Guild Files Comments on Mandatory Deposit of Online-Only E-Books

On August 18 the Authors Guild filed comments with the United States Copyright Office regarding whether online-only books should be required to be deposited with the Library of Congress. Currently, two copies of the best edition of all books published in the United States must be deposited with the U.S. Copyright Office for the use of the Library of Congress; books published only in electronic format, however, are exempted. We took the position that because online-only books are an important and growing part of our nation’s literary output, they should indeed be part of the collections of our national library. But due to the sheer volume of online-only titles published every year, and the burdens mandatory deposit would place on independently-published authors, these books should not be required to be deposited with the Library of Congress, unless specifically requested by the Library.

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The Authors Guild welcomes all points of view in the Comments section, and we encourage civil debate. With this in mind we request that all comments be kept respectful and courteous. Click here for our terms of use.

Pat McNees

I assume one reason the Guild doesn't think an e-copy should be filed is that a lot of very minor fiction is being published in e-books. What if one of those e-book is on the level of THE GREAT GATSBY, but the author doesn't have the connections or savvy to have sold it to a major publisher? How is that GATSBY-2 author going to have protection against someone who lifts whole brilliant parts from the novel in their printed-on-paper novel that IS sent to the Library of Congress. For whose benefit are those two copies of each book sent to the Library of Congress?
Garrett A. Hughes

I must admit to not quite understanding the ramifications of the comments, but on-line books deserve the same treatment as hardcopy, if desired by the author. Therefore, if the author wants the Library of Congress to keep a copy, they should acquire a copyright (at their own expense, of course). Any copyrighted material automatically gets deposited in the LOC. The rational is that if the author values the material enough to assure its being available in perpetuity, they will obtain the copyright. Most self-published works that I have read are seriously in need of editing and not worth cluttering up what will be an enormous data base. In fact, all written material in the near future will have to be stored electronically simply because of the impossibility of storing all the physical hardcopy. While we are at it, let's demand that our severely restrictive copyright laws be modified so that a copyright exists only during the lifetime of the author(s), after which the material passes into the public domain.

Guild Files Comments on Mandatory Deposit of Online-Only E-Books

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