From: adam hodgkin <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue22 Sep 2015 10:25:05 +0100
Jim
I hope you are going to write this up?
It is a very important topic and needs to be aired more widely.
Adam
On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 12:31 AM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2015 17:05:33 -0400
>
> This will be my last obsession on the challenge of finding Ulysses on
> Amazon.
>
> On Saturday, Amazon made another try to find a good new paperback copy
> of Ulysses for me. What they came up with was a Wordsworth edition
> from the UK for $1.45. This has the merit of coming from a somewhat
> serious publisher, producing inexpensive copies of out-of-copyright
> classics. Reader, I bought it -- don't actually need it, but for
> $1.45 (and free shipping with Prime), I couldn't resist. I'll think a
> little about just how it makes sense to sell a book at that price at
> all and where the concept of profit has gone. Which part of the $1.45
> pays for the printing and binding, which for the distribution to
> booksellers, and which part for the shipping to me? (N.B.: there's
> controversy about just how "out of copyright" Ulysses is and the
> family has been highly protective. My experience suggests, however,
> that their protectiveness has been colossally ineffective.)
>
> So then I went to a bookstore. Easy to spot: big sign "Books"
> outside and lots of greeting cards, wrapping paper, and writers'
> supplies inside. But behind them, the books. It took me thirty
> seconds in the store to find what I was looking for: Vintage books
> edition, near-exact reprint of the classic Modern Library edition with
> the judge's opinion from the 1930s freeing the book for American
> readers. I photographed the ISBN and mailed it to myself. No
> question: this suited my needs exactly.
>
> Back to Amazon: if I search for editions of Ulysses or even just
> paperback editions of Ulysses, I do not find the Vintage edition at
> all. I do find its cover illustrated on one entry on page 13 of the
> hits, but that points only to four used copies priced each at more
> than $2,000 (two thousand dollars: not a typo, but no explanation
> what could justify the price). *If* I input the ISBN, I get the
> correct edition, for $12.45, Prime eligible. It comes with other tabs
> for hardcover and ebook editions, but those tabs lead to editions that
> have nothing to do with the Vintage edition; if you then click the
> "paperback" tab on one of those pages, the click does not take you
> back to the Vintage edition but off into the great dismal swamp of
> other editions. Don't blink or it disappears. (A liblicense reader
> points me to an Oxford Worlds Classics edition: it is similarly
> invisible to the basic search but available if you know the ISBN
> already.)
>
> I give up. Amazon certainly has. Better I should use a library.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> ASU
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