Agency pricing has sent me back to paper, but not the way the publishers would like

From Sep 2010
>I haven't disposed of any of my over thirteen thousand dead tree books, but I'm
>increasingly reluctant to pick up one of them to read. I've thought about scanning
>and OCRing some of my favorites for my personal use. I'd prefer it if the authors
>would just get their backlist up to save me the inconvenience and allow me to pay
>them a royalty.

Well, October 2011 I bought a stack paper cutter and started buying used duplicates
of the books I wanted to reread that are either unavailable or have the same digital
cost as the DTB version. I've since moved on to books I haven't ever read
before, dismantling my only copy.

The idea of stripping a paperback used to make me cringe, but I've gotten
pretty good at chopping the spines off of books. I started cutting almost
too much, but I know what I'm doing now. (October vs. January).



This is a picture of the spines of the books I've scanned so far.



I'm extremely nearsighted, but I can read a page of a pdf-ed book on my kindle
without my glasses easily. If I decide I want a mobi/prc version, the pdfs are
OCR-ready for me to proofread and format. If the author beats me to it and self-
publishes, I'll probably buy their version if it's not priced too much more than
a used book for the convenience factor.

I've read 110 of the 200 books I've scanned to date and have a pile of over one
hundred books ready for the cutter. I may be legacy publishing's worst nightmare.

Oh, I've also acquired over 500 kindle books from Amazon in that same time period.
294 were free, but the others ranged in price from ninety-nine cents to nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.