Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Cheaper and better books for me.
Cheaper is unassailable:
The Kindle edition of Animal Farm is US$7.92. The Kindle edition of 1984 is US$8.55. The Kindle edition of Burmese Days is US$9.39. KoboBooks prices are generally higher. By contrast, scruplously legal web sites such as Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Canada, and MobileRead provide residents of countries like Canada and Australia, which had Orwell public domain days, all of his books for free.
Better is speculative, but:
A 28 year copyright term is short enough that it would pressure great writer's-blocked authors (Salinger? Ellison?) to eventually produce more books. But it's long enough that no one will think they have to churn out potboilers every few months due to that looming 28 years deadline.
Life plus 50 was for a world in which age of death was highly unpredictable, and writers often were men with far younger wives. Now that most author spouses have their own careers, and there are old age pension schemes, the need is gone.
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Amazon is US based. I use a US server, and I just searched on 1984 and found it listed for 99¢, plus other copies much higher in price. A while back it was free on Amazon - before they realised that it was still under copyright in the US.