Comment by YetAnotherNick
7 days ago
> What if the book has been out of print for 50 years?
Same answer? They raise the price and print more copies.
You can just print even 1 copy, just the cost per print will be higher.
In fact publishers getting some profit on the tail end of books is the best thing that could happen to authors and publishing industry.
Do you understand that many of these publishers do not have the original copy anymore, and may have gone out of business entirely? 50 years ago text was not backed up to the cloud.
If there are very few copies and no one wants to even spend $100 to scan it, likely the book wont be bought by anyone in any case and it would rot/thrown away in another 50 years if AI companies had not digitized it.
Which is what has happened over time now that humanity has the ability to digitize them. The problem arises when we are purposefully picking books where we know those scans aren't yet available and purposefully destroying them. There'd be less outrage if any of these companies made statements about guaranteeing the survival of the scans they are taking and the release or planned guaridanship in the case they can no longer maintain the data.
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Sorry, that "just-so" explanation is not how the world works.