Path: ...!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Aidan Kehoe Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: Re: World Book Day (22 April) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 07:28:35 +0100 Lines: 43 Message-ID: <87o79wljsc.fsf@parhasard.net> References: <878r12lzhg.fsf@parhasard.net> <87v845l58a.fsf@parhasard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net ODICFLnoSzv7j3ucAyzrywgCYFEIlpm92g6IUFAcgJvRr9px4Y Cancel-Lock: sha1:RKplHd3bOLLv6HVE8V4tf7XQnR8= sha1:8VHAGDb/bSMamLyHUoZHfAICi30= sha256:OhqtSLl8AkF3VDRr6hrsj+CCL7yMrCn74UtJBF1rfxA= User-Agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) XEmacs/21.5-b35 (Linux-aarch64) Bytes: 3051 Ar an cúigiú lá is fiche de mí Aibreán, scríobh Christian Weisgerber: > On 2024-04-25, Aidan Kehoe 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. :-) Yes indeed! > > 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. Most of my book purchases currently are business expenses, the online invoices with Amazon on their own are a substantial improvement on keeping track of them for the accounts, over slips of paper that are likely to go astray. -- ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out / How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’ (C. Moore)