Some dead authors are still not available in e-book format; why (do you think)?

Cafe Society
1

Two come to mind, Georges Simenon and Graham Greene. Both still in copyright, but both dead, so I assume the estates are preventing conversion to e-books.

Are they thinking that they will lose money if their books are available electronically? Would that be true (that they would lose money)? Is there any research or reliable evidence about that one way or the other? Both authors are published by Penguin, and there are Kindle editions available in UK but not in US.

Anyone have any knowledge about the ins and outs of this situation?

2

Some living authors are uneasy about releasing their works as e-books because their publishers insist on crippling them with DRM. Some of the copyright holders of the works of dead authors may feel the same way.

3

It would differ depending on each author’s estate.

The most likely issue is money. Hard copy books bring in a solid, verifiable return. Authors get paid on a percentage of the cover price, for which any manipulation can be determined by a simple audit. eBooks pay authors on a percentage of the net profits, which opens things up to Hollywood accounting.

Further, if the estate is making money from the book sales, there’s the possibility that an ebook edition would cannibalize those sales and leave them with less money. The evidence for that is inconclusive (one book editor I know has said that their ebook sales have not done so), but the belief is there.

psyconaut – that’s utter nonsense. If anything, the issue is a fear that DRM won’t work. Authors are afraid that people will take the book and distribute it for free (it’s already being done). Authors deserve to be paid and the worry is that free copies of their copyrighted materials will destroy the market for paid copies.

4

I suppose you haven’t heard about the long-running “International Day Against DRM” and “Authors Against DRM” campaigns, in which authors of various stripes have been speaking out against the use of DRM on their works? Novelist and journalist Cory Doctorow has been particularly outspoken on this issue. A lot of scholarly and technical writers feel the same way. You can count me in as well, for what it’s worth.

5

It also costs a significant amount to convert printed works to digital form, for either e-book or quality republishing. I suppose scan-to-file is okay for some things, but I won’t pay much for such books in either format, not when most such are in free PDF libraries. Scanning old typeset material is not often done well, either, and if the basic job isn’t done right, no amount of straightening, cleanup, contrast tweaking etc. really makes the pages readable in the sense that a clean page is readable.

I’m happy to work through scanned copies of rare and specialized works and I have a PDF library of over 300 works by a Victorian-era figure; just having the text in any form is priceless, given that some of these books only exist in the dozens. But if you’re talking about books meant to be read and enjoyed and used… truly digital text or re-typeset is the only acceptable form, IMVHO.

Yes, there’s OCR. We’ve all read OCRed works and their quaint e#orz and miss steaks. Without careful proofreading and editing, OCR, especially of older material and stuff that can’t be completely flat-scanned (such as rare and valuable books that can only be opened so far) is only a first step.

I had a friend, a not-too-unfamous :wink: genre author, who wanted to bring out new editions of an out of print trilogy. We almost had a deal, but my end of it was to digitize the books to acceptably-proofed levels so I could reissue them in e-book and paper… and then hand over the digital files. Of about 900 paperback pages total. It was going to take around six months of my time or around $3k for a service (after which I’d have to proof it again anyway)… meaning there would little profit. Except for him and his agent, who could then make a beneficial deal with a bigger publisher.

So I said no, and still re-read the ratty paperback originals from time to time. I see someone finally did the job, and both e-book and hard copy are on Amazon.

So if a book is truly out of print, it’s most likely because the rights and permissions aren’t clear, the author or estate isn’t accommodating, and there’s a huge cost hump to get over to bring it back to print.