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