Kessinger Publishing is a publisher that offers for reprint rare, out of print and out of copyright books originally issued by other publishers. They are located in Whitefish, Montana.
The original dates of publication of the titles are usually prior to ca. 1923, which represents the most recent years for which books may be presumed to be out of copyright in the U.S.
Kessinger uses scanned texts created by Google Books, files for International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) for the scanned books, and offers to produce print on demand versions of them.
Kessinger has asked that Google block access to the scanned books, so that potential readers would have to purchase the public domain work from Kessinger.
They offered 190,175 titles for sale in 2009. Scholars have questioned their assigning new copyright dates for works that may be legitimately, and permanently, in the public domain, saying this limits their ability to search scanned public domain documents, calling this practice copyfraud.**
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