Post by Maria Bonn.
On Wednesday, the Scholarly Publishing Office activated more than 225,000 "buy a reprint" links in HathiTrust, increasing the number of public domain reprints available for purchase by more than 300%. Potential purchasers are now directed to our publishing partner, BookPrep, a service of Hewlett Packard, where they can preview the book prior to ordering. Over time, these books will also become available on Amazon.com (where you can already find tens of thousands of our titles) and through other distribution channels.
For those of you who are confused by the ever increasing avenues to reprints of UM Library books, know that you are not alone. SPO is working on some simple guides and materials to help you and our users understand the choices.
As we have seen throughout our years selling reprints, these books tend to sell in modest numbers (ones and twos) but in the aggregate we see considerable interest in our titles. Last month, a government document, The Sourcebook in Forensic Serology, Immunology, and Biochemistry enjoyed considerable interest, with sales of ten copies, and the 1907 edition of Dr. Chase's Third, Last and Complete Receipt Book and Household Physician... became a runaway bestseller, selling seventeen copies.