Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Anyone can do anything they want with a book that's in the public domain, including charging for it. I buy a lot of commercial editions of public domain books. Worth paying money for a nice layout, and material extra to the original text, such as a good introduction and explanatory footnotes.
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And sometimes a publisher will put new material in i.e. new illustrations or it will be a new translation say from French to English which means that version is under copyright rather than being P.D. even though the author has been dead for a century. I mean the works of Jules Verne are likely out of copyright (aside perhaps from one about Paris in the 20th century) but that one was just recently re-discovered I think. So the original books are P.D. but a new translation from French to English or any other language wouldn't be.