(urth) Drotte-Roche mixup

[Jeff Wilson]

On 4/19/2011 11:34 AM, DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:
> I've never really understood this problem. When you do a new edition, you change what feel you need to change, and that ought to include obvious errors. The copyright owner and publisher decide together, of course.
>
> It's not the technology. You make the changes, repaginate according to the format (size and length) of the new edition, slap a new cover on it, and print. This has been done at least semi-electronically for decades with increasing ease and still the typos remain, so it can't be blamed entirely on the fact that each new typesetting introduced new errors. It might depend on the file format of the "master" files, though, and who knows what that means for the Sun books.

While this sort of thing is possible, chatter in the spec-fic forums 
leads me to think it's often skipped or done with minimal amounts of 
underinformed entry-level labor, as it can't be shown that any money 
spent on fiddling typo corrections will sell more books.

> Certainly a living author has to agree to these corrections (and it's difficult to convince a dead author), but this is something you see so often I can't believe Wolfe is very special in this regard. Maybe it's the agents who are to blame, or the lawyers. The Library of Congress doesn't care as long as you submit your paperwork (which is now done online).

I'm not sure where the LC comes into it; since 1978, copyright vests 
upon creation in a tangible form, and few typos aren't going to affect 
what is a derivative work or not.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >