4 ms·
At even small scales, simply printing a book costs close to nothing. I don't think that's true. As far as I'm aware, we're talking dollars, not cents. For mass
by cygx 6y ago
At even small scales, simply printing a book costs close to nothing.
I don't think that's true. As far as I'm aware, we're talking dollars, not cents. For mass-market paperbacks, it's less than that, but that's the opposite of small scale.
- mardifoufs 6y agoWhat I should've said is smaller scales. But yes you are right that it's still going to cost a few dollars , but if it was actually legal to just produce your own copies surely we would see tons of printing shop specializing in very small printing runs that minimize costs. Right now its very expensive to only print a few copies because no business model makes sense at that scale unless it's plain copying which is... illegal.
- uryga 6y ago> if it was actually legal to just produce your own copies surely we would see tons of printing shop specializing in very small printing runs that minimize costs what would they print? they don't have the original "master" file for the book, scans look bad and take time and OCR-ing a scan is error-prone honestly i don't find this convincing... i think if small-scale printing made economic sense (and was something people want), you'd see bootleg books, despite the illegality. digital piracy is mostly illegal and that hardly stops people