[sonofpendragon]

There are too many posts to trawl through, so apols if this is already mentioned. The first 1908 edition of what has been at times, the third best selling book of all time, is also out of copyright on January 1 2012, or this Sunday. This is due to the fact that 70 years and more will have then passed since the author of the book - Lord Baden-Powell passed away.

However, for those wishing to put together reprints / facsimiles etc, do note the following, (not doing so will see you in an awkward position) :

It is very very hard to get hold of an original 1908 edition, not impossible mind, but hard, and costly. If you can get it, either the single paperback or hard cover editions, or the complete set of magazine serials which went on to be combined in the foresaid book will do, but whatever you do, do not use the text of the more recent re-releases / reprints / facsimiles of the 1908 edition, as the basis for your reprint. This is because, and you cannot blame them (assuming they were licensed by the Baden-Powell estate, I suspect some were not) for protecting their own copyrights; the texts and order of pages have been changed in minor but important ways. The only way to spot the changes is to have the original, and of course if you have the original, then to make such comparisons would be redundant, such frustratingly circular I know. If you did use these, you would be infringing their copyrights of their newer editions. So - you do need the original, but - if you have ... bingo (maybe).

There's no guarantees of success with any book, never. But if you do have the original, then you have three days to be at least up with the game or perhaps ahead of it, by scanning the pages, perhaps use OCR here and there, format the files, convert to html or Mobi etc, and get the thing on Kindle. I have to miss the boat on this one, but it will be interesting to see if at least one does pop up, and I suspect, knowing Amazon's zealousness over not allowing multiple editions of the classics on Kindle, that that's all there will be. But anyone who does try this and gets beaten to it, no worries, there are more and more platforms opening up, maybe not as big as Kindle, but big enough, and those that I have seen do not have such limitations.

Best of luck - to someone.

SofP