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Comment by thayne | Hacker News Reader

IMO if a work is out of print (or equivalent depending on the medium) for more than a few years, it should be released into the public domain. Or maybe something like the public domain, but requires attribution.

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Like trademark: Use it or lose it.

(The reality is that publishers would put lazy photocopies up for sale at ten zillion dollars a piece.)

Have you dealt with publishers? If a work is out of print for a few years, much better to have rights revert to the creator.

Even that doesn't always work --- I was rebuffed by Joan Turville-Petre's son when I asked for a license to reprint his mother's notes on J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of _The Old English Exodus_ on the grounds that he would prefer to work with an academic, rather than an individual.

Anyone know an academic specializing in Old English who would like to oversee this reprinting? I have a typeset PDF which only wants proofreading and updating of the index.

Public Domain Review?

Then every book will be immediately out of print after its initial run, while the not-quite-a-cartel of publishers all decline to print it until it hits the point where they no longer have to pay the author.

Then the publisher loses out on exclusive publishing rights and also loses money. It's in their interests to keep it in print so long as it's a profitable book, even if they have to pay some percentage to the author. Once it goes into public domain every publisher can reprint it and the original publisher has to compete with them on price.

> so long as it's a profitable book

And here is the rub. You’ll end up with three or four super authors with the rest being ripped off.

Much better for it to revert to the author in that situation IMO.

I'm not arguing for it (or against it for that matter), I was just pointing out that the analysis in the comment I responded to didn't make sense. Every book won't be allowed to fall out of print and copyright just to exploit the authors because it would also hurt the publishers, they also benefit from exclusive publishing rights. Publishing rights are granted by the copyright holder (the author) to the publisher, much like patent licenses.

Regarding unprofitable books, they'll fall out of print anyways because they're unprofitable. Those authors won't be getting ripped off because they won't be making money either way beyond initial commissions and what few sales they get.

> Much better for it to revert to the author in that situation IMO.

The publisher doesn't hold the copyright, the author does, so copyright (the particular right under discussion) can't revert to the author as it never left the author. What the publisher holds is publishing rights per a contract with the author. That could revert back to the author (or be voided or however it's structured), and that would be reasonable but we don't need any laws for it, that would fall under normal contract terms. Whether it's a common thing now or feasible for a particular author (with no clout? maybe not, with billions in sales from prior books? probably) is another matter.

Part of the problem here is a change in tax law a couple of decades back where the backlist as a bunch of printed books in a warehouse became a tax liability when Congress tried to close a tax loophole which non-publishers were exploiting.

Rather than the old model of printing a reasonable print run, selling books as demand allowed, and keeping unsold books in warehouses only paying tax as they were sold, the new laws required paying tax on inventory each year --- so any books not sold in the first year were not as profitable, hence book remaindering, and the current mess.

Do we really need publishers anymore?

They are useful for quality control when the author is not well known.

As someone who has both independently published and gone through a technical publisher, there’s still a stamp of approval, fully deserved or not, associated with your book being published by a known name.

So, e-books are either immediately out of print, or never out of print?

What if we applied the simple test that the book was originally published on paper and no other printings have occurred (digital or paper).

Never out of print. If there's an e-copy available to buy, that's better than millions of other books.

By "in print" I mean, the publisher is actively selling it.

Although, if I were writing the law I would require selling DRM free ebooks for ebooks to count for maintaining the copyright.

So, if an e-book is listed on Amazon, does that count as "actively selling it"? It's for sale, after all. The same happens with Print On Demand (POD).

This is actually a real issue when authors have deals where rights revert to them when the book goes out of print.

https://katemckean.substack.com/p/when-does-a-book-go-out-of...

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