<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/02/forgotten-books-and-how-to-save-them/>
"On the
Neglected Books site, there is a fine meditation on rescuing
forgotten writers and their works from oblivion, and why this is important. As
its author Brad Bigelow explains:
I have been searching for neglected books for over forty years and the one
thing I can say with unshakeable confidence is that there are more great
(and even just seriously good) books out there in the thickets off the
beaten path of the canon than I or anyone else can ever hope to discover.
His post mentions three questions that “reissue” publishers must answer when
looking at some of these neglected books as potential candidates for
re-printing:
Is the book good (meaning of sufficient merit to justify being associated
with the imprint)? Is the book in the public domain or are the rights
attainable for a reasonable price? Will enough readers buy the book to
recoup costs and, with some luck, earn a profit?
The first is an aesthetic judgement, but the other two are essentially about
copyright.
Walled Culture the book (free ebook versions available) discusses
at length the issue of “orphan works” – works that are still in copyright, but
which cannot be re-issued because it is not clear who owns the rights, and thus
who could give permission for new editions. Bigelow makes a good point about
why this is such a problem:
Even in the U.K., which has the advantage of a national database of wills,
it can be practically impossible to track down who has inherited the
copyrights from a dead author. The database, for one thing, is incomplete.
There are millions of wills missing. There are plenty of writers who failed
recognize their copyrights as inheritable assets and didn’t bother to
mention them in the will. And there are plenty of writers who simply didn’t
bother to have a will drawn up in the first place. Every publisher involved
in the reissue business can name a dozen or more writers they’d love to
publish, if only they could find legatees empowered to sign the necessary
contracts.
The last question for publishers – will enough readers buy the book to recoup
costs and earn a profit? – is the other main stumbling block to re-issuing
out-of-print books for a new audience. Bigelow explains that this often comes
down to a key challenge: how does a publisher get a reader who knows nothing
about the book, the writer, or the publisher’s reputation to look at, let alone
buy it?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
