It's a pretty common cause for law suits actually and is known as reverse-engineering. It touches on exactly what we are talking about here. You seem to believe that the inherent value of something is exclusively associated with the cost of the material, but of course it's not. Let me give you some examples. Dirt doesn't have any value to most people, but if someone creates pottery from it that people deem valuble, then it becomes a commodity that can be sold. The difference between the dirt and the pottery is the labor and the skill of the creator, that is what creates value. Similarly with a book, what creates it's value is not the paper or the ink but the narrative, it's what makes you pick one book over another or even an empty notebook.