Hi. This applies to any book published after 1923. In most cases, it is
not public domain. Any book published after 1923 is most likely under
copyright protection, except in cases where it was published between
1923-49 and the copyright was not renewed. Project Gutenberg has published
the renewal records for those years, so this is easy to verify.
However, in regards to this specific title, it is not in the public domain
because everything published after 1988 is automatically given copyright
protection, regardless of whether a notice is included. This is why the
ISBN is important. It would be possible to look up the ISBN and get a
definite idea of the publisher and date, thus establishing valid copyright
info. I assume that the ISBN is missing or not present, in which case you
need the copyright owner's name and copyright date for legal
reasons. Based on what you posted, I would say to not submit the book
since there is no copyright date. They need this for legal reasons. One
thing for sure, though. It is definitely NOT in the public domain and the
copyright status is not pending. As soon as a book is published, it is
under copyright.
This probably does not satisfy your question, but hopefully this will help
other submitters in the future. Just to be safe, I would probably not
submit the book without a valid copyright name and date or an ISBN which
can be looked up.
