I just read about an article that
says Amazon stands to make a fortune offering out-of-print books. One of the most appealing reasons for indie
authors to publish e-books is that they will be offered forever. No out-of-prints;
Amazon’s policy is that, if you buy a book from them, they will always have a
copy available for you to download.
So, if copyright laws are for the
life of the owner plus fifty years, and Amazon and other e-book retailers must
provide copies of them forever, and 49 years after an author’s death, their
books suddenly become branded as ‘important literary works’ by history or
literature professors for studying our era, and the sales dramatically spike of
that author’s books, and those new readers are in their 20’s, with a potential
lifespan in their 100’s…. Can you say, “cash
cow”? How about, “windfall of
astonishing proportions”?
And WHO gets that money? The digital provider, who spends mere pennies
sending you an e-book, would get it all.
Not the descendents of the author.
What can we do?
- a. Change copyright laws for e-book rights to belong to their assignees ‘in perpetuity’, and let the heirs fight it out
- b. Register our books’ copyright under a business name/corporation, and let whoever runs the corporation decide where the royalties go
What I would prefer is:
- c. Create a corporation just for e-book copyrights – the executor of the estate of the author’s family signs up their e-books, the CEO guarantees a huge chunk of sales (95% minimum) will go to the designee of the family as determined by the executor, and the corporation uses its profits to maintain the database.
Now is the time to make these
decisions! Look at how long copyright
laws have been in effect!
Although many people laugh when
referred to Wikipedia as a source, the minimum we should do is read their article
on copyrights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
So, who can we indies trust to establish the standards?
