Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I think we're actually in a pretty good place when it comes to ebooks - certainly compared to the situation ten years ago. Hugely more back-catalogue books are available, and they continue to appear. I really see no need for any drastic change to the law: realistically, I have far more books in my Calibre library than I can hope to read in any reasonable life expectancy.
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I don't disagree. I think that going forward, it's going to be a pretty rare book that is not available as an ebook. The real issue is orphaned works. My personal suspicion is the real hanging point for orphaned works is there are a few major players who like things the way they are, orphaned works isn't a problem for them, so they don't want any change.
I really can't think of any orphaned work that would have any real commercial value. Most of the backlist books that have any significant commercial value isn't orphaned, but rather the copy right holder doesn't want to release them as an ebook for various reasons, for example the Zelazny backlist.