on the cost of saving money....
Dec. 28th, 2008 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It
"For readers and collectors, these resellers, as they are called, offer a great service. Lost in the hand-wringing over the state of the book industry is the fact that this is a golden age for those in love with old-fashioned printed volumes: more books are available for less effort and less money than ever before. A book search engine like ViaLibri.net can knit together 20,000 booksellers around the world offering tens of millions of nearly new, used or rare books.
One consequence has been to change the calculations involved in buying a book. Given the price, do I really want to read this? Now it’s become both an economic and a moral issue? How much do I want to pay, and where do I want that money to go? To my local community via a bookstore? To the publisher? To the author?
In theory, I want to support all of these fine folks. In practice, I decide to save a buck."
EtA: just to clarify, y'all do understand that the above is from the article, and not my own words? I didn't bring the world "moral" into it....
Comments?
"For readers and collectors, these resellers, as they are called, offer a great service. Lost in the hand-wringing over the state of the book industry is the fact that this is a golden age for those in love with old-fashioned printed volumes: more books are available for less effort and less money than ever before. A book search engine like ViaLibri.net can knit together 20,000 booksellers around the world offering tens of millions of nearly new, used or rare books.
One consequence has been to change the calculations involved in buying a book. Given the price, do I really want to read this? Now it’s become both an economic and a moral issue? How much do I want to pay, and where do I want that money to go? To my local community via a bookstore? To the publisher? To the author?
In theory, I want to support all of these fine folks. In practice, I decide to save a buck."
EtA: just to clarify, y'all do understand that the above is from the article, and not my own words? I didn't bring the world "moral" into it....
Comments?