Resurrecting out-of-print math books
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
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
Mitch
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
Patricia Shanahan
> 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
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
Patricia Shanahan <pa...@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!
A.L.
>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.
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
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.
Mitch
> 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/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=Subsystems+of+Second+Order&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
James Burns
> In article <p3un74hjt9s9kbrtj...@4ax.com>,
> A.L. <alew...@zanoza.com> wrote:
>
>>On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tc...@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
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
Mitch <mah...@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.
James Waldby
[...]
> 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.
> 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.
I disagree, on the basis that when taxation is used, it should be
strictly a revenue measure, and so far as possible, should not be
an instrument of any social policy. In my opinion, the existence
of deductions for something (such as charitable donations) is no
argument for having deductions or credits at all.
-jiw
David Bernier
> In article<p3un74hjt9s9kbrtj...@4ax.com>,
> A.L.<alew...@zanoza.com> wrote:
>> On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tc...@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
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
David Bernier <davi...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>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?
Often it is. In the best-case scenario, the publisher will simply send the
author a rights-reversion form to fill out, and the matter will be taken
care of.
However, if the publisher holds all the rights, then in particular it is
under no obligation to return them to the author. This can be annoying,
obviously. Some publishers won't reprint books but also won't release
the rights to them, thinking that they might want to reprint them in the
future.
The best way to avoid getting into such a mess (if you're an author)
is not to let it happen in the first place. That is, make sure that
your initial contract with the publisher gives you the rights back if
the publisher chooses to let the book go out of print. Most publishers
are amenable to having such a clause if you ask for it.
herbzet
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.
[...]
How long does it take these days for a book to pass into the public domain?
--
hz
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
>How long does it take these days for a book to pass into the public domain?
Wikipedia says:
Under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
Works, the signatory states are required to provide copyright protection
for a minimum term of the life of the author plus fifty years, but they are
permitted to provide for a longer term of protection. Following the 1993
Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection, member states of
the European Union implemented protection for a term of the author's life
plus seventy years.
[...]
The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 --- alternatively known
as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or
pejoratively as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act --- extended copyright
terms in the United States by 20 years. Before the Act (under the Copyright
Act of 1976), copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50
years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship; the Act extended
these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate
authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication,
whichever endpoint is earlier. The Act also affected copyright terms for
copyrighted works published prior to January 1, 1978, also increasing their
term of protection by 20 years, to a total of 95 years from publication.
Herman Rubin
>> In article<p3un74hjt9s9kbrtj...@4ax.com>,
>> A.L.<alew...@zanoza.com> wrote:
>>> On 14 Jul 2008 14:21:40 GMT, tc...@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.
It may or may not.
>>> 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?
No. The copyright owner can sit on the copyright
until it runs out. However, the situation is
partially as you state.
>David Bernier
>> the author that lots of people had expressed interest in his book, I think
>> he would have been persuaded.
It is more difficult than you think.
>> Also, of course, sometimes the author is deceased.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
By "it" here, I assume you mean an author regaining copyright from the
publisher. Do you have any specific anecdotes you can share, about
particular publishers both refusing to bring a book back into print
and refusing to release the rights to an author who asks for it?
Gerry Myerson
tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> In article <g5o95v$5g...@odds.stat.purdue.edu>,
> Herman Rubin <hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
> >It is more difficult than you think.
>
> By "it" here, I assume you mean an author regaining copyright from the
> publisher. Do you have any specific anecdotes you can share, about
> particular publishers both refusing to bring a book back into print
> and refusing to release the rights to an author who asks for it?
I don't know any book examples, but there's a notorious example
in recorded music. Do a search for Dave Bulmer, Celtic Music,
and/or Nic Jones.
--
Gerry Myerson (ge...@maths.mq.edi.ai) (i -> u for email)
herbzet
tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> In article <487EAFAD...@gmail.com>, herbzet <her...@cox.net> wrote:
> >How long does it take these days for a book to pass into the public domain?
>
> Wikipedia says:
>
> Under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
> Works, the signatory states are required to provide copyright protection
> for a minimum term of the life of the author plus fifty years, but they are
> permitted to provide for a longer term of protection. Following the 1993
> Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection, member states of
> the European Union implemented protection for a term of the author's life
> plus seventy years.
>
> [...]
>
> The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 --- alternatively known
> as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or
> pejoratively as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act --- extended copyright
> terms in the United States by 20 years. Before the Act (under the Copyright
> Act of 1976), copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50
> years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship; the Act extended
> these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate
> authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication,
> whichever endpoint is earlier. The Act also affected copyright terms for
> copyrighted works published prior to January 1, 1978, also increasing their
> term of protection by 20 years, to a total of 95 years from publication.
Yikes!
--
hz
Timothy Murphy
> Wikipedia says:
>
> Under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
> Works, the signatory states are required to provide copyright protection
> for a minimum term of the life of the author plus fifty years, but they
> are
> permitted to provide for a longer term of protection. Following the 1993
> Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection, member states
> of the European Union implemented protection for a term of the author's
> life plus seventy years.
I never saw any explanation for this extension of copyright.
At first sight the effect seems to be that an author's grandchildren
or even great-grandchildren will benefit from his work.
This ancestral right does not seem to be applied in any other area,
except perhaps royalty (as in kings and queens).
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
Timothy Murphy <gayl...@eircom.net> wrote:
>I never saw any explanation for this extension of copyright.
Well, in the case of the U.S. at least, part of the reason is that
companies who had highly lucrative copyrights that were about to expire
lobbied heavily to have the copyright extended.
If you mean an "explanation" not in the sense of a causal explanation but
a reasoned argument that extended copyrights are a good thing, then some
such arguments have been proposed (although I don't find them very
convincing myself). For example, some economists argue that works in
the public domain tend to be under-exploited or over-exploited while
works protected by copyright are exploited more efficiently in the
marketplace.
Herman Rubin
>Herman Rubin <hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
>>It is more difficult than you think.
>By "it" here, I assume you mean an author regaining copyright from the
>publisher. Do you have any specific anecdotes you can share, about
>particular publishers both refusing to bring a book back into print
>and refusing to release the rights to an author who asks for it?
I did not have refusal in getting back the copyright of my
late wife's book, but as it had gone from publisher to
publisher to publisher, we could not find the original
contract. The last publisher was getting out of this type
of book.
Having one publisher take over from another is not that
unusual. I suggest authors keep their original contracts
in a safe deposit box.
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
>> 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.
>Usenet is not the most widely read thing in the world...where are other
>places to advertise? Slashdot? Where else?
A colleague just alerted me to the fact that a short blurb about Schmid's
site has appeared on the Slashdot Firehose.
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=813057
If you're a Slashdot subscriber and like Schmid's site, please click on
the + sign above the blurb to increase the chances that the story will
be selected by the Slashdot editors for publication.
By the way, Schmid's site has reached the 100-title mark now. It is
interesting to see which titles have the most votes. The top titles seem
to be number theory texts: Cassels and Frohlich, Borevich and Shafarevich,
Artin (Class Field Theory).
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
>By the way, Schmid's site has reached the 100-title mark now. It is
>interesting to see which titles have the most votes. The top titles seem
>to be number theory texts: Cassels and Frohlich, Borevich and Shafarevich,
>Artin (Class Field Theory).
Just for fun, I decided to compile a list of the "hottest" books on the
list as of this morning, ranked by the number of "highly" votes, with
30 votes as an arbitrary cutoff:
82 Cassels and Frohlich, Algebraic number theory
76 Borevich and Shafarevich, Number theory
69 Artin and Tate, Class field theory
68 Feynman and Hibbs, Quantum mechanics and path integrals
64 Csiszar and Korner, Information theory
59 Welsh, Matroid theory
59 Riordan, Combinatorial identities
59 Whitehead, Elements of homotopy theory
58 Kuratowski, Topology
55 Mac Lane, Mathematics: Form and Function
54 Dugundji, Topology
52 Arbarello, Geometry of algebraic curves
46 Groetschel et al., Geometric algorithms and combinatorial optimization
43 Conway, Regular algebra and finite machines
39 Grunbaum and Shephard, Tilings and patterns
39 Weyl, The concept of a Riemann surface
38 Curtis and Reiner, Methods of representation theory
37 Platonov and Rapinchuk, Algebraic groups and number theory
36 Lovasz and Plummer, Matching theory
35 Erdelyi, Higher transcendental functions
34 Huppert, Finite groups
34 Gunning, Lectures on Riemann surfaces
33 Mumford, Abelian varieties
33 Weinstein, Examples of groups
32 Carter, Finite groups of Lie type
31 Simpson, Subsystems of second-order arithmetic
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
G. A. Edgar <ed...@math.ohio-state.edu.invalid> wrote:
>So, let's say they brought Dugundji back into print at a price
>something like $106.24 ... would they sell many copies? Would it
>matter whether they would sell many copies?
[...]
>So ... if this were in print at $120.00 (about 20 cents a page), would
>many people buy it? Presumably any libraries at research universities
>that don't already have it would. But who else?
Certainly, how well the book sells matters to whoever is putting in the
effort to make the book available. It has to be worth their while.
However, I don't think that a book necessarily has to sell a lot of copies
to be "worth it." Suppose that you, as a professor with a strong interest
in general topology, know (or strongly suspect) that you could sell at
least 50 copies of Dugundji worldwide at $40 a copy (to grad students,
professors, and libraries). You might very well spend $2000 to acquire
the copyright and make it available on some print-on-demand site, as a
service to the community.
On the other hand, if you thought that you would sell only 5 copies, then
you might not bother. So it is still worth finding out which books are
more in demand than others.
Michael Press
tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> In article <489b35c0$0$303$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>, I wrote:
> >By the way, Schmid's site has reached the 100-title mark now. It is
> >interesting to see which titles have the most votes. The top titles seem
> >to be number theory texts: Cassels and Frohlich, Borevich and Shafarevich,
> >Artin (Class Field Theory).
>
> Just for fun, I decided to compile a list of the "hottest" books on the
> list as of this morning, ranked by the number of "highly" votes, with
> 30 votes as an arbitrary cutoff:
Riordan, Combinatorial identities is on my shelf.
$186.97 at amazon.com.
--
Michael Press
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
Michael Press <rub...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Riordan, Combinatorial identities is on my shelf.
> $186.97 at amazon.com.
I don't see it at Amazon any more---maybe someone just snapped it up---but
several copies are listed at Bookfinder.com, starting at $122.95.
Michael Press
tc...@lsa.umich.edu wrote:
> In article <rubrum-26F6FC....@news.sf.sbcglobal.net>,
> Michael Press <rub...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >Riordan, Combinatorial identities is on my shelf.
> > $186.97 at amazon.com.
>
> I don't see it at Amazon any more---maybe someone just snapped it up---but
> several copies are listed at Bookfinder.com, starting at $122.95.
The page has changed: "Out of Print--Limited Availability."
Bookfinder lists the 1968 edition at $122.95 to $155.55.
The corrected 1979 edition weighs in at $238.99 to $257.50.
Here is a current amazon.ca listing for the 1968 edition at CDN $300.
<http://www.amazon.ca/Combinatorial-Identities-John-Riordan/dp/0471722758%3FSubscriptionId%3D1NNRF7QZ418V218YP1R2%26tag%3Dbookfindercom-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0471722758>
Borevich and Shafarevich does not seem to be available,
but a scan is.
<http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~brussel/borevich_and_shafarevich.htm>
--
Michael Press
Bill Dubuque
>
> Borevich and Shafarevich does not seem to be available, but a scan is.
> <http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~brussel/borevich_and_shafarevich.htm>
That 118.6 Mb pdf is much inferior to the 5.5 Mb djvu version
http://google.com/search?q=borevich+Shafarevich+djvu
Angus Rodgers
>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.
I wanted to vote for Weyl, /The Concept of a Riemann Surface/,
but the Web page (entry #70 in the list) reads "poll closed".
--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril
tc...@lsa.umich.edu
regarding Klaus Schmid's site outprintmath.blogspot.com:
>Just for fun, I decided to compile a list of the "hottest" books on the
>list as of this morning, ranked by the number of "highly" votes, with
>30 votes as an arbitrary cutoff:
I have some additional information about a few of these books.
>69 Artin and Tate, Class field theory
This one has now been brought back into print by the American Mathematical
Society, in their Chelsea series. You can (pre-)order it on their website.
>82 Cassels and Frohlich, Algebraic number theory
The AMS is looking into this one. They are definitely interested, but the
copyright situation is complicated, though, so no guarantees yet.
>59 Welsh, Matroid theory
Dover Press is now working with Welsh to bring this one back into print.
>36 Lovasz and Plummer, Matching theory
The AMS plans to bring this one back into print. The authors are working on
a brief addendum, to cover a few of the major results in the field since the
book was originally published.
>31 Simpson, Subsystems of second-order arithmetic
The Association for Symbolic Logic says they've been waiting for a while now
for Simpson to submit the final version of his manuscript. I haven't been
successful in contacting Simpson to find out the status on his end.
I can claim some credit for working to get Cassels and Frohlich and Welsh
back into print; the other three have nothing to do with me. I encourage
those of you with a particular desire to see some other particular book
come back into print to contact Dover and/or the AMS about it. Arm yourself
with the information at outofprintmath.blogspot.com and any other info
you have about the book.