In article , I wrote:
It occurs to me that one way to help address this problem would be to
create a website or Wiki where consumers of math books could "vote" for
which books they would like to see come back into print. Anyone could
propose a book, or add their support to a book that someone else has
proposed.
Klaus Schmid decided to create a prototype site:
http://outofprintmath.blogspot.com
I encourage everyone to try it out, add their own books, and post feedback
to sci.math.research.
It has also occurred to me that an alternative approach is to convince an
existing book website to add such a feature to their site. People who
search for an out-of-print book (not necessarily mathematics) could submit
a vote to have the book made available again (either through conventional
publishing or on-demand publishing). The running tally would be displayed
for everyone to see. I contacted several book websites with this idea;
the most famous ones essentially ignored me, but Booksprice.com and
Fetchbook.info liked the idea and said that they would put it on their
todo list. Anyway, regardless of whether they actually get around to
adding this feature to their site, I expect that experimenting with an
actual prototype like Klaus's will yield valuable information about whether
this idea has merit and if so, what needs to be done to make it 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