[Monolith]

Over the last few months, I've been researching the life and work of the late Bill Smith, author of the highly esteemed Studmarks on The Summits which is an account of amateur fell racing between the years of 1861 - 1983.

Some of you reading will be familiar with this text and have doubtless read the PDF edition on the Fell Runners Association website. Since meeting a number of fell running friends of Bill in Liverpool over the last few months, I've been very much interested in his life and in the production of the book. Very few copies of the book were ever produced and it had to be financed in a joint venture in conjunction with the FRA.

Since learning more about this fellow Liverpudlian and the circumstances in which he died, I've felt a desire to stimulate an effort to have the book reproduced to the letter and the production costs secured by Kickstarter-style funding. After some debate on the FRA forum and on the FRA Facebook group page, two things have become apparent; firstly, there was some ambiguity as to whether Bill had wanted further copies of the book to be published and secondly there might have been further copy produced by way of an update.

After meeting one of Bill's friends who lives two roads away from me, we have been able to obtain his sister's telephone number and contact has been made to see whether she would have any objections to a republishing (she didn't). She was asked by Bill's friend whether she had come across any written work of his and I understand that she might have done but these papers might have been passed on to the FRA or friends of his; she's going to look into it for us. With this in mind, could it be simplest and 'just' to focus on republishing only the original book?

At this stage, I'm unsure whether the author had produced a will and left the copyright to anybody in particular. An initial suspicion is that he might not have done but I'm now unsure how to proceed. Would I be right in thinking that I would need written permission from his sister to republish the book? Who would I go to in order to obtain the book's copy? Would it need to be manually rewritten etc. etc. For clarity, I've begun to look in to this operation from the point of view of creating a working group. I don't have the intention to solely take the reigns and commit to something that would be better progressed among a few keen individuals.

Some links about Bill can be seen below (including my post on the FRA forum):

http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/showthread.php?22655-Stud-Marks-On-The-Summit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Smith_(fell_runner)

http://fellrunner.org.uk/studmarks/?p=1

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bill-smith-lonely-death-of-a-modest-giant-of-fell-running-2366786.html

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/13/bill-smith-obituary

http://www.economist.com/node/21533348

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-15208250

I would link to the FRA Facebook page but a request to join has to be submitted. Asked whether an appetite existed for a republishing, just shy of 200 people 'liked' and commented that they would.

Lastly - and as explained in the FRA forum post - the intention is that all surplus from the sale of the book is to be given back to a mountain rescue charity or similar. I do not intend to profit whatsoever from any involvement with this operation.

Your thoughts and experiences of publishing are very much welcomed.

[Falling Down]

Oh definately.  When I ran for DP in the early pre-Internet nineties it was the only book on Fell Running and other than club newsletters and the FRA journal about the only printed matter on the subject. 

Here's a little blog post I wrote when he died. https://bensblogredux.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/stud-marks-on-the-summit/

What a great project.   I'm sure various people who knew Bill will come out of the woodwork with assistance.  Perhaps consider an Unbound crowd sourcing project?

[A Jooser]

Under current law the copyright of the written work will last for 70 years after the death of the author. Assuming he made no mention of the copyright in his will (or didn't leave a will) then the laws of intestacy apply. If he has no wife, children, grandchildren or surviving parents then it's likely his sisters have inherited the copyright so definitely a good idea to get them on side with any plans you may have. This questionnaire-type thing on the Government's website seems a really useful tool to work out who inherits when there's no will. I always refer to this useful page about UK copyright law.

I'm not a lawyer so what I've written above may be complete misinformation...

Getting written permission of a copyright holder is a very good idea and certainly good practice, but if there is any breach it's down to him/her to sue and - unless it's a best seller - I doubt the awards are that great. As it seems you've a good chance of establishing who is the copyright holder and obtaining their written permission to republish, doing so will save any potential hassle.

With regard to reproducing the book, one way of getting the text for a new typeset edition would be to run the PDF of it through some OCR software. I use Tracker Software's PDF-XChange Viewer which was free to download when I did it. This will enable you to copy and paste the text into a desktop publishing package to work on it. However the Optical Character Recognition process is not flawless and it will be necessary to carefully go through the text correcting mistakes - changing 1s back to ls, /Ns back to Ms, VVs to Ws, 0s to Os, etc.

Another option for reprints is a facsimile reprint which basically means getting hold of an original copy of the book, separating the pages from the binding and scanning or photographing them one by one to construct an exact replica of the original edition.

I hope this is helpful and good luck with it.

[tomtom]

Are you sure about the 70 year thing Jooser?

I ask, as a popular old text book in my discipline - last print run in the mid 80's was 'reprinted' by someone copying each page - then printing it again (as per your method suggested)... afaik it was totally legit, and the original author is very much still alive (and I suspect may have wanted some royalties)....  Also, aren't a load of the books google scan - done when they're 20 or 25 years old?

I may well be hideously wrong of course!

[A Jooser]

Yep, pretty sure, but like I said I'm not a lawyer.

It basically comes down to whether anyone wants to take action for breach of copyright, which generally isn't that likely. If you take the same textbook into your local public library and ask to photocopy it, they'll probably want to know if it's for your own personal use. If you say 'no, I want 100 copies so I can sell them' they'll quickly tell you about the laws of copyright.

Google does scan new books but fought a lengthy legal battle over it in the US. I think it involved various out of court settlements. But different countries have different copyright laws. Some countries it's 50 years, we're 70 and I think it's 100 years in the US. All the books you see digitized online on Archive.org or the Gutenberg Project are old enough to be out of copyright.

[Falling Down]

Jooser's right on the 70 year limit.  The key is getting the holders involved. A couple of mates run publishing companies re-printing old books and usually get this kind of thing sorted out via the family or estate of the writer.

An optical scanner into a word processor followed by a very close proofread for accuracy is the usual route.  Then into Adobe or another DTP for printing and publishing. 

I'll buy one.

[Monolith]

Thank you all very much for this information and discussion. It's a project that has a series of disparate elements, some of which I'm unsure how to tie together at this stage.

FD, great shout on Unbound, I'll look in to this further. So many questions at this stage but all of the elements appear to be there for this to happen.

Thanks all for the copyright thoughts too. I'll take a good look through this text when it comes to assessing that side of things. Will keep you posted and welcome any other contributions.

[cofe]

We use Pearl Scan for scanning old books to OCR, including a couple which had to be done without damaging the books.

[steveri]

Good luck with the project. Nothing useful to add, but my feeling is that there will be a general goodwill towards getting it done but you might well have to provide the drive, however reluctantly! It's a funny one isn't it, in that the book is almost open source since free copies have been in general circulation for a while ...and before Bill Smith's death? Does anyone at the FRA have a view on the legalities of this and whether Bill approved? I am very far from a lawyer

...I've never actually read it, does it stand up to modern eyes? I think a clubmate may have a copy.

[Monolith]

We use Pearl Scan for scanning old books to OCR, including a couple which had to be done without damaging the books.

Thanks Cofe though I sense that might prove a costly option? I'm up very early these days so could always just retype the whole thing.

Does anyone at the FRA have a view on the legalities of this and whether Bill approved? I am very far from a lawyer

There haven't been too many forthcoming committee members online so far. I'll be telephoning some of them this week for further discussions. I've put the message out as far and as wide as I can to see if there are any strong objections forthcoming. In my view - and on the basis of the conversations had with his friends so far - I can't see of a justifiable reason not to progress.

[Monolith]

Things progressing nicely now and I have a meeting with the author's sister this week. She has given me permission to acquire the copyright and I'm enlisting a patent attorney friend to undertake this process for me. Additionally, I have the backing of the Chairman and Treasurer of the Fell Running Association with this project. They have agreed to retail the book via the FRA site which is a huge tick in the box.

Currently waiting on a response from OS too on the map copyright side of things (granted in the original edition).

On to the slightly more complex issue of printing the book; has anybody experience of a service such as http://www.blurb.co.uk/? I'm all for keeping things as simple as possible but have zero experience of printing a book!

[tomtom]

BLurb are good - not sure how they are for larger volumes.

MrsTT's dad makes blur booklets/books up with pics from family do's/get togehters and the quality has always been superb IMHO..

[Johnny Brown]

Organise a pint or two with Cofe. I suspect he knows more than the rest of us put together, and then some. If you get the funding sorted VG might even be able to do everything for you.

[steveri]

Chuffed it's moving on - I saw the thread on the FRA and linked older threads and thought it looked like an uphill battle.

The FRA has a slightly odd hands off approach to it's own forum. It's noticeably absent from some of the threads it would be best placed to give definitive advice on. That and the suspicion there's a few sock puppets with their own agendas, sometimes seems to over-complicate things. Getting the sister's backing is worth a lot I'd think.

[Monolith]

Chuffed it's moving on - I saw the thread on the FRA and linked older threads and thought it looked like an uphill battle.

As with most projects, as long as momentum is maintained, it will lead to something. I have an IP Attorney drafting up an agreement for the copyright assignment so things can be progressed accordingly.

I've also been speaking to the Intellectual Property Office and now understand the process of how to go about acquiring permission to republish the photographs where the owner cannot be traced (orphan works license). Let's see how things progress...

[mini]

Sorry I don't have any advice to offer, but I'm glad to hear this is developing nicely for you Monolith. I've seen your posts on the FRA forum, and think it would be a great historic publication. I know it's available to read as pdf via the FRA, but on a personel level, I would never read it in that format, but would certainly love to own a copy.

Good luck!

[Monolith]

Thanks mini.

I'm currently assessing the enormity of the task in seeking permission to republish all of the images. Since some sources are rather esoteric, it could end up being a very long winded process.

It's a shame that the image copyright permissions don't pass over with the copyright for the whole book. I don't think they do anyway...

[Yossarian]

How many images are in the original book? And are they vital?

Could you substitute illustrations / modern imagery?

This is an awesome mission you're undertaking - wondering if I can help in some way...

[Johnny Brown]

I'm currently assessing the enormity of the task in seeking permission to republish all of the images. Since some sources are rather esoteric, it could end up being a very long winded process.

It's a shame that the image copyright permissions don't pass over with the copyright for the whole book. I don't think they do anyway...

No they won't. I've been doing the same recently, it is a ball ache, but imagine doing it without the internet...

[Monolith]

I'm currently assessing the enormity of the task in seeking permission to republish all of the images. Since some sources are rather esoteric, it could end up being a very long winded process.

It's a shame that the image copyright permissions don't pass over with the copyright for the whole book. I don't think they do anyway...

No they won't. I've been doing the same recently, it is a ball ache, but imagine doing it without the internet...

I now have a copyright reassignment contract drafted up and will get it all signed off next week.

JB, have you processed an orphan works application yet with the IPO? Luckily, a lot of the images in the book were taken by the author and a good few of the other sources can be traced. For those that can't, it'll have to be the OW route I'm afraid.

Pleased that OS Open Data can be used for free commercially. This offers some very considerable savings to the project. Currently in the process of scanning and OCRing the entire book with a fellow FRA member in Halifax. So far so good!

[wintermute]

Nice one Tom. Looking forward to this.