I haven’t bought a lot of Nancy Drews in the last year, simply because there hasn’t been any, or I’ve had other things to buy and couldn’t afford it.

I did buy the Wandering Planet lunchboxes. These were done last year after that big lot of dolls and books that came out.

I bought this Nancy Clancy book, because she worships Nancy and reads the books in the series. I only bought the first, as Nancy’s mentioned the most, and the title is Super Sleuth.

I was able to get these 3-in-1 UK edition paperbacks to add to the collection.

And a Double Horror of Fenley Place replacement book for a boxed set of books which has a battered Fenley Place in it.

I have a Pinterest board full of all my Nancy items here.

While I managed to add to my collection, sadly, the first four Nancys have hit the public domain. Which for me, as an author, fucking annoys the hell out of me because it means any Tom, Dick, or fucking Harry can now take those books, slap some shit arse cover on in and sell it.

And they have. There has been a slew of Nancy Drews repurposed by “authors” who want to get a bit of coin out of a well-established name and icon.

Nancy Drew.

Some of them aren’t even reproductions. They’re “retellings” using the character searching for an “old clock” or some such. Not a straight out Nancy. But, as with human behaviour, and the life and times we’re in, people just want to cheat and not actually do the work by writing the book, but take from others who did the work and slap some shit arse AI cover on it to make money. I hope they don’t.

Blech!

How Simon & Schuster will deal with this, who knows. Nancy’s not the only one now in the public domain, so is the original Mickey Mouse. Winnie the Pooh has been for several years, and there are many more, and more will turn up in the coming years. The Hardy Boys have been in the domain for a couple of years as well, and I know some books have already been reproduced with shit arse covers.

Of course, this now leads to, do we collect these new books or not?

I don’t know, but it’s a question I put out to the Nancy Drew Sleuths FB group I’m a part of and many said they weren’t buying them. Some have bought a couple to see what they were like and were disappointed in it not being a straight out Nancy.

We’ll see what happens down the track as each book comes out, but it doesn’t look hopeful that she’ll be left alone.