They damn well should be. I’d buy a copy.
Well, I might wait till they’re remaindered.
Um, why do you need 16 copies? 
Clearly, you do not have the collector mentality.
Fine. Go and look for a hardcover copy of Ed Sanders’ “Fug You” on Amazon then. My library network had it (free of course) and in my hands 3 days after I ordered it. (Just one example out of countless thousands, if not millions.)
He cornered the market. He posted here to drive up interest. And now he can make a killing selling them off.
Software documentation. If you’re interested in Win98, Win2k, WinXP…MS culls that information and deletes it. Some stuff you can find where somebody has saved everything they thought was relevant in 2006, some stuff you can’t find: you follow the links, and there is nothing there. Gone. Like tears in rain.
There is a broad grey line between ephemera and enduring cultural artefacts
In recent times with DVD/Videos, some things just drop off the map. Even unfindable on torrents, if you use them as a last resort.
Hawks- A film with Anthony Andres and Timothy Dalton was put out on VHS in 1988 and never issued since. You’ll see VHS tapes on amazon.
Dragnet 2003 - The reboot on TV with Ed O’Neil, which was actually quite good, is unavailable having never been issued on DVD. There’s a dead torrent somewhere I’ve been attached to for a year waiting for a seeder to reappear. Not given up on getting it yet.
St Elsewhere (some seasons) is something in between. They issued the first season on DVD (I have that). Seasons 3 and onwards are on the torrents. I think you can see Season 2 on Hulu in the US because they broadcast it there (plus Channel 4 in the UK). But getting it in a persistent form, is currently impossible.
Our library recently cleared out a ton of stuff. Less than a third remains in my areas of interest. Browsing the shelves is pointless now. I really don’t have the heart to go there anymore.
Anyway …
When I was a prof the issue of out-of-print was a recurring problem. And it’s gotten worse. And the mania towards coming out with new editions so the old ones lose their value on the used book market has gotten even more absurd.
While my area was Computer Science, in some sub-areas the books were good for at least 10 years … if they stayed in print. And in some other areas a 3 year old book was virtually ancient history so a limited time in print was built in.
I have no idea what the OP’s definition of Out of Print is attempting to accomplish, and it’s fundamentally contradictory - a lot of book stores that specialize in old things do at least some business on Amazon. I’m not really sure why you’d draw the line of OOP at ‘only traded in retailers who don’t do any sales on Amazon’.
A trivial to find example of stuff that is fully OOP is all of the old “How to” and “Dummies” books on Windows 95 and dialup internet (really anything but basic programming theory from the 2000s back).
I know of several examples of self-censorship, where the copyright owner voluntarily removes the work from the market because of some controversy.
Rage by Stephen King, because he was afraid it might encourage potential mass shooters
Song of the South, the Disney film, because it’s now considered racially offensive
One episode of the original Hawaii Five-O with Jack Lord titled “Bored, She Hung Herself” because it features auto-erotic asphyxiation or something similar.
The short-lived 1970s TV series James at 15 has never been rebroadcast or released on home video because it features underage sexuality.
The version of Lady Gaga’s “Do What U Want” that featured R. Kelly, because of the accusations against Kelly.
I’m sure there must be many more.
According to IMDb:
Suddenly I need a copy of The Blade. And I’ve never heard of it.
“In print” simply means that the book is available from the publisher. That’s the standard definition used in the publishing industry—it’s not something I made up. It doesn’t matter if if there’s a physical inventory or not. As I and others have pointed out, the OP in this thread is not using the standard definitions of the terms “in print” and “out of print.”
The SDMB is not a book publisher, so I don’t think this is a meaningful analogy.
Another prominent example are the first twoalbums by a truly genre-defining band, Kraftwerk. The band soon totally disowned them and they were never re-released, neither on LP nor CD nor online. Nobody really knows why, they both are really interesting kraut rock albums, they only hadn’t found their signature sound yet.
Along the attempted self-censorship line, Neal Stephenson’s first novel The Big U went out of print not too long after release. Stephenson had decided by then that it wasn’t very good (I’ve read it, BTW, and he’s right) so he didn’t care and never tried to get it reissued. After Snow Crash and Diamond Age, his fans were doing stuff like stealing library copies and buying used copies for several hundred dollars - so he allowed a reprint, on the basis that if his fans wanted to read it that badly they at least shouldn’t have to pay that much to do so.
With regards to music… the artist Lizzo has been putting out music since about 2012. She had some EPS and singles and studio albums. You could buy them online in CD and digital format (at least on Amazon, that’s where I bought them) and stream everything on Spotify. But this year just before her new album on Atlantic came out, all of her physical and digital stuff was no longer available. No CDs, no older singles and no streaming except her new album and one or two newer singles.
I suspect it’s due to her latest label contract and we’ll see her old stuff again sometime once all the legalities are figured out. But it sucks because new fans are completely locked out from her older music. It’s effectively out of print, for the moment.
Song of the South, LOL.
The example I was thinking of was Rich Burlew’s webcomic, The Order of The Stick. For a long time, he was unable to reprint bound copies of his books, due to lacking the money to do so. Then he thought of using Kickstarter to solicit funds… https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive
It was outrageously successful. Absent that though, his books were really hard to find. Now, I just buy the .pdf’s.
The whole oeurve of the KLF, where the two principals famously set their master tapes on fire. The KLF - Wikipedia
Really ahead of their time. Their duet with Tammy Wynette is hilarious.
Data books. I’m going some of my Dad’s stuff, and there are several shelves full of data books like you just can’t get anymore, Ok, most of the Intel and Motorola stuff is out of print because it’s obsolete. but it’s not all Intel and Motorola and it’s not all obsolete: there is a lot of documentation and explanatory engineering and science and technology there as well, but the genre is dead. I don’t look in those books anymore, and the publishers don’t publish new editions anymore: if they’ve got the budget to produce anything now, it’s all on the internet.
I guess this isn’t particularly recent: the internet is 25 years old, and I haven’t got anything from the last 16 years.
I periodically look for books by John Morrissey and never find them, party because John Morrissey is too common a name so there are a lot of false positives. I am looking for books in the Kedrigern series, last in print in 1990 or so. I assume the rights are lost in a family dispute or some publisher lawsuit.