Quote:
Originally Posted by ownedbycats
Is it? I've been checking it against a digital unedited copy and would say it's 98% identical. The only changes I've seen were gay > carefree and beat > leave.
|
The first change doesn't change the meaning. The second change is major change of meaning. So not trivial. It's no longer the same story. If some is making that sort of change to a PD work, then it needs to be indicated in the subtitle. If it's in copyright, they need the permission of the author or estate.
I was annoyed with Gutenberg about "At the Back of the North Wind". On that page they recommended a link to an illustrated version, so I downloaded it instead.
Its title is "At the Back of the North Wind (Simplified)" and it has a second author.
it's about 28,000 words versus 92,000 in the original, but at least the title warned me. It was actually paper published that way, perhaps for younger readers. I'd call that seriously abridged. Readers Digest did that. I now don't bother with them if I see them even free.
I expect a republished book or PD ebook to have a new title if it's not the original.
I have both versions of Feist's "Magician" on paper and one has "NEW REVISED EDITION". Not only that, but the author did it and wrote an extra Acknowledgement and Preface.
If you do more than typos and punctuations, like gay > carefree or ejaculated to shouted that's revision, though it's often insulting the intelligence of the readers. If you change the meaning, then it's a derived work. It doesn't matter if it's only one sentence in the book (maybe 0.1%). Like if she/he/they don't die. Or who the criminal is (needs less than 1% rewrite).