You'll have lots of cases of out-of-print but not out of copyright stuff. Like how you can find torrents of all of TSR's gaming books for illegal download, only about 13.5GB. They have been out of print for 20 years. I own many, many if not most of them already as real books (print) except for some of the early D&D stuff that is big-time collector fodder now. However, now they are being brought back out as high-quality pdf files you can buy cheaply for a legitimate copy. So the dirty lawyers will get richer...
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 4:57 PM, StephenB <[email protected]> wrote: > I wonder what Google's Book Library quest to bring out-of-print / old > books etc back into mainstream consciousness with their scanning and > digital archiving will do to the sector. I know there are lots of pros / > cons to this and the lawyers are getting bigger pension pots from it. > > In the long run digital prints will I think go the same way of becoming an > archive - in what format I don't know. Server costs vs storage space is > reducing and feeding the expansion of cloud hosting so I don't think it > will be a limitation, at least in the short-medium term. > > > -----Original Message----- From: Brian Jones (Trancendance) > Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 11:38 PM > To: 'feistfans-l' > Subject: RE: ebooks out of..... print? > > Of course, given the growth in storage capacity being brought about by > nanotechnologies, graphene and other such materials, and the proportionally > reducing amount of data that it will take to store books, it is conceivable > that all (future) books will be available, if not for immediate purchase, > for retrieval from a library archive. I know that the British Library has a > long running digitisation and archiving project, although some past texts > and recordings are just too old and fragile to be converted, and it is > likely that eventually these will be lost forever. > > -----Original Message----- > From: > bounce-86339343-39128317@list.**cornell.edu<[email protected]>[mailto: > bounce-86339343-**[email protected]<[email protected]>] > On Behalf Of Raymond Feist > Sent: 29 April 2013 23:24 > To: feistfans-l > Subject: Re: ebooks out of..... print? > > > On Apr 29, 2013, at 2:27 PM, Paddyjack <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ray, >> >> I was wondering about something..... in the printing world, there is of >> course a limited amount of books that are printed, and once you get to the >> end of that for one particular book, then it's done and final unless you >> get to get a second edition, a third etc. It means that some books can no >> longer be found in bookstores except second hand stores. >> >> Now, with the ebooks era, how does that work? Is there a limited "copies" >> that has to be sold, or are these books going to be in e-stores forever? Is >> there something about this in contracts with publishers? >> >> Curious about this. >> >> PJ >> >> > > it's a different paradigm. If you look at the US paperbacks for > Silverthorn, for example, it's in it's (I think) 37th printing. Magician > got a do-over when the '92 revised text hit, because that was a new ISBN. > Anyway, as my books never go out of print so far, its academic unless > you're a 1st edition collector. > > E-books will have out of print, I expect, if there comes a time when it's > just not downloading, which I can imagine for several reasons. Even though > e-books have different fixed overhead, server space costs money. Yes, you > can put a bazillion books on servers if you're design is scaleable enough > and you have the money to buy blade servers, but at what point do you keep > a book on that hasn't been downloaded in five years? And there's a > question of a reader finding a book. Say we were talking and I mentioned > some old Science Fiction author from the 1960s I loved, and you decided to > go look for him/her. That's one way, but if nobody's talking about that > writer, the book just sits there, because the publisher is not spending a > dime on attracting an audience. > > It's a different retail channel and we don't know yet exactly how it plays > out, so I guess my answer is books will linger far longer, but probably > like print not forever. > > Best, R.E.F. > ---- > www.crydee.com > > Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by > stupidity. > > > > > > > > > > > -- Nick A "You know what I wish? I wish that all the scum of the world had but a single throat, and I had my hands about it..." Rorschach, 1975 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759 "Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them." Bill Vaughan "The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." Plato
