How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

Hopefully the rise of e-books will be able to combat this trend, since it costs almost nothing to keep an e-book "in print" forever.

It costs almost nothing for the server electricity. But I think it costs a lot, relative to tiny sales, to figure out who would get hundreds of thousands of tiny royalty payments for books published many decades ago.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Thus, there would be more books available that are written before 1923 as compared to books written after 1923, as most non-classics from both times are out of production.

There is a middle category between classics and average books. Those in there are mostly the ones I read. AFAIK, all Pulitizer Prize winning books published up through 1922 are available as eBooks, because they are public domain. Those published starting 1923 are mostly unavailable as eBooks.

[bobcdy]

Recently I searched google for copyright royalty costs, and found one sample contract that specified 10% of the retail costs for each book sold.

If an ebook sells for $10.00, then the royalties on each sold copy will be $1.00. While the publisher loses $1.00 there is still the remainder that goes to the publisher and the retailer.

Would that really seriously hinder reprinting books as ebooks because the cost of the reprinting and maintaining availability is so low compared to print books?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by bobcdy

Would that really seriously hinder reprinting books as ebooks because the cost of the reprinting and maintaining availability is so low compared to print books?

I wasn't saying that the price of the royalty would hinder. The royalty price would often be zero because of not earning back the advance! The cost is in keeping track of whether royalties are owned at all, and of figuring out who currently owns the rights. Suppose it was the author, except she died intestate and had seven children. Now some of them are deceased, with and without wills. We are talking about serious recordkeeping costs.

Then, once in a while, there would be the cost of defending lawsuits in cases where ownership of the rights was in dispute.

Here's a prediction: The vast majority of today's eBooks would, in, oh, say, the 2070's, sell less than one copy per year. Maybe this would be true of 99.99% of today's titles! And from that revenue you would have to pay a boatload of lawyers and paralegals and software maintainers. I don't think it would be worth it for Amazon's successors, so they will, long before copyright expires, stop distributing the vast majority of eBooks published in this decade.

If copyright law stays unchanged, some of you young whippersnappers here will one day find out whether I'm right.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

May I respectfully disagree on one point?
There are many "classics" written after 1923. Hemmingway, Faulkner, Chandler, Steinbeck, are among the authors that would be considered "classics".

If you're talking litfic, then you might as well stop with James Joyce. No author is ever going to be more modernistic than him, and no works more modernistic (and incomprehensible) than Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses. Which actually makes the whole discussion about keeping later books moot. There's no point in keeping later authors available, because they're never going to top him, and no future literary movements to have their own great authors.

After all, you can never be more modern than modern, right? *nasty litfic prof possum grin*

[Pulpmeister]

In fact, looking through the available pre-1923 literature, a vast quantity of non-classics exist today, simply because they still have a considerable fan base.

Classics esteemed by the literary elite may not be esteemed by the public at large, and often are not, but a vast body of literature despised by the literary elite is alive and very well indeed in the digital world. I'll give three examples: William Hope Hodgson. Edgar Wallace. E Phillips Oppenheim.

It will eventually become apparent to all, possibly even the literary elite, that litfic is just another genre. Ultimately, it is sustained popularity with a wide public over the long haul which establishes whether any given work of literature is a "classic".

So a lot of the books which seem to have faded into "out-of-print" status and caused the big hole in the graph, could well come back as digital books (even if only as pirate digital books) simply because there is a demand for them not being met by publishers. It would be sad if it takes a thriving digital black market to goose legitimate publishers into action, rather than their own initiatives.

Quite a lot of the trouble, discussed here often, is that trying to coax digital rights out of copyright owners, or even finding copyright owners/heirs, can be a lot of work and expense, maybe not justifying itself.

[K. Molen]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

It costs almost nothing for the server electricity. But I think it costs a lot, relative to tiny sales, to figure out who would get hundreds of thousands of tiny royalty payments for books published many decades ago.

Oooh. Good point. Granted, it should be entirely possible to automate or simplify something like that, but who knows if publishers would be willing to do so. One example could be to have a look at the music industry and how royalty payments are done with songs played on the radio. But yeah, that seems like a bit of an undertaking publishers may not be willing to engage in.

Then again, I don't know much about how that works currently, maybe publishers already have an effective, streamlined system for that.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by bobcdy

Recently I searched google for copyright royalty costs, and found one sample contract that specified 10% of the retail costs for each book sold.

If an ebook sells for $10.00, then the royalties on each sold copy will be $1.00. While the publisher loses $1.00 there is still the remainder that goes to the publisher and the retailer.

Would that really seriously hinder reprinting books as ebooks because the cost of the reprinting and maintaining availability is so low compared to print books?

The cost of scanning and proofing and layout must be paid upfront (or else your have no product), Will they consistently get their money back? Most publisher don't want to make that bet, for books decades out of print.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by teh603

If you're talking litfic, then you might as well stop with James Joyce. No author is ever going to be more modernistic than him, and no works more modernistic (and incomprehensible) than Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses. Which actually makes the whole discussion about keeping later books moot. There's no point in keeping later authors available, because they're never going to top him, and no future literary movements to have their own great authors.

After all, you can never be more modern than modern, right? *nasty litfic prof possum grin*

Now, now, I was just citing some examples...(And when did Chandler become "litfic"? I missed the memo...)

[antithesis]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

There's a cost involved with keeping books in print, or even running a print-on-demand service, and I guess publishers have made the judgment call that those costs outweigh the earnings when it comes to many older books.

So you're implying that copyright is what makes the costs of older books outweigh the profit? I thought book writers only get a certain percentage of the profit, not a fixed amount, which would make this impossible.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by antithesis

So you're implying that copyright is what makes the costs of older books outweigh the profit? I thought book writers only get a certain percentage of the profit, not a fixed amount, which would make this impossible.

It's not always a matter of profit. The existence of a copyright prevents anybody from producing copies of the book without permission. It's that control that prevents backlist items from being printed/e-booked.

Example. The executor of the estate for Eric Frank Russell won't allow much of his works from being sold as e-books. He chose to forgo all profits from e-book editions (for the estate) to legally maintain control. There are publishers willing to sell e-books of his, (Baen Books comes to mind) so there would be a ready source of profit, but a choice was made to forgo that profit. And copyright prevents anybody from doing anything about it.

[antithesis]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

It's not always a matter of profit. The existence of a copyright prevents anybody from producing copies of the book without permission. It's that control that prevents backlist items from being printed/e-booked.

Example. The executor of the estate for Eric Frank Russell won't allow much of his works from being sold as e-books. He chose to forgo all profits from e-book editions (for the estate) to legally maintain control. There are publishers willing to sell e-books of his, (Baen Books comes to mind) so there would be a ready source of profit, but a choice was made to forgo that profit. And copyright prevents anybody from doing anything about it.

Certainly this example is the exception, not the rule, no?

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by antithesis

Certainly this example is the exception, not the rule, no?

I would imagine that there are far more cases where nobody knows who currently owns the rights.

Freddy Pharkas left the rights to his cousin Larry. Larry lost the rights in a poker game. The poker player left the rights to his mother. Mom left the rights to her cat.

Publishers would have to unravel the mess. Locate Miss Mittens. Start negotiating.

[SteveEisenberg]

Kindle Direct Publishing question:

What happens today when the average eBook author dies, with or without a will?

I suppose Amazon doesn't know until a royalty payment -- say, a direct deposit of US$15 -- comes back as account closed. Does the book then vanish? If not, why not?

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The cost of scanning and proofing and layout must be paid upfront (or else your have no product), Will they consistently get their money back? Most publisher don't want to make that bet, for books decades out of print.

I've said before that one way publishers could in a small way turn the tables on pirates would be to download pirated versions of out of print books that they own the rights to. Not completely sure about the legalities involved, but it doesn't seem that unethical at a glance.

And of course if Google is allowed to make copies of all books and if they are converting them to text and proofreading them, then it seems that they should at least provide the rights holder with a copy. For the courts to decide I guess. So they have the book, can be sold as is with a warning or probably proofread fairly cheaply. I doubt layout would have to be all that fancy.

Or maybe the various government could set up a system whereby the rights could be donated to Gutenberg or a charitable organization set up for this purpose and receive a set tax deduction.

A lot of out of print books are being sold as ebooks today and they are pretty decent quality for the most part. Hard Case Crime does an excellent job and I believe many of their books were out of print as paper and the authors are still living. Older works of Lawrence Block and Max Allan Collins for example.

Books go out of print for the most part because of supply and demand rules, same as whalebone corsets and the Model T. Sure you can buy a Model T or a whalebone corset, and you can probably buy a paper copy of most out of print books from a collector or specialty dealer. Might cost a few bucks, but if it is worth it you will pay the price.

And if the world will collapse because a specific work is not available because the rights holders aren't known, then I say re-publish it and be prepared to pay the penalties, You would probably not be fined to high, being a world savior and all.

Helen

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Kindle Direct Publishing question:

What happens today when the average eBook author dies, with or without a will?

I suppose Amazon doesn't know until a royalty payment -- say, a direct deposit of US$15 -- comes back as account closed. Does the book then vanish? If not, why not?

Probably because the author has a contract with a publisher for printing that book. The contract does not AFAIK say you must stop publishing the day I die. The publisher may even own the rights to publish for a long time. The royalty checks would go to the estate.

Possibly the publisher only loses their rights to publish in some cases when they stop publishing the book or a certain time after.

I say possibly and probably because I don't know for sure, but I have never seen anything that suggests an authors works cannot be printed the minute they die. Would have to be a strange contract IMO.

Helen