On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 08:01 +0000, Chris Croughton wrote: > On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 12:49:53AM +0000, Graham Seaman wrote: > There is no such primary market in recent works (as MJ > > says, if you want to get a book printed you normally have to give > > exclusive printing rights to one publisher),
> > But even with the traditional publishers the 'monopoly' rights tend to > now have built-in limits, so that if they cease printing the book and > have no intention of reprinting the rights revert and can be sold > elsewhere, and in other cases they are only exclusive for one form > (hardcover by one publisher, paperback by another, for instance). > You're saying it's possible for the author to negotiate such a limited surrender of rights, not that the law has changed; am I understanding that right? The reason I'm asking is that I've been asked by an author to make a book available on the web. The original print rights were assigned to a company which went broke and were taken over by a well-known left-wing publisher. The author is happy to make the work freely available, since it is now out-of-print; the publisher say they wish to retain all print rights they have inherited, and the copyright statement on the web version must say that it cannot be converted to print-on-demand, although they themselves have no intention of reprinting the book or providing a p-o-d service. As I understand the law, they are within their rights to say this - correct? Cheers Graham _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
