I bought Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother sometime this Spring, don’t quite remember where (think it was Amazon). When I read it, I discovered that half of page 198 was torn out. This is rather irritating, especially when you are into the book and would like to continue. Previously, my two solutions would have been: Skip the missing page(s) and continue reading; or exchange the book for a new one (which entails taking a break until the new book is back.)
This time, I just found Cory’s full text on craphound.com and printed those pages out on my printer. Then I left them in the book. I saved time and kept the continuity, the bookseller saved time and money not having to exchange my book, and the publisher saved the cost of another copy.
Simple, isn’t it?
Applied Abstractions 
No, actually, a much more rational course of action would have been to photocopy the missing page, which would have the advantage of matching page size (after trim) and typography. You cleverly failed to mention this as an available option, probably because it nullifies your point.
Tell me: How did you precisely isolate the page of text that was missing? Your printout appears to include a great deal of text before and after the missing page.
Joe,
photocopying a page requires having access to another sample of the book, which I didn’t. And I didn’t bother separating out the precise missing text, something I easily could have done by just copying it into a word processing document and formatting it. Anyway, the whole thing took a few seconds, fixed a problem, and that’s all there is to it…
Nice solution! I love Creative Commons!
Hmm, a solution you came up with yourself, and it did not involve lawyers, guns, and money. Had this happened in the U.S., all three of the latter would have been involved, perhaps some local TV and perhaps national TV coverage, a pending scandal about missing or torn pages being a trend, questions about online ordering, customer service, and security, and all the fuss would have been over in about 3 days or as soon as Lindsay Lohan reappeared in the tabloids.
I really like your solution much better.
@Joe. Seriously, “How did you precisely isolate the page of text that was missing?”? Are you not familiar with the wonders of text search?