In the mid-1960s, there was a major industry in the production of short-run, high-priced reprints of academic and specialist titles that had been unavailable for many years. The boom started in the United States and was designed to service the requirements of libraries for the many new universities and colleges established during that period. Key players were reprint houses such as Archon, 1111
Greenwood Press, Kraus Reprint and Shoestring Press. In addition to those titles for which applications were made, many British titles were reprinted without permission, since they had fallen into the public domain in the American market through failure to renew copyright registration in that country (see Chapter 9). Publishers such as Dover continue to reprint titles in areas such as art and architecture.
A number of specialist publishers were also established in the United Kingdom, reprinting classics in such areas as anthropology, archaeology, indus-trial history and travel; David & Charles also undertook reprints as part of their programme. Since print runs were often limited to a few hundred copies, the terms were usually modest but the books had a renewed lease of life.
The boom has now long subsided and not all the reprint houses still exist, although newer publishers such as Wordsworth Editions have entered the field and publishers such as Sutton (an imprint of Haynes Publishing) revive titles in the area of history, as does the Phoenix imprint of Orion. Publishers with long-standing backlists may therefore still be approached to grant reprint rights to other publishers who feel that a book could be profitably revived.
Such licences are often dealt with on a passive basis, since the applicants make it their business to undertake market research in their particular fields of interest. However, if there is access to good historical records within a publishing house and an archive of publications, it may be worthwhile combing the backlist with a view to offering reprint rights actively to appropriate houses.
Without ready access to copies of the books, active promotion becomes a problem, since it is hardly a strong selling point to alert a reprinter to a gem on the backlist and then ask them to locate a copy themselves.
If a publisher receives an application for reprint rights in a title long out of print, the first step is to establish whether it is still in copyright in the required market or markets and who controls the rights. Under the present UK copy-right legislation, if the author has been dead for more than seventy years, the work will have passed into the public domain in the United Kingdom and may be reprinted without permission or payment, although reprinters may offer some finished copies of the work as a matter of courtesy.
If a reprint application is received for a British title either from a reprint house located in the United States or from a reprinter located elsewhere but seeking to include the United States in its sales territory, it is vital to check the copyright status of the work in the United States. In previous years, many British titles had fallen into the public domain in the United States through failure of the British publisher or an authorized American sublicensee to reregister the work for protection with the Library of Congress. Since 1 January 1996, many such works have had copyright protection restored follow-ing changes to US domestic copyright legislation to comply with the Uruguay Round of the GATT. As a general principle, some works that originated in Berne member countries after about 1925 and that have hitherto been in the 164 Other reprint rights
public domain in the United States are eligible for a further period of US copyright protection, provided that their authors were citizens of, or domiciled in, a Berne member state and provided that the work in question was still in copyright in its country of origin as at 1 January 1996. It should also be remem-bered that the US has now extended its own period of copyright protection to the life of the author plus seventy years, in line with the period in the United Kingdom and other EU countries. For further details, see Copyright legis-lation in the United States in Chapter 1, and The United States in Chapter 9.
In the case of a British book covered by the 1911 Copyright Act but published before 1 July 1957, when the 1956 UK Copyright Act came into force, and where the author has been dead for less than seventy years, rights originally assigned to the publisher may have reverted to the heirs of the author twenty-five years after his or her death; this anomaly has already been described in Chapter 9 since it may also affect dealings with US publishers. It may never-theless be possible to offer to negotiate for reprint rights on behalf of the heirs if they wish this, subject to receiving an agreed share of the proceeds. Locating the heirs of deceased authors can prove problematic if there has been no contact for many years since the book went out of print. If the author was employed by an academic institution or large commercial company, its personnel depart-ment may be able to assist; other sources of information may be the Society of Authors (more relevant for literary authors), the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS – see Chapter 23) or the WATCH website, run by the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas in association with the University of Reading in the United Kingdom (http://tyler.hrc.utexas.
edu). If the date of death of a British author is known, a will search may reveal some information.
Research could also reveal that although a work is still in copyright, rights may have been returned to the author or their representatives if the original edition went out of print. Some older contracts with authors provided for auto-matic reversion of rights in such cases, but this has long been regarded as unrealistic since legitimately sublicensed editions may still be in print and selling well even after the original edition has ceased to sell. Most head contracts now require that the publisher must inform the author when the main edition goes out of print or that the author must provide written notice of his or her intention to reclaim the rights; there may nevertheless be provi-sions for existing sublicences to run for their full term. Many head contracts for trade titles are no longer granted for the full term of copyright, but for a specified period of years with or without a provision to renew for a further period.
If a licence is granted, payment is normally made on the basis of an advance against a royalty on the recommended retail price in the main market, although some applicants may seek to pay royalties on their net receipts for bulk export sales or sales at high discount. If world rights are requested, it should 1111
be established how the reprint edition will be marketed outside the home market. Licences can often be limited to a period as short as three years, with provision for renewal if there is a continuing demand for the book at that point.
Reprint houses frequently ask to borrow a copy of the book from which to originate their editions. For books published before 30 June 1957, there is no legal justification for requiring an offset fee, since copyright protection for typo-graphical setting was first established when the 1956 UK Copyright Act came into force on 1 July 1957, and is limited to twenty-five years from first publi-cation. If the book requested for such use is a first edition and the only copy owned by the original publishing house, it may have some intrinsic value. Some reprint houses have been known to slice the spine off the book for easier scan-ning access and may replace the binding incompetently or use a different binding altogether. It is thus inadvisable to lend an only copy or a copy borrowed from a source such as the London Library, even if assurances are given that the book will be well treated. If the licensees can be persuaded to locate their own production copy, such risks can be avoided.
If a reprint application is received indicating that a book could have a new lease of life after a dormant period, there may be a good case for alerting in-house editorial colleagues in case they feel that the book could be revived by the original publishing house rather than through the medium of a licence.
Authors and topics may come back into fashion as trends change, and the applicant for a reprint licence will undoubtedly have undertaken research to assess this. On the other hand, if the original publishing house has changed its profile since the work was first published, it may be more sensible to grant a licence to a publisher who has developed a specialized list in the field and may be better able to reach the target market.