Re: thought for the week

On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 07, 1999, Jeroen Hellingman <jehe[_at_]kabelfoon.nl> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 06 Aug 1999, Ewan Kirk <ewan.j.kirk[_at_]solent.ac.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > > I have a question: how would someone go about finding out if a
> > > copyright work had been abandoned before the end of it's term? One
> > > advantage the current system has is certainty: as long as you know
> > > when the author died, then it is possible to calculate when the
> > > copyright will expire. With abandonment, I can forsee that this
> > > would be complicated. I'm not necessarily saying that this would
> > > be a bar to implementation of the system, I'm just curious as to
> > > how this would be addressed.
> >
> > It isn't easy to establish whether a work is public domain in the
> > current system as well. Maybe you manage to get a death date for
> > the main author, but then, death dates for translators, for
> > illustrators, etc. are much harder or even impossible to obtain.
> > (It would be a nice adjustment if a name of which no information is
> > available at some central register may be treated as an anonymous
> > work, it would certainly be an incentive to have such information
> > available. For example, I wish to digitise "The South Pole" by
> > Amundsen, Amundsen died in 1928, but when did his translater, A.G.
> > Chater die?) that is one reason I am also against the life+XX
> > formula, a fixed term would be easiest.
> >
> > To establish whether a book is in print, some guidelines should be
> > incorporated on what would constitute enough efford in finding whether
> > it is in print, including, for example asking the publisher/author (but
> > he may not willing to tell you) checking publications like "books in
> > print" (my best bet, they are available in most libraries and larger
> > book stores) attempt to order the work.
> >
> > Already the Dutch laws allows somewhat wider "fair use" if a work has
> > gone out of print.
>
> Increasingly, a lot of book dealers -- particularly Amazon.com and
> Barnes & Noble -- pride themselves in being able to obtain "out of
> print" books. Question whether a book is truly "out of print" if
> copies are available through a major online ordering system. The
> answer will depend upon the out of print clause in the agreement
> between the author and the publisher, which defines what is meant
> by "out of print" and determines whether a work will be deemed to
> be o/p or not. One more resource that is not available to the
> would-be re-user trying to find out if a book is o/p or not.

In the case of Barnes & Noble, they do have titles which are specific to them. If you want the book, you order from a Barnes & Noble subsidiary, aka Barnes & Noble -- you're not going to get it anywhere else. Therefore, is it out of print? No. Is it easily obtainable for an independent bookstore? No. Therefore, is it to be construed as available? Yes/No/Maybe.

In the field of custom publishing, there are now a lot more companies coming online, if you will. Ingram's has had its "Lightning Print" for some time now, and other distributors are emulating it. Print runs can be from 1 to whatever. Books do not need to be hauled all over the country (or the world, depending on the place of printing) anymore -- they can be run within a specific geographical radius to a specific customer base. In some ways it might be construed that this is just another way of saying "vanity press," but it isn't. They're offering their services to authors, but they've also contracted, or are working on contracting, with some pretty big publishers.

Additionally, several of the major publishers have begun their own custom publishing divisions. Of course, these would probably be the academic titles rather than the mass market books. For books in these systems, "out of print" is becoming just a temporary thing.

All this being said, there are still way too many cases where the publisher will not respond to a customer as to whether or not a book is op or available in some other format.

Barb

Barbara Ruhmann
Text Buyer
UCD Bookstore
University of California
2828 Cowell Blvd.
Davis, CA 95616
Phone 530-752-5538
Fax 530-752-4791
e-mail brruhmann[_at_]ucdavis.edu
http://www-bookstore.ucdavis.edu/ Received on Tue Aug 10 1999 - 15:49:53 GMT