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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Sure, but it is rather a waste of paper, ink, manufacturing and transportation capacity etc. It's not the only instance of this of course, waste of unsold inventory exists in just about any industry that sells physical products, but it's still frustrating to see it.
This seems more like an indictment of the practice of physical publishing than destructive book scanning, in which case I generally agree. There are a host of industries with baked-in inefficiencies that our life experiences have conditioned us to accept as normal or unavoidable when really have no business persisting in the modern world. Printed books is definitely one of them.
I wouldn't say print books have no place today, it can't be assumed that one will have access to electronics in all circumstances after all and many people do prefer physical media, but it's definitely an indictment of the sort of cheaply made basically disposable books made in larger quantities than needed to fill their current niche, and of the way unwanted (by their owners) but usable goods are dealt with in general.
Even teenagers sometimes prefer dead tree books to ebooks. Back when I worked in a public library, we could tell when a book was assigned reading because we'd suddenly get 10 requests for our 2 copies. The students had access to the ebook, they just preferred paper.