Earlier this week, on a truly bright day of late summer weather, I wandered through a city centre bookshop with a paper and pen, randomly checking authors and novels.

Six titles by the American Philip Roth; that was good. Ten titles by the great John Steinbeck too. Even F Scott Fitzgerald, who might be considered in some quarters as a bit period, was represented by four titles.

This was better than I had expected. In a mood of optimism I inspected the P' section; but the novels of JB Priestley OM, the most versatile author Bradford has ever produced, were noticeable by their complete absence.

I didn't bother looking for his plays in the shelves reserved for drama.

Ah well, I thought, you know what they say about a prophet in his own country. Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner were once huge best sellers. Not a sign of either on the shelves now.

Kingsley Amis, whose comic novel Lucky Jim recharged the batteries of English comic fiction in the 1950s, was lucky to have one copy of his splendid book in stock. His son Martin, however, had four titles on display.

As for Howard Spring's great political novel Fame is the Spur, located in real places all over Bradford and Manchester... forget it.

In days gone by a bookshop was a place where you could reasonably expect to buy a copy of most novels by a published and acknowledged author. Vogue was not as important as it is now. If you couldn't, the local library was sure to have it.

Neither proposition is necessarily so any more. Libraries are having to redfine their role from places of quiet and study to drop-in centres and cafes for rootless teenagers.

Big booksellers now dominate the market and seem more interested in turnover than turning pages.

Barry Cox, managing director of Ilkley and Bradford-based Great Northern Books - the publisher bringing out Priestley's Bright Day - thinks the tide may be turning against what he calls the "number crunching" of publishers and big book sellers.

"It beggars belief that JB Priestley has been allowed to go out of print. We see the publication of Bright Day as a catalyst. When you look though the edition and see the comments from the literati such as Alan Bennett, Alan Ayckbourn, Margaret Drabble and Tony Benn, other publishers might ask the same question," he says, meaning why the best English story-teller since Arnold Bennett has been allowed to vanish from the shelves of bookshops.

Apart from the inexplicable decisions by modern publishers and booksellers, Barry thinks there are two other reasons why JB fell by the wayside.

"His publisher, Heinemann, was bought out twice. There was a change in commissioning, a clamour for more modern writers and because Priestley was so prolific and wrote for a broad cross-section of society rather than for a minority he could not be pigeon-holed," he adds.

As he intimated, the new edition of Bright Day offers more than the original novel.

There is a biography to set its author in context and preambles by Margaret Drabble and his son Tom Priestley. In addition there is a photo-literary tour through the Bradford of Priestley's pre-First World War life and appreciations from David Hockney, Denis Healey, Ann Cryer, Barry Cryer and a host of others.

Barry Cox and Northern Books' editor David Joy decided to produce the novel in this way in the hope of encouraging a new generation of readers to rediscover JB, who also wrote plays that Alan Bennett wishes he had written - An Inspector Calls and When We Are Married.

This latest attempt to revive JB Priestley's reputation, which has had more modern revivals than An Inspector Calls, is the fourth in the last 16 years.

In 1994 the T&A's late theatre critic Peter Holdsworth had a biography of JB published, Rebel Tyke, to mark the centenary of the writer's birth. There was a reception at The Priestley and a performance of The Linden Tree.

Cartwright Hall put on an exhibition of memorabilia that included recordings of some of Priestley's wartime broadcasts and Tom Priestley appeared at the Ilkley Literature Festival to talk about his father.

In 2001, West Yorkshire Playhouse staged three of JB's plays and persuaded Patrick Stewart to star in at least two. Oberon Books published the playscripts of these works.

Then in 2005 Oberon Books published a selection of JB's writings about the theatre with a preface by Tom Priestley.

None of these revivals were sustained: why should the latest make any difference?

Tom Priestley says: "Well, as a playwright he has never gone away. His plays are always being done. Some people don't realise he also wrote novels.

"The reason the novels are out of print is because of modern publishing.

"We hope that if the publication of Bright Day goes well it will be the start of a series.

"It has always been my hope that we would find a small publisher who would do a good job rather than just be a name on a list."

If Bright Day's print run of 7,000 should sell out, Great Northern Books would almost certainly publish another novel.

Tom Priestley thinks Good Companions should be the one, or perhaps Lost Empires.

l Bright Day by JB Priestley goes on sale next Monday. It costs £14.99 in hardback. You can contact publishers Great Northern Books on (01274) 735056.