Re: World Book Day (22 April)

On 2024-04-25, Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net> wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price#/media/File:Countries-with-a-Fixed-Book-Price-Agreement.svg

>
Part of the argument in the Wikipedia article is that well-stocked bookshops
are important for cultural life, and that’s something that’s less important
with good online sources for books. Certainly if I had been attempting to

There seem to be a sufficient number of studies with a wide range
of results--the German Wikipedia article cites a bunch more--that
you can pick and choose to support whatever argument you want to
make. :-)

source John Perry’s Tajik Persian Reference Grammar in the 1990s (assuming it
had been published then) living in Dublin, I strongly suspect I would never
have been able to source it at all. Whereas currently (and in 2006ish) it’s
just a matter of throwing enough money at the problem.

Back in the 1990s I walked into the university bookstore and tried
to order a book on... GSM cellular networks, I think.  "Oh, that
one's published in France.  I'm sorry, but we can't get that.  Maybe
you could drive [50 km] to the border and try there?"

In the 1980s/1990s, when I was a customer, the German bookseller
system worked well for books published in Germany, but poorly for
US/UK books and failed entirely for French ones.  When online
bookstores became a thing, I switched to ordering there and I don't
even remember if I have ever since bought a single book in a
brick-and-mortar store.  Requiescant in pace, I will not miss them.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de