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I don't think copyright forced books out of print. The real reason was that they weren't making enough money in relation to other books.
Many books never made any money, but for those that were marginal, say making $1000 profit overall annually for the publisher, how would a publisher talk bookstores into keeping a book on a shelf where they would probably make one sale a year. If there were 50,000 titles in this category could even a small portion be placed in bookstores, and could a publisher have space and money to carry inventory on all of them? Sounds like a logistical nightmare to me.
With ebooks many backlist books and those that have been out of print for many years are being produced. Many of these books are still in copyright and many of the authors are still living/writing.
So if copyright was the main reason they weren't being printed physically, why are they being produced as ebooks one wonders.
Hard Case Crime is one example of a very small company who appear to be quite successful in this area and I think most if not all of their ebooks are under copyright.
Helen
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