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