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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
I'm wondering if there are copyright implications, or (if I can say this without sounds paranoid) motivations.
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Interesting question, but I wouldn't think it so. New editions may be protected by copyright, but there's nothing preventing anyone from making their own versions of a book that's in the public domain, adding or removing modern spelling, racism, zombies, or whatever they prefer.
Some other explanations for why we see more news stories about new editions of novels now:
- This kind of edits is nothing new, what's new is that there's a lot more discussion about them. (Does anyone know if there were much controversy in the 70s, when the Umpa Lumpas were changed from Black people imported from Africa to white people imported from a fantasy land?)
- The publishers are getting more greedy, and prefer to republish old books with a minimum of effort instead of building up new authors whose works need more editing to be publishable.
- As time passes, both the amount of old books and changes in social norms increase. Thus, the amount of old books which can be profitably sold to new readers, but which are out of step with current norms, increase.