Book publishers

It's all in how and who you ask. You have to find the right person, not just deal with a shill, and you have to ask professionally, not just as a hobbyist. That's been my experience with this sort of thing. For example, HP gave me permission to reprint Gordon Dickson's story called "Thank you, Beep" from the 1978 issue of the HP Calculator Digest -- even though it's going to be part of a book that I'm writing, which is clearly a commercial endeavor -- because I found the right person and I asked nicely. They simply required is that I include some boilerplate copyright text as shown here: http://www.snarc.net/pda/tybeep.htm. -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Guzis [mailto:cclist at sydex.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:35 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: Book publishers On 30 Jan 2007 at 21:53, Evan Koblentz wrote: Well, good luck with that. I've had my fill of experience with the music publishers--you find an old piece, say, from 1932 and you want to get a legal copy. So you write the publisher and get the response that "sorry, it's out of print--and you may not copy an existing copy". Okay, you ask them if they can sell you a reprint--the response can vary from "no, we don't do reprints" to "yes, we do reprints, and our fee is $150 per page for a barely-readable photocopy" Don't be surprised of Macmillian gives you flat-out "no". Such is the state of affairs as regards copyright. I keep telling myself that surely, this can't be what was intended by the founding fathers. Consider that our national anthem was a bald-faced ripoff of an English drinking society song. But then, that was then and this is now. Cheers, Chuck