From LISNews.com:
Here’s A Neat Chart from BookMagazine that shows how well the “classics” are selling these days. It’s a look at the best selling classics in 2002, according to BookScan.
The top 5 are The Hobbit, Catcher in the Rye, Red Tent, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lord of the Flies.
Over at The Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine observes:
What would have been really interesting was a column on this chart showing when each title is currently scheduled to become available in the public domain. That would be an eye-opener. Anybody have the time to do the research and the math?
Indeed! With a little more math, we could roughly determine how much the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act stole from schoolchildren and the rest of us in each case–if not now, at least in the future. For all books, movies, records, etc., in fact anything if you wait long enough, the total will reach the billions.
Attention, Congressman John Conyers: Care to value your Detroit constituents’ interests–on term extension and also file sharing–over those of your Hollywood contributors? Good riddance to Ernest Hollings in this regard. At least he’s leaving on his own rather than seeing disgusted voters push him out. Don’t take your long Hill career for granted.
Update, Aug. 22: Jenny has pointed to some specifics from Eliot Landrum—telling when each title will finally hit the public domain (some are already in it).
