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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
This sounds like something that would happen with a textbook, and the publisher's in-house staff often -- I think ususally -- contribute more than do the title-page author(s).
It seems to me fairly unlikley that they would prevent continued publication of a profitable book that was totally, or almost totally, the creation of a single author. But I don't have a problem with an author having the freedom to sell all rights to a book to the publisher. If the author was legally forbidden to sell all rights to a publisher, this would reduce his or her income. While I am sensitive concerning freedom to read issues, I also consider interlibrary loan as a reasonable option for my reading an out of print book.
P.S. Does the Berne Convention say anything about this? I don't like international law violations.
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My understanding is that it happens fairly frequently and mostly with fiction.
A middling author has a reasonable backlist. The contract he signed with the publisher assigns copyright to the publisher. (Common practise I believe.) Some years later sales of the titles in the author's backlist are only making a small profit/breaking even.
The publisher has a "hot" new author who writes similar books, so the publisher decides not to reissue any more titles from the backlist of the old author because they may compete with the titles the "hot" new author. He hopes to make a lot more money from the "hot" new author's titles.
As he he holds the copyright he can prevent both the old author and a new publisher from publishing titles from the old author's backlist. And should a title on the old Author's backlist be picked up to make a film (movie for our US readers
) he is in a position to make a lot of money.
Commercially it makes sense for the publisher but culturally it is not good. It is also not good for the old author whose visibility and income are affected or public who want to buy titles of the old author's backlist. (Agreed the number of such people may be relatively small.)
I have no knowledge of the Berne Convention.