> You've hit the crux of it. Why bother, indeed, > buying a new *paper* > book if you can get the same title, gently used, for > half the cover > price? This is what makes it difficult to be a > publisher and *great* to > be a bookstore, particularly those that handle used > titles. Amazon's > making a *fortune* (well, not, but still...) as a > vendor of used copies > of my programming book, but neither I nor > Osborne/McGraw-Hill are > seeing a cent of those sales. Which, believe me, > sucks.
I think I'm just not understanding the difference between a used e-product and a new one, since theoretically there should be no difference at all (all other things remaining constant). A used hardcopy book, however, *does* have some differences -- increased wear and the like -- so there's a better justification on the side of the consumer to demand the product for less money. > If the material is not copyrighted or is GPL, you > can consider using > lulu.com -- they allow you to PDF-ify a document and > then do a POD > production of it on your own. You could do that and > then order a copy > or two for yourself. The end result's pretty decent, > a bound trade > paperback. > > Also I believe Cafe Press (cafepress.com) offers a > similar product. Product is definitely copyrighted -- its old OOP gaming books turned into PDFs by the company to continue to make them available. Other companies now release print books as PDFs, and these are regularly printed out by users for various purposes, and I believe its covered under fair usage since they're not giving away the printed copies (in part or whole) or trying to sell them. At least I queried message boards about it (though no one has given me a satisfactory answer). I vastly prefer print over digital for a number of reasons (I like books; they look cool). Damon. ===== ------------------------------------------------------------ Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: Revell Germany's M60A3 ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
