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This is a somewhat older thread, but the subject still crops up for me. Recently, on a different board, the subject of war movies came up. Two of the movies mentioned, Von Ryan's Express and The Great Escape where based on books written back before personal computer and like many books from that era aren't readily available as ebooks.
Von Ryan's Express, a 1965 Frank Sinatra movie, was based on the David Westheimer book by the same name. I read the book way back when I was a teen/young adult and still went to libraries. The book is out of print, though you can buy used copies on the internet. The last edition that I saw mentioned was 1977. Oddly enough, there is an ebook version on B&N nook, the Rosetta Books edition, but it's no longer sold at Amazon or Roku. I'm not sure what the deal is there. Westheimer died in 2005. He wrote a sequel called Von Ryan's Return. I vaguely remember reading it, but it's been a very long time. Of course, since one can no longer download books from B&N, buying it there is like throwing your money away, especially since the future of the nook bookstore is very much in question. I do understand there are work around methods, i.e. there is a screen scrapper app that will scan in the nook book by reading it in the web browser.
The Great Escape was loosely based on the Paul Brickhill book by the same name. I've got the audiobook, but as far as I know, the book itself has never come out as an ebook. Brickhill also wrote the Dambusters, also made into a movie.
Oddly enough, both writers have living children so they aren't really orphaned works from the stand point of not knowing who holds the copyright, rather it just seems to be the case that they just aren't that interested in making the books available. If copyright really was property, this is a case where the property would be declared abandoned and put up for auction.
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