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