Picking up on Bill Stepp's previous post, the alternative way of publishing, posting a book on line and allowing downloading without charge is slowly expanding. Bell's book "Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good," is available that way here . This follows David's model.

A more trivial but perhaps economically more important variation is represented by a comic book now free to download here. This mode of distribution seems to have been a success; "The comic book publisher Boom Studios announced about 2 weeks back that they were going to release the full first issue of a new comic called North Wind online free the exact same day as it was released in shops. The hard copy sold out almost immediately and a second printing had to be ordered link here."

A variation on this for those who want to read a hard copy is to print it on a laser printer. I am also intrigued by the idea of having it printed by lulu press, which will print single copies at a competitive price link here. Public Domain Books Reprints Service has announced it will make available some 1.7 million books in the public domain, using lulu link here. Admittedly an experiment to test the demand for the service, it has the possibility of being expanded to new books.

Who knows what kind of copyright provisions would be necessary for this? Public Domain Books publishes with this disclaimer: "NOTE: There is no warranty of any kind with this service. Use it at your own risk. Please also note that we are not affiliated with any of the archives that the digital images are being obtained from. We are simply using these sites in accordance with their terms."