Why doesn't Project Gutenberg have ...

[Kirsten Wever]

Why doesn't Project Gutenberg have quite a few books that entered the PD this year; that in principle should be there? Regarding the books I'm looking for, I say "should be" at PG because each is stated by at least two apparently legitimate non-profit online sources to be PD as of 1-1-2022. Still ... I searched for 11 such books, and while three are at PG, eight are not -- including these:

William Faulkner's Soldiers' Pay
Baroness Orczy's Celestial City
Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy
S. S. Van Dine's The Benson Murder Case

Any ideas about ...

other ways to find bonafide PD mss. of these?
ways to get PG to catalog them?
anything else that could help?

Many thanks.

Kirsten

[knotyouraveragejo]

Hi Kristin,

The online texts of books at PG are prepared by the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders. Assuming they don't start a book until it is in the public domain, there will necessarily be a delay in getting newly PD texts online at PG.

You can try Google Books, PG Australia and IA or fadedpage for these. Just be sure there is a bonafide copyright date on the text or scan. My Mortal Enemy is available at Google Books. There is a solo project already started here as well. The other three are all available at fadedpage as Distributed Proofreaders Canada texts..

Celestial City https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20140801
Soldiers' Pay https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20181197
Benson Murder Case https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20131113

Hope this helps!

[Kirsten Wever]

Many thanks Jo,

Does your information help ... yes and no.

I've found several works at faded page and Canadian / Australian Gutenberg which these sources say are PD, but which in fact are not. To my cost, in fact. I recorded and was ready to post a 1927 1st edition, US published, of Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers. This was PD according to Faded Page, also Canadian PG. But it was not US-PD. I got lots of help from Tricia, Anne, and others ... Greg Weeks found out we need the 1927 1st edition printed in the UK. So I started Harvard and MIT academic library network searches AND have friends in the UK working LSE and Oxford ... 3 weeks later: NADA.

I do appreciate your letting me know about those particular novels I was interested in. (If I'd known earlier I would have started the Mortal Enemy recording as my own solo -- but I'm glad someone's doing it.)

Best, Kirsten

[knotyouraveragejo]

Because faded page goes by public domain in Canada (50 years after the death of th author), not everything on their is PD for LibriVox, but we can currently accept texts from there if the copyright date is 1926 or earlier. All three of the links I posted are dated 1926.

[moniaqua]

I've found several works at faded page and Canadian / Australian Gutenberg which these sources say are PD, but which in fact are not.

They sure are, just not in US. Internet is international, so if you want to work in this area of PD books, you need to get used to obey more than one law if needed, as there is no international copyright law. Librivox hosts the books in US, so first thing is to follow US law. No one hinders you to travel to Canada (or Australia, there you might be lucky, too) and read books from faded pages, if you're lucky they might be allowed to be hosted at legamus.eu, following EU-law. You'd need to check that, though.

(If I'd known earlier I would have started the Mortal Enemy recording as my own solo -- but I'm glad someone's doing it.)

You still can read that one if you like. Librivox favours the choice of voice