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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
Books were being published before copyright existed.
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Not nearly as many.. and often the author of such works might receive nothing from the printer of such works (especially the more popular works).
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Your observation doesn't go against my argument, but in support of it. The reason why books are only commercially viable for a short period of time is because of the large competition. A publisher can't maintain in bookstores all the titles that they published in the last 5 years, and they have monopoly over books published over decades.
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You are making an unjustified (imho) logical leap there. Prior to ebooks (which obviously changes the game), it would have been impractical to say the least for the author to self publish. Even if we maintained the original copyright laws of the United States (14 years renewable (by the author or his heirs) once for 14 years), I sincerely doubt it would have had any beneficial outcome for the vast majority of authors. I believe many author contracts include clauses where rights revert after a work has been out of print for a given period of time.
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And this has nothing to do with my point. It's not about how much profit is being made, it's about how much of it goes to the author.
Both. Shorter copyright = fewer titles under copyright = less competition => higher value for the publishers compared to today.
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No it doesn't. A book that is out of print is out of print because it is no longer competitive in the market place. Lets look at it this way, of all the novels published in the 1970s, the vast majority are now out of print and have effectively zero commercial value (Perhaps not even worth the effort of converting them to ebooks). The fact that they might remain under copyright for another 100 years (i.e., their author might live another 30 years) has zero impact on their value. Those novels do not compete with the latest novels being published in any practical form.
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Bill