Thanks, Jeff -- Wiliams is one of my favorite authors, and
I'm very excited to be publishing a new edition of A TOUCH OF
DEATH next year.
We aren't publishing any public domain books, though, by
Williams or anyone else. For one thing, it's extremely hard
to establish conclusively whether a book published less than
75 years ago is or isn't in the public domain. Some
publishers claim to have a good understanding of the relevant
laws, and maybe they do; I do not, and wouldn't want to run
afoul of the law accidentally.
For another, Dorchester doesn't have an interest in
publishing PD books, which I can understand -- why invest a
lot of money and effort in publishing and marketing a book
when any competitor who wants to can legally 'freeride' on
your investment by publishing their own edition of the same
book once your edition enjoys any success?
Finally, there are a number of other houses out there that do
nothing but reprint works they claim are in the public
domain. Rather than fighting with them over the same limited
pool of material, we'd rather leave the PD works to them and
concentrate our efforts in an area in which they can't
compete for lack of resources and in which readers are
consequently underserved.
--Charles
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Jeff Vorzimmer"
<jvorzimmer@a...> wrote:
> Charles,
>
> There are a lot of great books, some by Charles
Williams, that are
in the
> public domain, which you might consider
publishing.
>
> Jeff
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