Resurrecting out-of-print math books

We have all experienced the frustration of discovering that a favorite
book of ours has gone out of print. Bringing such a book back into print
is no easy matter. Publishers want some assurance that the book will sell
well enough for them to recoup the costs of republishing. Even in today's
world of on-demand publishing, someone (perhaps the author, if still
alive) still has to go to the trouble of securing the copyright and then
making the text available. Few will go to such trouble unless they know
that the book is in demand, and the trouble is that ascertaining the
demand seems to be difficult.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to estimate demand. At my suggestion,
Klaus Schmid has set up a prototype website at

http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com

where anyone can suggest a title, and vote for titles that others have
suggested. The site tallies votes and displays the total for everyone
to see. I encourage everyone to visit the site and participate.

A better long-term solution might be for a bookselling website to take
over the job of collecting such votes (for any out-of-print book, not just
mathematics texts). I have tried to contact several such sites but most
have not responded, except for Fetchbook.Info and Booksprice.com, who said
they would add the idea to their todo list. In the meantime, I believe
that experimenting with Schmid's prototype will not only yield valuable
information about individual titles, but will tell us whether collecting
votes in this fashion is a good idea, and if so, what needs to be done to
make such a service work well.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

On Jul 14, 10:21*am, tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> We have all experienced the frustration of discovering that a favorite
> book of ours has gone out of print. *Bringing such a book back into print
> is no easy matter. *Publishers want some assurance that the book will sell
> well enough for them to recoup the costs of republishing. *Even in today's
> world of on-demand publishing, someone (perhaps the author, if still
> alive) still has to go to the trouble of securing the copyright and then
> making the text available. *Few will go to such trouble unless they know
> that the book is in demand, and the trouble is that ascertaining the
> demand seems to be difficult.
>
> Fortunately, there is an easy way to estimate demand. *At my suggestion,
> Klaus Schmid has set up a prototype website at
>
> *http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com
>
> where anyone can suggest a title, and vote for titles that others have
> suggested. *The site tallies votes and displays the total for everyone
> to see. *I encourage everyone to visit the site and participate.
>
> A better long-term solution might be for a bookselling website to take
> over the job of collecting such votes (for any out-of-print book, not just
> mathematics texts). *I have tried to contact several such sites but most
> have not responded, except for Fetchbook.Info and Booksprice.com, who said
> they would add the idea to their todo list. *In the meantime, I believe
> that experimenting with Schmid's prototype will not only yield valuable
> information about individual titles, but will tell us whether collecting
> votes in this fashion is a good idea, and if so, what needs to be done to
> make such a service work well.

All around excellent idea.

There is a difficulty with interpreting the answers, and what it means
when someone responds. I found myself thinking. "Oh yeah I love this
book but don't have it, so I'll answer 'highly'". Then for
others...well my true answer would be "barely", but then I found
myself wondering do I really want to -prevent- someone else from
getting a book by a 'barely' vote? (because a 'barely' really sounds
like a 'no, please don't bother with this book at all').

But then, you may mean by 'barely' that 'yes, I'd buy this book if it
were very close to free'. But now if the economics is that 'highly'
could be interpreted as 'I'd pay a lot of money to get this book, if
only it were available', then I might be encouraged to try 'barely'
just to game the system.

Mitch

Mitch wrote:
> On Jul 14, 10:21 am, tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
>> We have all experienced the frustration of discovering that a favorite
>> book of ours has gone out of print. Bringing such a book back into print
>> is no easy matter. Publishers want some assurance that the book will sell
>> well enough for them to recoup the costs of republishing. Even in today's
>> world of on-demand publishing, someone (perhaps the author, if still
>> alive) still has to go to the trouble of securing the copyright and then
>> making the text available. Few will go to such trouble unless they know
>> that the book is in demand, and the trouble is that ascertaining the
>> demand seems to be difficult.
>>
>> Fortunately, there is an easy way to estimate demand. At my suggestion,
>> Klaus Schmid has set up a prototype website at
>>
>> http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com
>>
>> where anyone can suggest a title, and vote for titles that others have
>> suggested. The site tallies votes and displays the total for everyone
>> to see. I encourage everyone to visit the site and participate.
....
> There is a difficulty with interpreting the answers, and what it means
> when someone responds. I found myself thinking. "Oh yeah I love this
> book but don't have it, so I'll answer 'highly'". Then for
> others...well my true answer would be "barely", but then I found
> myself wondering do I really want to -prevent- someone else from
> getting a book by a 'barely' vote? (because a 'barely' really sounds
> like a 'no, please don't bother with this book at all').
....

Perhaps rather than asking for opinions, the site should ask for
anticipated reactions to availability, in two dimensions:

1. Would you buy a copy, and if so with what price limit?

2. Would you recommend the book to others, and if so how strongly to
how wide a circle?

Patricia

In article <leKdnVAXnaFxRObVnZ2dnUVZ_jmdnZ2d@earthlink.com> ,
Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> wrote:
<Mitch wrote:
<> There is a difficulty with interpreting the answers, and what it means
<> when someone responds. I found myself thinking. "Oh yeah I love this
<> book but don't have it, so I'll answer 'highly'". Then for
<> others...well my true answer would be "barely", but then I found
<> myself wondering do I really want to -prevent- someone else from
<> getting a book by a 'barely' vote? (because a 'barely' really sounds
<> like a 'no, please don't bother with this book at all').
<...
<
<Perhaps rather than asking for opinions, the site should ask for
<anticipated reactions to availability, in two dimensions:
<
<1. Would you buy a copy, and if so with what price limit?
<
<2. Would you recommend the book to others, and if so how strongly to
<how wide a circle?

Thanks for the comments...this is good feedback.

It's true that it's hard to interpret the votes. I'm not sure, however,
that asking for more detailed information will necessarily help. The more
work it takes to supply input, the less likely people are to give input.
Asking for a price limit is not going to prevent people from trying to game
the system. Besides, a lot of people don't really know how much they would
be willing to pay until they're forced to make a real decision. They might
*say* $X and think they're being honest, but they might not know themselves
as well as they think they do.

My feeling is that it's best to keep the interface simple so that people
can easily vote, and hope that any "noise" will average out. I mean, if
500 people vote for Book A and 3 people vote for Book B, then unless
someone is ballot stuffing, it's pretty clear that Book A has a much better
chance of financial success than Book B.

Anyway, please spread the word about the site and post suggestions of your
own!
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:

>We have all experienced the frustration of discovering that a favorite
>book of ours has gone out of print. Bringing such a book back into print
>is no easy matter. Publishers want some assurance that the book will sell
>well enough for them to recoup the costs of republishing.

In many cases when publisher is not interested in republishing a book,
it returns publishing rights to the author. There are many authors who
in such situations publish book online, free.

I believe that it is more reasonable to convince authors to follow
this procedure than to ask publisher to make new release.

A.L.

In article <p3un74hjt9s9kbrtjjca66rmejl65h9lbv@4ax.com>,
A.L. <alewando@zanoza.com> wrote:
>On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
>In many cases when publisher is not interested in republishing a book,
>it returns publishing rights to the author. There are many authors who
>in such situations publish book online, free.
>
>I believe that it is more reasonable to convince authors to follow
>this procedure than to ask publisher to make new release.

I agree.

This does not eliminate the need for a website like Schmid's. In fact, I
got the idea for the website precisely because there was a particular book
that I was interested in; I tried to convince the author to do what you
suggest. But the author was unwilling to go to the trouble of asking
the publisher to give him back the rights to his book, because he was
convinced that nobody was interested in his book. If I could have shown
the author that lots of people had expressed interest in his book, I think
he would have been persuaded.

Also, of course, sometimes the author is deceased.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

On Jul 14, 10:21*am, tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> We have all experienced the frustration of discovering that a favorite
> book of ours has gone out of print. *Bringing such a book back into print
> is no easy matter. *Publishers want some assurance that the book will sell
> well enough for them to recoup the costs of republishing. *Even in today's
> world of on-demand publishing, someone (perhaps the author, if still
> alive) still has to go to the trouble of securing the copyright and then
> making the text available. *Few will go to such trouble unless they know
> that the book is in demand, and the trouble is that ascertaining the
> demand seems to be difficult.
>
> Fortunately, there is an easy way to estimate demand. *At my suggestion,
> Klaus Schmid has set up a prototype website at
>
> *http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com
>
> where anyone can suggest a title, and vote for titles that others have
> suggested. *The site tallies votes and displays the total for everyone
> to see. *I encourage everyone to visit the site and participate.

More comments:

- at least for math, Dover seems to supply the need (for reprinting
out of print books) pretty well and their turnover for classics is
pretty quick (~20 yrs? e.g. Goulden & Jackson, Combinatorial
Enumeration, originally 1980)

- the problem I have with out of print books is often not their
unavailability but their price. looking on abebooks or alibris or even
amazon, an o-o-p book can often be available by somebody, but often at
some exorbitant out of this world price, e.g.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...rder&x=71&y=11

Sure monographs tend to be a little higher, but $189, or even $1247?
That's ridiculous.

I'm just not sure about the economics

- how would you get the website to continue being used? I used it
right away (doesn't everybody -love- surveys?), and almost added a
book myself (but looking up the ISBN on amazon told me that Dover had
just reprinted it ). But a month from now, will I remember? will I be
able to find that site again? Usenet is not the most widely read thing
in the world...where are other places to advertise? Slashdot? Where
else?

- I agree, in the long term, it should be booksellers (who are
collecting stats about book requests/browsing constantly) that pass on
the info to the publishers.

Mitch

tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> In article <p3un74hjt9s9kbrtjjca66rmejl65h9lbv@4ax.com>,
> A.L. <alewando@zanoza.com> wrote:
>
>>On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
>>In many cases when publisher is not interested in republishing a book,
>>it returns publishing rights to the author. There are many authors who
>>in such situations publish book online, free.
>>
>>I believe that it is more reasonable to convince authors to follow
>>this procedure than to ask publisher to make new release.
>
>
> I agree.
>
> This does not eliminate the need for a website like Schmid's. In fact, I
> got the idea for the website precisely because there was a particular book
> that I was interested in; I tried to convince the author to do what you
> suggest. But the author was unwilling to go to the trouble of asking
> the publisher to give him back the rights to his book, because he was
> convinced that nobody was interested in his book. If I could have shown
> the author that lots of people had expressed interest in his book, I think
> he would have been persuaded.
>
> Also, of course, sometimes the author is deceased.

An idea just now came to me. I don't know enough of the
details necessary to make it a practical suggestion, but
perhaps others do know them.

If publishers and/or authors received tax credits for
releasing their copyrights, then everyone would be
better off.

Perhaps there would need to be a requirement to make
available (to the Library of Congress?) an electronic
version -- or perhaps not.

As to how one would verifiably estimate the value of
the released copyright, I have no clue. Perhaps the
tax credit should be fixed at a negotiated percentage
of the value received commercially. This could be
audited, if necessary, and it would discourage
schemes to "write" books filled with random text
and "donate" the rights to the public.

There may be a thorny problem in making different
copyright regimes agree as to who holds the copyright,
who gives the tax credit (whatever it may be), etc.

Whatever the issues that need to be resolved, there is a
clear public benefit in releasing copyrights, no less
than donating money or goods to an established charity
-- except there is no organization on the receiving end,
just the public as a whole.

Jim Burns

In article <56932a9e-90de-4bdc-929c-3b913426906d@34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
Mitch <maharri@gmail.com> wrote:
>- at least for math, Dover seems to supply the need (for reprinting
>out of print books) pretty well and their turnover for classics is
>pretty quick (~20 yrs? e.g. Goulden & Jackson, Combinatorial
>Enumeration, originally 1980)

The American Mathematical Society also helps out here.

>- the problem I have with out of print books is often not their
>unavailability but their price.

I find both to be problems. For example, it has been years since the last
time I saw Matching Theory by Lovasz and Plummer available on any of the
usual book websites (I don't monitor eBay though).

>I'm just not sure about the economics

Join the club! From what I can tell, the publishers aren't too sure about
the economics either.

>- how would you get the website to continue being used?

I think you answered your own question here:

>- I agree, in the long term, it should be booksellers (who are
>collecting stats about book requests/browsing constantly) that pass on
>the info to the publishers.

>Usenet is not the most widely read thing in the world...where are other
>places to advertise? Slashdot? Where else?

I sent email to Terence Tao, asking him to mention it on his blog, but I
don't know if he'll do so. Also I sent a letter to the Notices of the AMS
that will hopefully be published. Another thing to do is to mention it
to your colleagues and spread the news by word of mouth.
--
Tim Chow tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth. ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> In article<p3un74hjt9s9kbrtjjca66rmejl65h9lbv@4ax.com >,
> A.L.<alewando@zanoza.com> wrote:
>> On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
>> In many cases when publisher is not interested in republishing a book,
>> it returns publishing rights to the author. There are many authors who
>> in such situations publish book online, free.
>>
>> I believe that it is more reasonable to convince authors to follow
>> this procedure than to ask publisher to make new release.
>
> I agree.
>
> This does not eliminate the need for a website like Schmid's. In fact, I
> got the idea for the website precisely because there was a particular book
> that I was interested in; I tried to convince the author to do what you
> suggest. But the author was unwilling to go to the trouble of asking
> the publisher to give him back the rights to his book, because he was
> convinced that nobody was interested in his book. If I could have shown

What does an author need to do for the rights of his/her book
to be returned? Is writing a letter to the publisher enough?

David Bernier

> the author that lots of people had expressed interest in his book, I think
> he would have been persuaded.
>
> Also, of course, sometimes the author is deceased.