Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Copyright of books DOES lie with authors. It's very, VERY rare for an author to transfer copyright to a publisher.
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That is just not true. If that was the case, there would not be the problem of the books which are out of print and which the authors wants to release (say in ebook format) but the publisher does neither want to re-print nor authorize the author to release. Same problem in music. There are plenty of old but excellent 33LP disks which cannot be released by musicians because of crazy copyright laws which prevent the composers and/or musicians to release their old and good records. I personally know of authors and musicians in this case. Sometimes the copyright is nominally the author's, but then he/she is contractually bound anyway. If it was otherwise, the authors could publish through any number of publishers at any time they would chose and in as many versions/languages as they wanted and that does not happen, alas.