HarperCollins in San Francisco published the first title in the "Rim" trilogy. Clayton Carlson, then publisher, made a quarter-of-a-million dollars offer for the next two titles, "Mir" and "Chi." A week later he was out the door, and the trilogy was split up because of that. An agent from Writers House auctioned "Mir" and "Chi" off and the books received many offers including a top bid from Bantam which Besher turned down in favor of going hardcover with editor Bob Mecoy at Simon & Schuster. Shortly thereafter, Mecoy left Simon & Schuster, and "Mir" and "Chi" were orphaned to a revolving door number of S & S editors. S & S took 18 months, six months beyond the contractual date, to publish "Mir" and 24 months to publish "Chi" which set Besher's time-table for other projects off "by a little bit." Having paid a high five-figures for "Chi," S & S then printed only 2,000 copies of the book. Then publisher of S & S, Jack Romanos, would only communicate with Besher through a slew of soft-speaking apparatchiks and could not provide Besher with an explanation for their slight of hand. Besher was "born-again" to the ways of the publishing world in which authors have no rights and should just be grateful to be tolerated. Several passages in "Mir" were literally censored without prior consultation with Besher despite registered letter requests (after Besher had read the galleys) that they be reinstated. Orbit UK is the only English-language publisher to have printed the non-bowdlerized edition of "Mir." Kudos to Orbit editor Tim Holman for that. The nanosecond that "Mir" and "Chi" went out of print at S & S, Besher moved to have the rights reverted back to him. And they were.