The cost of printing and shipping the book is only part of the cost. There are additional costs as part of the initial storage, such as the administrative funct

The cost of printing and shipping the book is only part of the cost. There are additional costs as part of the initial storage, such as the administrative function of issuing the LCCN, cataloging, and shelving the book. Once shelved, the book continues to incur the cost of shelf space in a climate controlled building. The cost of just keeping a book in a library is great enough that all but the richest academic libraries have an ongoing process of identifying and selling or destroying books with no circulation over a period of time. Usually they do so after checking whether they can borrow a copy from another library in their network should one of their patrons ask for it.