: Re: Want to publish unpublished work found in an auction storage unit I started buying storage auctions in the middle of this year. In the third one I bought I ran across an unpublished manuscript

@Kristi637

For what it's worth I think what you're trying to do is awesome!

As @Surtsey 's answer (correctly) points out the work is still copyrighted regardless of the absence of an explicit copyright notice.

Assuming US copyright law applies here (you don't mention a locale so apologies if that is incorrect) then, unless some other entity had acquired it, ownership of the copyright passes to the author's heirs on their death and it's them that you'd need to contact in order to gain permission to publish the manuscript.

The company that operates the storage units might be the best place to start in terms of tracking them down.

You mention that the author died in 2019 - which means that the work won't be in the public domain yet (it will be in 2089 though).

Good luck!

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