Batgrl: Bookish Hooha

Just because I couldn't find the Most Dangerous Game short story online (I'd wanted to add a link to my last post) I figured I'd check to see what Amazon had. And check out what pops up for:

The Most Dangerous Game

Remember the author of this short story should be Richard Connell.

And also be aware that the story itself is only about 20 pages long.

I see one ebook selling at .99 and another at 1.99, two in paper for $6 and $12. (The $12 copy at least adds multiple other short stories - though all of those are freely available online as they're out of copyright.)

And we'll note that not only is an author called Ralph Lagana selling that story with his own preface (which you can read in the sample) and afterward, he's selling a second book to make it a series - having marked his use of the Connell original with a title that makes it appear the first in his own series. Wow, that's a new level of re-use of someone's work.

I sense that Connell's work is out of copyright, don't you?

I especially hate the paper copy prices because the people who'll end up paying for this are likely to be students (the story is frequently assigned), who usually have to pay too much for their books anyway. Happily I also know that high school and college teachers hate these prices as well, and either hand out books with the story in them that are re-used, or distribute xeroxes of the story.

Sigh. Just having one of those "ugh, self publishing" moments. (I know, not all SPA do this, but this is why there's the bad rep.)

Oh and here's the full text of the story, in case you were still curious:

The Most Dangerous Game (Internet Archive)

I really hate it when people try to sell what's available online for free.