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From: Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: World Book Day (22 April)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 07:28:35 +0100
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 Ar an cúigiú lá is fiche de mí Aibreán, scríobh Christian Weisgerber: 

 > 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. :-)

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)