| I just came across an amazing statistic. "Of the 300,466 books published in the U.S. from 1927-1956, only 9,240 are currently available from publishers at any price." The relevance of the 1956 date is that the Sonny Bono copyright extension bill in the USA makes these books copyright rather than public domain. So that's 291,226 out-of-print books that you cannot buy anywhere because the book industry is hoarding it. This reminds me of Janis Ian's proposal to the record industry. What if the book industry and the record industry created a site where their entire back catalogue of unpublished work was made available for download at a really cheap price? Like a few pence for each song and maybe a few tens of pence for each book. Does anyone think that wouldn't make a ton of money for them out of content that they're not exploiting anyway at the moment? I can think of a whole string of books and music from that canon that I would buy if I could. Like John Shirley's early work; Lewis Shiner's early work; anything by Bob Shea; the albums from the Grateful Dead spin off bands in the mid 70s; Reebop Kwaku Baah & Ganoua, the record of moroccan drummers that I stupidly leant to someone. The dub versions of Rico's Man from Waraika; And so on. [from: JB Ecademy] |
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[ 02-Dec-02 8:47pm ]
