Copyright Extension:—­I think the remedy could be accomplished in the following way, without injury to author or publisher, and with extreme advantage to the public:  by an amendment to the existing law providing as follows—­to wit:  that at any time between the beginning of a book’s forty-first year and the ending of its forty-second the owner of the copyright may extend its life thirty years by issuing and placing on sale an edition of the book at one-tenth the price of the cheapest edition hitherto issued at any time during the ten immediately preceding years.  This extension to lapse and become null and void if at any time during the thirty years he shall fail during the space of three consecutive months to furnish the ten per cent. book upon demand of any person or persons desiring to buy it.

The Result:—­The result would be that no American classic enjoying the thirty-year extension would ever be out of the reach of any American purse, let its uncompulsory price be what it might.  He would get a two-dollar book for 20 cents, and he could get none but copyright-expired classics at any such rate.

The Final Result:—­At the end of the thirty-year extension the copyright would again die, and the price would again advance.  This by a natural law, the excessively cheap edition no longer carrying with it an advantage to any publisher.

Reconstruction of The Present Law Not Necessary:—­A clause of the suggested amendment could read about as follows, and would obviate the necessity of taking the present law to pieces and building it over again: 

All books and all articles enjoying forty-two years copyright-life under the present law shall be admitted to the privilege of the thirty-year extension upon complying with the condition requiring the producing and placing upon permanent sale of one grade or form of said book or article at a price of 90 per cent. below the cheapest rate at which said book or article had been placed upon the market at any time during the immediately preceding ten years.

Remarks

If the suggested amendment shall meet with the favor of the present Congress and become law—­and I hope it will—­I shall have personal experience of its effects very soon.  Next year, in fact, in the person of my first book, ‘The Innocents Abroad’.  For its forty-two-year copyright-life will then cease and its thirty-year extension begin—­and with the latter the permanent low-rate edition.  At present the highest price of the book is eight dollars, and its lowest price three dollars per copy.  Thus the permanent low rate will be thirty cents per copy.  A sweeping reduction like this is what Congress from the beginning has desired to achieve, but has not been able to accomplish because no inducement was offered to publishers to run the risk.

Respectfully submitted,

S. L. Clemens.

(A full and interesting elucidation of Mark Twain’s views on Copyright may be found in an article entitled “Concerning Copyright,” published in the North American Review for January, 1905.)