Electronic versions of out-of-print paperbacks

[hernep]

Cutting spine can greatly enhance the scanning process i.e. making it faster to scan. In this case when he only wants to OCR the scans, pressing book on flatbed will work.

But I'm with you murraypaul, some books will cast spell on you if you cut them Sometimes the heart is not cold enough to cut/rip/press the books, you see.

By the way, I wasn't aware Office has OCR built-in?? I use FreeOCR for my humble efforts. Even tried Google OCR demo, as well.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by hernep

...some books will cast spell on you if you cut them Sometimes the heart is not cold enough to cut/rip/press the books...

That is true. I have a few books that need not fear the guillotine because of their age.

[Freeshadow]

@GA Russell
I think you managed to show the most ignorant point of view on the problem of (possibly)
orphaned works ever possible. really.

[GA Russell]

Thanks Freeshadow. I'll put you on my ignore list.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I wonder how much a copyright attorney or similar company would charge to do a "title search."

More than you can afford.

Patent searches and trademark searches are one thing: the records exist. Title searches for copyrights are quite another. In many cases, no records exist that will tell you who the current rights holder is.

A chap I know went through an analogous exercise a few years back. He's an Orthodox Jew, with a strong interest in Jewish mysticism. He has an obscure volume that is highly popular in those circles, and tends to be photocopied and passed around, because you just can't find the original book. He was interested in getting a new edition produced, but was chewing on rights issues. The author was long dead. The publisher that produced the original version was long out of business. He was happy to talk to the rights holder, but had no idea who the rights holder was, and had no way to find out.

He did eventually find the grand daughter of the original author, but before then, he was considering simply publishing a new edition, and compensating the rights holder if one stepped forward. He had no interest in making any money on the deal - he simply wanted the book available to like minded folks interested in the topic in a better form than someone's photocopy.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Thom, well, my experience with heirs has involved older downtown buildings used for commercial purposes. The heirs were much easier to deal with than real estate developers.

If you have experience with heirs of orphan works, please tell us all about it!

Talk to people in the SF field. There are an assortment of works that haven't been re-issued because the estate has an exaggerated idea of how much the property is worth, and demands reprint fees no one is willing to pay.

An apposite example is the late H. Beam Piper. He committed suicide in 1961. His work was out of print for several decades because his widow had an inflated idea of the value. Ace Books finally secured the rights and reprinted a good bit of it (save some collaborations he had done with another author.)

An old friend of mine is proprietor of a small press, and has been returning some out-of-print works to publication in collector's editions. He was talking to Ace about doing limited edition collector's hardcovers. Ace was willing enough, since he wouldn't be competing with the paperback editions they were doing, but their rights and permissions people were tied up on other things and couldn't get to the paperwork at that time. The next thing we knew, Piper's work had entered the public domain, and all save one book that Ace apparently had renewed rights on started appearing at Project Gutenberg.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Note I said he may face criminal charges.

Copyright is civil law, not criminal. You don't face criminal charges for copyright violation.

There would need to be something else besides copyright violation to bring criminal charges into it.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nguirado

I looked for an electronic copy of World Without Men. Had to buy a used copy. I wonder why publishers don't do this. Scanning can't be that expensive.

Depends. There is an expense. You need more than just scanning, as no OCR software is perfect. A human being has to proofread the scanned material to catch errors. And after you have clean copy, someone needs to do the markup to create a decent ebook edition.

How likely a publisher is to do this will depend on the title. The basic question is "If we do this, will enough people buy it to cover the costs and make us some money?" If they think there's a big enough market, they may decide to. But if they do it at all, you can expect first priority to go to titles that they know are popular because they have been consistent back list sellers. For something like "World Without Men" (I think you are talking about the old Charles Eric Maine title?) I suspect they don't see a market.

I expect this to ease in coming years. Ebooks are now an important enough factor in the marketplace that some publishers are digitizing their back catalog. More may follow.
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Dennis

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Copyright is civil law, not criminal. You don't face criminal charges for copyright violation.

There would need to be something else besides copyright violation to bring criminal charges into it.
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Dennis

The emphasis was on may. I never claimed to be a lawyer (although I seem to know more about law than one self-professed lawyer here).

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Depends. There is an expense. You need more than just scanning, as no OCR software is perfect. A human being has to proofread the scanned material to catch errors. And after you have clean copy, someone needs to do the markup to create a decent ebook edition.

How likely a publisher is to do this will depend on the title. The basic question is "If we do this, will enough people buy it to cover the costs and make us some money?" If they think there's a big enough market, they may decide to. But if they do it at all, you can expect first priority to go to titles that they know are popular because they have been consistent back list sellers. For something like "World Without Men" (I think you are talking about the old Charles Eric Maine title?) I suspect they don't see a market.

I expect this to ease in coming years. Ebooks are now an important enough factor in the marketplace that some publishers are digitizing their back catalog. More may follow.
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Dennis

Based on what I was told about the production costs on my E-reads titles, some of which were created by the above method, it probably costs $500-$1000 to do the scanning, the OCR, the proofing and correcting, the markup, the cover, and all the other ancillary costs to produce an ebook for professional distribution. (Depending on the length of the book and probably other factors.)

Now consider what Dennis said about considering whether they'll make a profit. This assumes the publisher has the ebook rights to begin with. I got personally involved in the creation of my own backlist ebooks. Many writers don't have the interest, the knowledge, or the time. I think that's changing.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

The emphasis was on may. I never claimed to be a lawyer (although I seem to know more about law than one self-professed lawyer here).

And the emphasis on "may" was in error. Copyright law is civil law. Talk to your own attorney about the difference between civil law and criminal law.

The "self-professed" lawyer is indeed one, but his area of practice is real estate law. The law is highly specialized, and a practitioner in one area may well claim lack of expertise in another. A different set of legal codes will cover it, and a different specialist should be consulted to get proper advice.

Copyright law is property law. The property is intellectual, not physical, but it will have a value, and the value is why copyrights are claimed and why copyright law exists.

What happens if a copyright is violated? The first requirement is that the rights holder be aware of it. If you hold copyrights, policing them is on you. You can sue if you discover they are bring violated, but you must discover it and bring suit. It does not happen automatically, and will not be done for you.

If you do sue for violation, the question will be what you can expect. The first thing you want is for the violator to cease and desist. You probably also want monetary damages. What you can get will depend on circumstances. One question is what loss you actually suffered. How much money did you lose because someone pirated your work? The court will want you to substantiate that. Another question was whether the copyright was registered. The US is a signatory to the Berne convention, and under it, registration is not necessary to have copyright. That exists when the work is completed. But registration is useful if you expect to have to sue, as it provides legal proof that copyright existed as of the time the registration was done, and you can sue for punitive damages as well as statutory damages. Whichever route you take, you may discover the defendant is judgment proof, as they have no assets and can't pay any substantial damages. You'll have to settle for stopping the infringement and destruction of the infringing materials

And filing suit can be an expensive and time consuming business, as there are court costs and legal fees.

An acquaintance is a major comics fan. When a new comic book is issued, high quality scans are posted to the Internet the day the book is released. He's been tracking it, and posted a question to a list we are both on populated by publishing types, including people in the comics industry. He wanted to know who he could talk to to offer his assistance in stopping the piracy. The answer was no one, because the comics publishers didn't care. The real money in comics these days is licensing the characters for things like movies, TV, and toys. (It's a good bet that Marvel made more money on the licensing for the first Spider Man movie than they made on the entire run of printed comic books since the start of publication.)

The books serve as a development area for new characters that might become valuable, and sell to collectors and those who would rather read an actual book than view the panels on screen, but from the viewpoint of Marvel and DC, stopping the piracy is simply more trouble and expense than it's worth. They can't be bothered. Their rights aren't threatened, and they aren't losing enough on lost sale of the books to justify the time and effort required to stop it.

Copyright law isn't sacred rules where violators risk a lightning bolt from heaven if they break them. For instance, scanning a paper book to produce an electronic copy for your personal use is technically illegal in the UK. So what? If you're a UK resident, and do that to a paper book you own, the publisher won't know, and if they find out, they are unlikely to care. You've already bought the paper copy (or somebody did), and they made revenue. They aren't losing anything because you chose to format shift. If you try to distribute your electronic copy and they discover it, they probably will care. In that case, they may well suffer potential losses, as people can simply download your version instead of buying one for themselves, and you can assume they will come after you.

Ultimately, it's about money, and whether suit is brought at all and what the results will be will depend upon how much money is involved.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Based on what I was told about the production costs on my E-reads titles, some of which were created by the above method, it probably costs $500-$1000 to do the scanning, the OCR, the proofing and correcting, the markup, the cover, and all the other ancillary costs to produce an ebook for professional distribution. (Depending on the length of the book and probably other factors.)

The biggest factor I can think of offhand will be the size of the company doing it. Big companies have big overhead. It simply costs them more to do anything.

Now consider what Dennis said about considering whether they'll make a profit. This assumes the publisher has the ebook rights to begin with.

And in many cases, they won't. These days, electronic rights are a separate area of the contract. In earlier days, they weren't mentioned at all, because ebooks didn't exist. The publisher bought the rights to issue paper volumes, and the fact they they hold the rights to the paper volume does not mean they have electronic rights.

I got personally involved in the creation of my own backlist ebooks. Many writers don't have the interest, the knowledge, or the time. I think that's changing.

I think so, too. And I see an emerging group appearing who offer publishing services to writers with backlist books, who would like to offer electronic editions, but don't have the time or knowledge to do it themselves.
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Dennis

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

An old friend of mine is proprietor of a small press, and has been returning some out-of-print works to publication in collector's editions. He was talking to Ace about doing limited edition collector's hardcovers. Ace was willing enough, since he wouldn't be competing with the paperback editions they were doing, but their rights and permissions people were tied up on other things and couldn't get to the paperwork at that time. The next thing we knew, Piper's work had entered the public domain, and all save one book that Ace apparently had renewed rights on started appearing at Project Gutenberg.

So at least there was a happy ending

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

So at least there was a happy ending

For suitable values of happy.

He wasn't unhappy about it - simply bemused. It doesn't affect his plans. He caters to the collectors market, and there are plenty of people who would buy deluxe hard bound slip cased editions of Piper works. (Like me...) Now he doesn't need to deal with anyone over over rights.

What we couldn't figure out was whether Ace let the rights lapse on purpose because they no longer cared, or accidentally because of oversight. Either seemed possible.

He mentioned dealing with another company about producing a limited edition of a different work, and their response was "Go ahead and do it. We'll send you a piece of paper later saying it's okay. What we could charge you for an actual license on this would be less than it would cost us to have the lawyers prepare a contract."
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Dennis

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And the emphasis on "may" was in error...Dennis

Whatever.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...How much money did you lose because someone pirated your work? The court will want you to substantiate that...Dennis

And yet we frequently see excessive awards granted, such has the McDonald's hot coffe case.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...The first requirement is that the rights holder be aware of it. If you hold copyrights, policing them is on you. You can sue if you discover they are bring violated, but you must discover it and bring suit. It does not happen automatically, and will not be done for you...Dennis

No kidding. Thank you for stating the obvious. What set you off on this tangent?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...Another question was whether the copyright was registered. The US is a signatory to the Berne convention, and under it, registration is not necessary to have copyright. That exists when the work is completed. But registration is useful if you expect to have to sue, as it provides legal proof that copyright existed as of the time the registration was done, and you can sue for punitive damages as well as statutory damages...Dennis

It's true you do not have to register a copyright but can you show me one instance where someone successfully sued (in other words sued and received a favorable judgement) without having registered the copyright?