I'm about to register my own publishing concern.
Among other projects dear to my heart is the re-edition of a book that came out in the mid '70s. I own the only copy of the book that I've ever seen (and I bought it at a jumble sale back in the late '70s). It's #4 on my list of favourite children's books. And when you read that tied for 1st place are the 2 Alice books by Lewis Carroll, and #5 is Momo by Michael Ende (I'm keeping schtumm about #3, because I'm going to make a bid for the Spanish translation rights and I don't want THOSE snatched from under my nose), you'll know that the bar has been set pretty high.
I have tried surfing Internet to find the author. The book's title appears only SIX times on Google (once in a comment that I myself had made), the author's name only ten... and NONE of those pages help me to locate the author*. The publishers apparently disappeared in '81, and the Google results on THEM don't lead me to my author.
My question: If I print on the inside front cover of the book that I'd be thrilled and honoured to meet the author, and more than happy to hand over all royalties - which will be kept in a special account until that time... can I be done (for example, by unscrupulous shysters) for infringement of copyright?
(I fear that the author is dead. He'd have his own web-site nowadays if he were still alive. I'd be happy - admittedly not AS happy - to hand the royalties to anybody proving to be the legitimate heir(s).)
* A few of these results were from those awful automatically-generated web-sites. "Looking for Vrtwrqdeeithrlc Qczertsjdh? Find him on 'LostBuddies.com' "
Jimmy - printing something you don't own the copyright to is infringement. End of.
It doesn't matter what you put in the front matter. It doesn't matter that you've got the royalties stashed to one side in case the author ever comes forward, you have zero legal right to publish this work. They haven't agreed to whatever royalty rate you think is 'very generous'. They haven't agreed to anything. They may not want the book in print, even. You cannot publish this without permission. There is nothing more to be said on the matter.
Now, as for finding the author - I seem to remember the way somebody finally proved Richard Bachman was a pseudonym for Stephen King was via the copyright filed with the Library of Congress. Does the country where it was published have any kind of copyright registration which would help you along?
Have you tried looking up other books from this publisher? If you can find something with an acknowledgements page, you may be able to find somebody who used to work there who may be able to point you in the right direction.
Is there a cover designer credit you can chase?
Otherwise, try newspapers for the time of its publication. Do you know where the author was from? You could try a library from their hometown/city. You could try some libraries anyway.
Have you tried searching on GoogleBooks? You may find their name referenced by somebody else.
Last ditch try - are there any book bloggers of the right sort of age and provenance around? They may remember something about the author - seeing them on a tv show, for instance.
It's an interesting quest, and I wish you good luck with it. Just don't publish this without permission.
Do you remember the case of "My Sweet Lord"?
On 10 February 1971, Bright Tunes filed suit against Harrison and associated organisations (including Harrisongs, Apple Records and BMI), alleging copyright infringement of the late Ronnie Mack's song "He's So Fine".[17] In I Me Mine, Harrison admits to having thought "Why didn't I realise?" when others started pointing out the similarity between the two songs [...] With liability established, the court then recommended an amount for the damages to be paid by Harrison and Apple to Bright Tunes, which Owen totalled at $1,599,987[105] – amounting to three-quarters of the royalty revenue raised in North America from "My Sweet Lord", as well as a significant proportion of that from the All Things Must Pass album...... - wikipedia
The difference to my case is that I'm WILLING and DESIROUS of paying ALL author royalties and will not make use of them until the author (or his heirs) presents himself to claim them. I just don't want a court case that would strip me of ALL my assets because of WILLFULLY infringing copyright.
Trouble is, it WASN'T in the UK. (not even in the northern hemisphere). I've written to that country's version of the Society of Authors, but haven't had an answer yet. I also wrote to the Society of Authors in the UK, and got a reply asking whether I was a member. Since I haven't published a book with a main-stream publisher, I'm not ELIGIBLE for membership.
It's the old Catch-22: you can't publish until you're well-known and you aren't going to be well-known until you're published.
I can assume that the author was the copyright holder. However, the author is probably deceased (otherwise, he'd certainly have a web-site) and doesn't show up on Google search. And there's no clue as to who is the author's heir (and present copyright-owner).
The other possibility is that the publisher was the copyright owner. But they've sunk without trace in the early '80s.