It has to do with rights. The rights to these books would reverted years ago. In the cases where rights were re-negotiated, they weren’t always re-negotiated for digital printing. And for those books with dead authors, it’s not always clear who owns the rights. The publishers are much better off not publishing books to which they don’t have the rights. Look at the mess Dorchester is in. Sure, some of these authors are alive and willing to see their books in digital form, but negotiating a contract is a long involved process, and one that’s more trouble than it’s worth in most cases.
I just found this Kickstarter project that aims to get as many older SF books as possible converted to ebooks. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/singularityco/singularity-and-co I pitched in, even though they are way over their goal.
Hopefully they will work on the Hugo awarded books first. ;-)
It has to do with rights. The rights to these books would reverted years ago. In the cases where rights were re-negotiated, they weren’t always re-negotiated for digital printing. And for those books with dead authors, it’s not always clear who owns the rights. The publishers are much better off not publishing books to which they don’t have the rights. Look at the mess Dorchester is in. Sure, some of these authors are alive and willing to see their books in digital form, but negotiating a contract is a long involved process, and one that’s more trouble than it’s worth in most cases.