Copyright issues are acute in modern publishing practice. According to the current norms of Russian legislation, many publications on the Russian book market, which are provided with additional comments, links, illustrations, and other changes, may be illegal, for example, illustrated editions of classics of the 19th century, commented editions by writers of the 20th century who do not have heirs. The correlation of the rights to the inviolability of a work and its processing has long been an urgent issue of the application of copyright in Russia. The legality of publishing reprints is often questionable from the point of view of legal requirements. Is it possible for the publisher to make changes to the author's text? To what extent is it permissible to add publishing notes and comments to the author's work? To what extent is editorial processing of the author's text possible during the preparation of the manuscript? Copyright is regulated in the territory of the Russian Federation by the Civil Code. The article discusses the legal features of republication and processing, fixed by the fourth part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (Chapter 70). Particular cases in publishing practice pose difficult questions, which do not always have an unambiguous solution, to publishers. There are two points of view on reworking and republishing: legal and publishing. At the intersection of these areas of book publishing, there are often discrepancies and, as a result, disagreements on the legality of publication. In search of answers, the article presents the main provisions of Russian legislation in the field of copyright and reveals the concepts of publication, republication, processing, reprint. The research focus is on considering the legal features in the republication and processing of an author's work; examples of reprints available on the Russian book market are given. The simplest legitimate way to republish a work that has passed into the public domain, with changes to it, is to process it - create a new (derivative) work based on the existing one. The peculiarities of copyright in the republication of a work that has become public domain are revealed by the example of the publication of a derivative work Her Life. Based on the Novel by A.G. Korevanova “My Life” and the republication of Agrippina Korevanova's My Life in the Publishing House of the Ural University. In general, it has been revealed that the current situation in the book publishing sphere contradicts freedom of creativity both in legal terms and in terms of preserving and studying works of literature, art, and science; there is ambiguity in the interpretation of the law when republishing works. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.