Still, many scholars and legal experts argue that American copyright law, which is mind-numbingly complex, has skewed toward enriching companies and the heirs of writers and artists at the expense of the public. When the first Copyright Act was passed in the United States in 1790, the maximum term was 28 years. Over the decades, lawmakers repeatedly prolonged the terms, which now stretch to over a century for many works. “It’s worse than the tax code,” said Rebecca Tushnet, an intellectual property expert at Harvard Law School. “The copyright term is way too long now.”

Image Next year, Penguin Classics is publishing new editions of several works from 1923, including Jean Toomer’s “Cane.” Credit... Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

Some studies show that extending copyright can actually have a negative impact on the sales and availability of books. A few years ago, Paul J. Heald, a law professor at the University of Illinois, used software that randomly sampled books available on Amazon, and discovered that there were more new editions of books published in the 1910s than from titles published in the 2000s. Publishers often stop printing books that aren’t selling, but still retain the copyright, so no one else can release new editions. Once the books enter the public domain, a wider variety of new editions become available again, filling in a hole in the public and cultural record.

Legal experts say that Congress is unlikely to pass yet another copyright extension because the political dynamics have shifted over the decades, with growing public opposition to stringent intellectual property protections.

For readers and book buyers, the proliferation of competing texts and editions will mean more selection and cheaper books. In 2019, the digital publisher Open Road Media is publishing around a dozen newly available works from 1923, including e-books of Jean Toomer’s “Cane,” Gibran’s “The Prophet,” Sigmund Freud’s “The Ego and the Id,” P. G. Wodehouse’s “The Inimitable Jeeves” and Christie’s “The Murder on the Links,” one of her early novels featuring the detective Hercule Poirot.

Legacy publishers are also snapping up newly available works. Penguin Classics is releasing new editions of “Cane,” Gibran’s “The Prophet” and Proust’s “The Prisoner.” Vintage Classics is publishing a new edition of Robert Frost’s “New Hampshire” — which will feature the original woodcut art and some of his best-known poems, including “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” — as well as Dorothy Sayers’s “Whose Body?” and three new editions of classic Agatha Christie novels.