Hi Everyone: I know this won't sound politically correct, but oh well. If we as blind individuals happen to be getting an "advantage" over our sited bretheron when it comes to books, then so be it. I am not a member, I am just a volunteer. in fact i'm not much in to reading. What attracted me to bookshare was the concept of making thousands of books available to people who want them. Up to this point, i have been vallidating, but now that i have my new pc, i can take my epson 1660 out of the box and start scanning the boatload of books my girlfriend has *smile* I have seen publishers make money off bookkshare if anything. My sister and brother-in-law are both members and they have purchased a couple of hundred dollars of books, some of which they probably bought for the expressed purpose of scanning. By the way, nothing says that some sited people don't borrow books from a library, use $99 off-the-shelf OCR software to scan them and they themselves now have a harddrive full of library books. Finally, I think Donna Smith put it best, she said: "I don't think they are losing any more money from us than they do from their average customers. My friend who is sighted walks into a book store, purchases a book for $10.50, takes it home and reads it. Then she passes it along to a friend, who passes it along to a friend, and it changes hands any number of times before it finally ends up in a used book sale, where someone else pays $4 for it, takes it home and reads it, gives it to a friend, etc. I buy the same book for $10.50, bring it home, spend several hours scanning it, someone else spends more hours validating it, and then it is available for sharing around via BookShare to those who meet the criteria. I don't think we're having a negative impact on the market. In fact, I have purchased many more books since becoming a member of BookShare and learning that others share my interests." --end of quote For me, its all about access. And I will continue to do what I can. -- Rui