Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
My thinking is if the book is that darned great, someone over the years would have found a way to get them to the masses, be it published last year, last decade, last century or a millennium ago.
I can of several that were that important. The Mythologies, the Bible/Koran/other religions texts, Shakespeare, etc.
I am pretty sure people that lived in those times could think of others they thought should be preserved.
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I don't think you get the concept of orphaned books. Those are books whose ownership is so obscure that it's not possible or at least extremely expensive to find the owner and offer to pay them. There are a lof of such books and none of them are ancient books. Ancient books are out of copyright.
It's not possible to determine the value of any given book. You might find it worthwhile and I might not. Or the other way around. That's how it is when judging a book. It's a very different situation when looking at books as a whole. It's hard to say none of those books have value. It's almost certain some do. But they're lost to us now and by the time their copyrights expire they'll have been forgotten and many will be lost forever.
It's very unusual for books to stay in print beyond the first year. In his introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of "Pillars of the Earth" Ken Follet explains that most of his books were best sellers but Pillars never sold more than a modest amount. But all his other books were out of print a year later and Pillars kept selling just enough to keep it in print so that 25 years later it had sold more than all his other books combined.
The point is that most of his books were best sellers and were out of print after a year. That's the normal situation.
Now that we have ebooks and keeping books, which don't go "out of print" the problem of lost and forgotten books becomes a much bigger problem.
Also, as discussed in the video I linked to yesterday, all books are based on other books or other people's ideas. Public domain means we all own them. And we do. They're part of our culture. Part of what makes us who we are. They are us!
Barry