to match what a few of us were told by customer service - initially it wasn’t guaranteed to be re-printed but they have since decided to print more.