Rebinding and reprinting mass market paperbacks and hardbacks

Most of my books are quality hardbacks on good paper. Easton Press and Folio Society. Some of my books are mass market paperbacks and mass market hardbacks. I hate paperbacks. I've also read that the paper in these mass market hard/soft cover books will not last long.

I am interested in possibly scanning the pages of all my mass market books and reprinting on archival paper and then making a hardback for it. If it's already a hardback I still want to make sure I've got long lasting paper.

What's the point of owning a book that will deteriorate fast?

Is it true that my mass market paperbacks and hardbacks won't last? For example, I just bought the hardback version of Orwell's Animal Farm & 1984 from Barnes and Noble which is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Can you point me in the direction of the best tutorial for doing all of this? The tutorials I have seen don't allow you to retain the front cover and instead you are just left with a bland blank cover.

Scanning/reprinting a mass-market p/b is, to my mind, an exercise in futility. The time needed to this is alone enough for me to refrain from the attempt. I, too, have mass-market p/bs in my library. They weren't intended to last forever, so, no, the paper used is not acid-free and they will, in time, decay to dust, but that won't be until after I'm long gone and in the grave unless they were printed on low-quality wood-pulp paper which is normally not the case today. Your H-M Animal Farm hardcover will last your lifetime, unless it is abused, so I would not worry about that.

As an added note, I have mass market p/bs published over 50 years ago (1960s) in my collection, and they are still just fine and are not falling apart. Even some from the '30s and '40s are hanging in there, although they are starting to show their age.

My best advice: fret not. You will likely fall apart before your books do.

Not to mention copyright. You do not have the right to make copies of books that are on copyright.

>3 MarthaJeanne: You do for personal use if you own the book you're copying.