Re: Bringing out-of-print math books into print
- From: "Timothy Y. Chow" <tchow@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 21 Apr 2008 11:32:48 -0400
In article <fu7m6e$4rr$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
irvanellis <ianellis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
An alternative, or perhaps supplementary, route to creation of a
"want" list web site would be for those willing and able to
participate to put together something like the Gutenberg e-book project.
I have no objection to such a project. It can co-exist alongside the
website I have in mind.
On the other hand, I am not convinced by your objections to the proposal
I made.
(1) mathematics books, for typographical reasons in particular, are time-
consuming and difficult to prepare for print, and even with the best
OCR software available, would produce text of sometimes marginal
quality (take a look at some of the products in Kessinger Publishing's
Rare Reprints);
Your remarks here, and your later remark about checking copyright status,
indicates that you have in mind much older books than I have in mind. There
are plenty of relatively recent books for which the copyrights have definitely
not expired, and that have electronic versions sitting around somewhere, but
which have nevertheless gone out of print. Bringing those books back into
print does not require OCR technology.
(2) the mathematics book market is comparatively limited (considering
that even the AMS has to ask about the cost- effectiveness of producing
titles);
That's true, but mathematics books *do* come back into print. Dover Press
and the AMS are just two examples of publishers that are in this business.
I am not trying to conjure a non-existent market out of thin air, but am
trying to see how the situation with a market that already exists can be
improved, by improving communication between the consumers and the publishers.
(3) it is uncertain how to establish and maintain participation in a
web site to recommend and vote for the reprinting of titles, without
enthusiastic support for such a project,
Similar objections have been leveled against Wikipedia and similar efforts.
It is certainly a possible problem, but the startup cost is very low, so I
don't see why one shouldn't give it a try.
and, in any case, the data collected from such a web site is likely to be
essentially anecdotal and unconvincing to publishers.
That may be, but I don't believe you can make such a judgment a priori.
Potentially, the site could become a reliable source of information. It
would then take only one enlightened publisher to use that information and
profit from it, and then other publishers would sit up and take notice.
.
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