From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 17:27:52 -0500

The authors I listed are all robustly protected by copyright.

jo'd


On Sunday, November 30, 2014, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 10:54:46 -0600
>
> So many of the "classics" these days (in the public domain) are
> available through Project Gutenberg and other free sources. My first
> download to my iPad several years ago was War and Peace. I wonder how
> much a difference the availability of these free editions has made to
> the stocking of retail stores like B&N?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> > From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:32:44 -0500
> >
> > Liblicense readers know my amateur counting habits.  Today a report
> > from two recent visits to Barnes and Noble -- one store in Clarendon
> > VA (a DC suburb in a mall-let shared with an Apple Store, Chicos,
> > Container Store, etc.), and one in Milford CT (in a strip mall with
> > Walmart, a block from a larger but not high end indoor mall).
> >
> > I wandered both stores trying to estimate floor space and came up with
> > the same count in both places:  40% of these B&N stores' floor space
> > is devoted to what I would call books -- things in hard or soft covers
> > with words in them, for people to read.  The children's section of
> > both stores has grown remarkably, as also the toys and games sections,
> > while magazines, Nooks, DVDs, gifts, and the coffee bar fill out the
> > space.  I do count as books things like self-help and remaindered gift
> > books and B&N imprints of various kinds.  Once upon a time a bookstore
> > "superstore" (B&N or Borders) boasted of carrying 150,000 volumes.
> > That number is way, way smaller now, and I wonder how far they are
> > from carrying a line roughly equal to that of an old Waldenbooks or B.
> > Dalton.
> >
> > One way in which the slimming down of stock happens is by thinning
> > out the supply of older and classic authors.  In fiction and
> > literature today in CT, there was one volume of Waugh, two Updike
> > novels and two volumes of short stories, four Nabokov novels and the
> > volume of his short stories, no Proust, a respectable collection of
> > Hemingway, and four novels of Faulkner.  In the glory days of the
> > bookstore superstores, I liked to say that I was confident I could
> > always pick up a copy of the next "classic" (broadly defined) title I
> > wanted to read.  Now, I have to transfer that confidence to Amazon
> > or other web-based sellers.
> >
> > Jim O'Donnell