Except that some of them are, indeed available on Amazon.
see??
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-1834596-2004124
Damn!
OK, this link works.
Why would Amazon carry a bootleg? Not their style. These are licensed.
They have almost all the titles available in various download formats (txt, msreader, mobipocket, acrobat) here.
Scroll down a bit.
I’ve got them all, and I just load one up to the old PDA whenever I’m in the mood. I use mobipocket, and the formatting is fine.
Forgot to mention that as far as I know, Conde Nast didn’t renew their copyrights, so the stories are public domain.
- Doc Savage * magazine was originally published by Street and Smith, an outfit that specialized in popular fiction magazines, and Street and Smith were quite scrupulous about renewing copyrights. Conde’ Nast basically bought out Street and Smith and acquired the copyrights to both Doc Savage and the Shadow. John Gunnison at Adventure House has researched the copyrights for both Doc Savage and the Shadow at the Library of Congress (with an eye to reprinting them), and he reports on the alt.pulp and alt.fan.doc-savage newsgroups that the novels are still very much under copyright.
It is extremely unlikely this guy has permission to reprint this material. For one thing, Conde’ Nast is asking ridiculous amounts for these properties. Rumor has it that they’ve demanded a million dollars just for the movie development rights–not the movie rights, just the development rights–for Doc Savage.
You see, when Bantam Books started reprinting Doc Savage back in the sixties, they originally negotiated some ridiculously small fee with Conde’ Nast, who apparently thought the properties were essentially worthless and were glad to get anything at all for them. But the books took off and sold like crazy, making Doc a publishing phenomena, and Conde’ Nast felt they’d gotten burned. Ever since then they’ve been demanding insanely huge amounts for the rights to Doc Savage (and the Shadow as well, I understand).
I’m very skeptical that a small operation like Black Mask could have negotiated the rights, and the somewhat amateurish production values and the absence of copyright information in the book itself are obviously bad signs.
With literally millions of items to deal with, Amazon obviously can’t take a close look at every item sold through their service. It would be pretty easy to sell bootlegs through Amazon. And if this is licensed material, why has this guy not made any overt attempts to alert Doc fans that the books are available? I’m sure he could sell several hundred if not several thousand copies just by making announcements on the newsgroups.
Look, Bosda, browse through the newsgroups and maybe research some of the threads dealing specifically with copyright issues. I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with me that it isn’t very likely these are licensed reprints.
So…what you’re saying is…these are about to become scarse, hard-to-find Doc collectables, about 15 minutes after Conde Nast shuts em down?
Important update----
I received volume 1 today.
It has the original illos from 1933!!! 
Typefont is clean, clear & easy to read.
It will even look good on my bookshelf.
I like this.
If you are a collector that likes stolen stuff…
I’m still not certain that it is stolen.
Suspicious, yes…but not proven.
And the book I have credits the original publishers.
BTW–is the Doc movie scuppered, now that Arnold is Governater?
Yes, but certain posts above have made it particularly suspicious. I suppose the onus is on you to determine whether it’s a) worth your time to research b) legal or not. I’ll leave that choice to you.
I think the question raised above was whether there is a copyright notice that shows the current (at the time of printing) copyright holders. That would be the easiest way to tell if it is legal, but certainly wouldn’t prove if it’s not. FWIW, the Doc Savage pages I found on a quick google search all showed that the copyright was held by Conde Nast.
Is there a way to e-mail Conde Nast?
You can check their web site. Being really, really bored today, I actually called their Chicago office. Went to voice mail and they probably wouldn’t know anything. I then called the Reference Dept. at the CPL (or Chipublib because those fuckers in Cleveland took CPL. I gotta send a shout out to the RD because they are fucking awesome!) and she helped me out. The best we could figure was that Ballantine held the copyright for some/all of the books in 1962, renewed 1967 and the 25 year thing would have that expire in 1992. I called Ballentine and got transfered to the perpetual hold line, so I gave up. I also looked into checking with the US Copyright office (a bit confusing, I think it’s related to the LOC somehow, but am not sure). For some fucking reason, there’s no online database and everything that linked to whatever official site mentioned fees associated with the search (maybe that’s why there’s no online thing…).
I’d actually email this guy. His site doesn’t have a copyright notice (then again, there doesn’t appear to be any text taken from the books) and he links to Blackmask! I think if you emailed CN, they’d 1) never get back to you and 2) sue you at some point. If you emailed Blackmask, you’ll never hear from him, so I think this is your best bet.
In case you do pursue this, let me give you some advice: don’t tell them you ordered the book! Just tell them you were thinking about it! I know a guy who ordered Autocad off of Ebay, did his due dilligence and still ended up with a pirated copy. Autodesk was more insterested in busting him than the pirate!
But, honestly, I’d just not order any more books from this guy and let it be. At his prices, you could probably find used original (well, '60s-era) books. I’d always choose those over the shitty paper that POD always seems to use.
Why did you call Ballentine? * Bantam * did the reprints, not Ballentine.
D’oh. That’s what I meant.
I think that Pow has had too much Ballantine–the kind that comes in 5ths! 
Got my copy of the first (two) book(s). Printed on fairly nice paper, perfect-bound. It is obviously not a reprint of the original pulp, nor is it a reprint of the paperback version. It has been reformatted to suit the paper size, and typeset. Some care has been taken in setting it up. I’ll need to actually read some of it to determine whether it was OCRed, and if so how well it has been cleaned up. One thing I can tell is that the hyphens in the original have come through as long dashes – en-dashes, I think.
It’s okay, but not great – and with the concerns about potential copyright violations, I don’t think I’ll be purchasing more in the series any time soon.
Em-dashes are the long ones.
Word for word this is what I was going to post.
I absolutely love Doc Savage and I devoured all the paperbacks I could. The movie was a travesty, and I’ve always thought Doc would be an outstanding candidate for an update.
And it ensaddens me that it may be getting ripped off.
em-dashes are the longest ones. en-dashes are the middling-sized ones. I can see instances of em-dashes in the book, used to set off clauses – as I am doing here – and they are clearly different from the shorter-but-still-too-long ones used in place of proper hyphens.
Thus, my conclusion that they are most likely en-dashes. Either that, or the typeface used has some f’ed-up-looking hyphens.
-Brainiac4, former typesetter