Anthologies not available as ebooks

[Katsunami]

Because I have a lot of Forgotten Realms books already, I've created a document that lists all of them, based on this page: List of Forgotten Realms Novels. That way, I can mark the books I own in there, to prevent buying doubles in a Kobo coupon shopping spree. (Without those Kobo codes, I wouldn't be able to afford all those books @ $6.59. It would take me years to buy them al.)

After I got into ebooks again in 2011, I've started to buy them from the top down (starting in 2011), keeping up with new releases, as these were the ones to be available as ebooks first. 2013 through 2010 are complete, and half of 2009 I have as well. Later, when the older ones started to become available, I've started to buy them from the bottom up (1987 onward), so quite some of the earlier years are also complete, so I can start reading there, and keep buying "upward" and "downward" until everything is complete.

Everything is going according to plan... apart from the anthologies.

I've noticed that NONE of the Anthologies are available as ebooks: The Realms of Elves / Magic / Undead ... " are all released as paperbacks only, even the latest ones. I also couldn't find the first book in the Sembia series. "Sembia: Gateway to the Realms", books 2 through 7 are all available, but it seems book 1 isn't. Why the frack not?

It's an anthology.

Whats the reason those anthologies are not available?

It shouldn't be a problem with publishing rights, as most or even all the writers of the anthology stories are people who have been writing for TSR/Wizards for a long time, some even since the very beginning. Some wrote D&D modules for TSR even before the very first Forgotten Realms novel got published. I can't imagine that a writer would say "Yeah, you can publish everything I've ever written for you as an ebook, except the short stories in the anthologies." That would be just weird.

So what's the reason then?

[bgalbrecht]

If the original contract for the short stories did not include rights for a digital edition, then anyone wanting to create an ebook would need to contact each author and negotiate a new contract. It's much easier to do this when it's a single author. I'm also aware of a Baen ebook where the estate wouldn't sell the digital rights for the story, and they had to leave it out.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

If the original contract for the short stories did not include rights for a digital edition, then anyone wanting to create an ebook would need to contact each author and negotiate a new contract. It's much easier to do this when it's a single author. I'm also aware of a Baen ebook where the estate wouldn't sell the digital rights for the story, and they had to leave it out.

I understand. Case in point is that most, if not all of those stories within the anthologies are written by authors whose books written for TSR/WotC have been reissued as an e-book. I wouldn't see any reason for any of those authors to specifically withholding permission to reissue those short stories.