Public Domain Stories and Self-Pub

I'd stay away from it. The issue is murky enough, plus the market is saturated with collections of Doyle's work, yours might get lost in the shuffle. And even though you're including it to provide clarification on references in your short, there are still probably ways you can make that clarification without having to include the Sherlock Holmes story. And there are probably enough rabid fans/purists who'll be shocked to see your story next to Doyle's.

The estate still owns copyrights to some of the stories and sometimes tries to assert trademark claims over the others. That said many people do reprint the stories generally considered to be in the public domain. Whether it would be a good idea... probably not. Most people reading these stories know where to find the canon and would probably just consider it filler material (possibly misleading re: how much original content they are getting for the price.).

I wouldn't. While perhaps legal, it seems cheap and uncreative.

If you market it right I can see how that might work, but it might be wise to "add value" to the reprint such as by annotating it in some way relevant to your audience. For example if some did a steampunk re-imagining for a story the could annotate the original and discuss the actual technology of the time etc.

Actually, the two threads are similar enough to where a mod might want to merge them?

The answer is you can do whatever you like with text in the public domain, including republishing it verbatim.

For example, you could add zombies to Pride & Prejudice.

(However, the question about whether it's a good idea, and whether a particular text is fully in the public domain are good things to consider before doing so. Doyle's estate, for example, has been notorious for bringing lawsuits with arguable merit which can cost you a bundle even if you "win".)

TheOneWho said:

Amazon is selling plenty of books that are explicitly Lovecraftian from different publishing houses. I don't see them saying if they got permission from anyone.

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What exactly do you mean by "explicitly Lovecraftian"? Lovecraft texts? Or stories inhabiting Lovecrafts milieu? There's a BIG difference, in terms of copyright protection.

And the issue of copyright protection for Lovecraft's work has long been thorny. In the U.S., standard public domain applies to anything published prior to 1923. Most of Lovecraft's work was published subsequent to that date, I believe.

caw

Long answer: if you aren't sure, either contact the most recent known publisher to find out or go ahead and publish and wait for the most recent known publisher's lawyers to come knocking at your door.

Shorter answer: if you aren't sure, don't use the characters or situations. You might safer in the long run, as was suggested in your Sherlock Holmes thread.

I've merged your two public domain threads, TheOneWho, as they are so close in intent. We ask for people to only start one thread per subject here, as AW is so big already that duplicate threads (or threads which are very close, as your two were) would make it collapse.

It's up to you to work out if the works you're interested in are in the public domain or not. The easiest way to do this is to contact the publisher or rights holder, which is often the people who inherited the author's estate. There isn't a list which tells you what's out there and what isn't, and it's always safest to assume that a work isn't in the public domain. Legal wrangles can get expensive very quickly.

Whether it's a good idea or not to combine a public domain story with your own works depends on what you do with it. If you just package the two in a single volume then to me, it would look like a cynical attempt to benefit from the talent of the other writer. If you add value to the public domain story by including a commentary of some sort, or by adding to the text in your own way (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for example) then that might be interesting--but only if it's done very well.

TheOneWho said:

By 'explicitly Lovecraftian' I mean referring to characters and settings first mentioned in the works of H. P. Lovecraft. If my story is about the rise of Cthulhu from the dread city of R'lyeh, I'm very explicitly using characters and settings created by Lovecraft.

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Your post raises two separate and distinct issues. First, referring to the above, you may be confusing "copyright" with "trademark". Copyright refers explicitly to textual material; trademark protection gets sought for the use of names and other similar material in the context of certain kinds of products or services. I don't know about Lovecraft, but I can provide a similar example from the same era:

Edgar Rice Burroughs became a HUGE success with the publication of Tarzan of the Apes in 19xx. That success led him to write many sequels, rapidly, over the next few years. The original and a number of the sequels have lapsed into U.S. public domain, which means anybody can reprint them for publication, freely, without paying royalities or getting legal agreements.

HOWEVER, Burroughs obtained trademark protection for the characters (Tarzan etc.) and the setting of the stories, meaning you can't write a new Tarzan story without permission of the trademark holders, now the Burroughs estate. As I said, I don't know if this applies in any way to Lovecraft's milieu.

TheOneWho said:

Yes, my understanding is works before 1922 are definitely in the public domain. But that doesn't mean everything written after that is still under copyright. Anything written between 1923 and 1963 was only under copyright for 28 years, then must have had the copyright renewed within a certain time frame. If it was not, it is in the public domain.

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Mostly correct. Actually, in U.S. terms, public domain dates from before 1923. 1922 is fair game, generally.

More important, however is your correct understanding of the 28-year copyright protection term, which could be renewed for an additional 28 years, during the years you cite. Since then, the laws have changed, and never retroactively. Anything still under copyright in 1963 came under the protection of the terms of the revised law. That situation still applies.

And, in general, anything likely to have been considered a valuable copyright-protected property would have had the copyright term extended via the 28-year extension statute. Examples certainly would include the works of Faulkner and Hemingway and Steinbeck, all still protected by copyright to this very day. Among many others.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Lovecraft situation has been contentious, for a variety of reasons, not least including the efforts of Lovecraft's acolyte and would-be successor, August Derleth, to cash in on Lovecraft's mythos. I understand that he, and his Arkham House publishing business, have historically been very litigious in asserting copyright protection for Lovecraft's works.

caw