A real mystery-Shell Scott name used in non-Scott novel

Ed here: My friend Greg Shepard of Stark House sent me the following. Back in the Seventies Gold Medal made Dan J. Marlowe convert some of his stand-alones into series adventure novels--that's the closest example I can come to this. Though historians will probably come up with others. Can anybody speak to the legality of this? Wouldn't they need the permission of the estate? Does the estate still hold the copyrights? Maybe this was all done legally. INquiring minds want to know.



Hi Ed:



I received this following email from a reader friend named Frank Loose. He noticed that there is a distinct difference between two editions of Prather's Dagger of Flesh. It started life as a non-Shell Scott book, but the ebook publisher changed it to a Shell book. Can they do this? Know anything about this publishing phenonenon? Might be worth a write-up on your blog, might not. But I thought I'd ask since you are delving deeper than I into the world of ebooks.



Greg



-- >

Date: Monday, August 8, 2011, 8:12 AM



Greg ... On a lark, I was checking Amazon to see what various editions were

out there for the Prather book DAGGER OF FLESH. Its fun to peruse the

covers, when they're shown.



In addition to scores of editions from the 50s and 60s, there's a new

edition that e-books has put out in addition to dozens of Shell Scott

titles. Only, what I noticed on the cover was it said DAGGER was a Shell

Scott book.



Well, I know it isn't, so I clicked on the preview button and pulled up the

first couple pages on the computer. It read exactly the same as my PB and I

figured the publisher was sloppy in their cover work. Then I noticed the

name Shell on the page where in my PB book it says Mark. I checked further

into the preview, and found that every Mark had been replaced by Shell.



I've not heard of someone doing this. Have you? I'm also curious when the

change took place. The new publisher? The old publisher telling Prather

his book was too hardboiled for a Shell Scott, so Prather changed the main

character?



All a bit of a mystery.



Frank