Comments on: Back in Print http://keywords.oxus.net/archives/2005/04/13/back-in-print/ The personal blog of P. Kerim Friedman. Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:00:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Mark Liberman http://keywords.oxus.net/archives/2005/04/13/back-in-print/comment-page-1/#comment-1597 Mark Liberman Thu, 14 Apr 2005 08:52:59 +0000 http://keywords.oxus.net/?p=2141#comment-1597 A properly managed scanning operation (like Google Print's <a href="http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html" rel="nofollow">library initiative</a>) imposes relatively little cost per work scanned. The discussion on the Google Weblog <a href="http://google.blogspace.com/archives/001493" rel="nofollow">estimates</a> a cost of $10/book, which is reasonable given my limited experience with such efforts. I notice that the re-issued classics that you cite more than twice this amount per copy. So there might be valid reasons not to re-issue such classics in digital form under some sort of Creative Commons license, but "prohibitive" cost is surely not one of them. A properly managed scanning operation (like Google Print’s library initiative) imposes relatively little cost per work scanned.

The discussion on the Google Weblog

estimates a cost of $10/book, which is reasonable given my limited experience with such efforts.

I notice that the re-issued classics that you cite more than twice this amount per copy.

So there might be valid reasons not to re-issue such classics in digital form under some sort of Creative Commons license, but “prohibitive” cost is surely not one of them.

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