Subject: Re: Out of Print Classic Computer Arch & Compiler Books From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu> Date: Aug 01 1996 Keywords: books, comment Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.compilers koopman@cs.cmu.edu (Phil Koopman) writes: >The problem is that it isn't economical to create a huge stack of dead >trees and then sell them off a few books at a time. It costs a >significant amount of money to print up a bunch of books using >traditional methods. ...So, if you don't >sell the books off quickly you've got all that capital tied up. Actually, the real problem nowadays is a very unfavorable US tax decision some years ago, which essentially required manufacturers to treat unsold inventory as assets valued at their face value *even if* there was no guarantee that they would ever be sold. Only when they are scrapped does their value suddenly drop. The result is that when sales of a book start to taper off, it is cheaper to dispose of the remaining copies as wastepaper than to keep them in stock against possible future sales. (The actual investment in the print run has been made, and storage costs are minor, but the tax consequences of hanging onto unsold inventory are unacceptable.) This had a devastating effect on "backlist" publishing; books now go out of print much more quickly than they did before, and it is quite costly to publish a book which is likely to generate slow but steady sales. -- | Henry Spencer | henry@zoo.toronto.edu