eBook Format

Yesterday in her post on my blog post, “Kindle,” Cissy Ford said:
“Sue, are you going to put your books in the ebook format? Please??”

Oh, Cissy, I wish I could. You might notice that if you try to buy ebooks online, you will be able to find ebook versions of the novels that were published in the past five to ten years, and, of course, ebook versions of of the classics, but between those two there’s a big gap. The gap’s name is ‘copyright problems.’ Most of the novels published during those “gap years” have not been released as ebooks.

The classics are no longer (or perhaps never were) protected by copyrights.  They were published too many years ago. Newer books are blessed by contracts that specify ebook contractual expectations and payments. Those books in between – roughly those that were contracted from 1935-2000 – do not have ebook right specifications in their contracts. And right now there is a big tiff between authors and publishers about who owns those ebook rights, the authors or the original publishers. Lawyers, organizations, corporations are all in on the fight, and neither authors nor publishers can publish those ebooks until the problem is solved.

Unfortunately, my books fall in that last category.  If I have a new book published, I am very hopeful that the publisher will contract and release an ebook version! Meanwhile, thank you for your patience!

Blessings,

Sue