We've been promising an ebook version of the classic Let's Play Checkers, by Kenneth Grover and Tommie Wiswell, for some little while now. Here's what's been going on.

First, the ebook edition turned out to be a lot more effort than we expected. We'd rather be late than produce less than a top-quality edition, and typesetting this book is simply taking a lot of time to do right.

But there is another issue, one that we ran into at a fairly late stage in the project. While our initial research indicated that the book was in the public domain, and therefore eligible for reissue by us, we have recently learned that copyright claims had in fact been asserted, and therefore we must now seek permission to republish the book.

We're in the process of trying to locate the copyright claimant, which is difficult enough in and of itself; then we'll need to ask for the necessary releases, something which the claimant may or may not be willing to grant. Under current copyright law, the book won't go into the public domain until the year 2035! (We believe this is excessive and out of tune with the original intent of copyright legislation, but that's another whole topic.)

Of course we're hoping for the best and for a speedy result. We'll keep you informed as we go along.