Monday 16 September 2013

Charles Dickens made no money from the sale of his books in America

"Now suppose that someone sees there’s money to be made from books, and decides to print and distribute my book themselves, without any agreement with me, and keep all the money they get from it. They’d be fairly stupid to do that, because this is where the law of copyright comes in. They’re not allowed to do it. It’s against the law. That’s why it very rarely happens now, although it used to happen a great deal before international copyright agreements came into existence. Charles Dickens, for example, made no money at all from the vast sale of his books in the United States, and he was justly angered about it."
Source:  Philip Pullman writing in Index on Censorship, September 2013
Also - The Story of Dr Jekyll & Mt Hyde was an early victim of piracy

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