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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#561

Post by rfarley04 »

cacois wrote: post #539
rfarley04 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea $100 bucks a year for a small historical library with a very limited selection of English books (that's 45 minutes away from me) doesn't really compare to a free library that's in every city in the US (or many libraries in bigger cities)

To the above posters credit, it sounds like their claim of exaggeration was spot on (he didn't say it was a lie). You didn't say their libraries don't compare to US ones, you said they don't exist.

I did even capitalize ZERO so that's on me. But also no one has pointed out any public libraries in this thread to my knowledge. Just private ones

Re: No one buys books

#562

Post by rfarley04 »

closetkantian wrote: post #549
rfarley04 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea $100 bucks a year for a small historical library with a very limited selection of English books (that's 45 minutes away from me) doesn't really compare to a free library that's in every city in the US (or many libraries in bigger cities)

I mean there are actually quite a few public libraries here, but of course the selection is primarily in Thai. I don't know why anyone would expect otherwise.

Which ones? Genuinely curious because I'm only aware TK Park (paid membership sponsored by... True? Or someone like that)

Re: No one buys books

#563

Post by Spivak »

huytersd wrote: post #297
paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

There are very few people go this is by Simon and Schuster etc. Most Americans don’t read and the ones that do read a bunch of junk.

[dead]

Re: No one buys books

#564

Post by j45 »

cafard wrote: post #531
j45 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting or undermining literacy remains important to those who benefit from it.

The advocates of "whole-language" learning as against "phonics" seem to do a fair job of limiting or undermining literacy. Yet how it benefits them I don't see. And what is the reference of "it" in the last sentence? Literacy, or limited or undermined literacy?

I should have said and, instead of for.

Undermining is a form of limiting, and limiting is a form of undermining.

Re: No one buys books

#565

Post by [deleted] »

ddingus wrote: post #422
yellow_postit wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny seeing this comment and the article about Seattle libraries reducing digital copies both on HNews front page at the same time. I love libraries. It also feels like all our public institutions in the US are crumbling under assault from all sides.

They are. Every single public resource is seen as a potential market opportunity being squandered away, or as competition other players do not want to see in play.

[deleted]

Re: No one buys books

#566

Post by kiba »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #546
Zenzero wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This is conspiracy level thinking. Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued. The assault on public institutions like libraries comes from 2 places: 1) Stop wasting my tax do…

> > [Rich & powerful assholes often maintain their status by unethical means.] > This is conspiracy level thinking. The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing (latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists, reportedly a very conservative lower bound), and who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status? I don't know about libraries specifically , but the idea that rich…

Why would that be obvious? It seems more likely that they don't care about libraries.

Re: No one buys books

#567

Post by al_borland »

grepLeigh wrote: post #332

From the article: >>> "Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay $9.99 a month and read all of the books you want?" I sincerely hope nothing "disrupts" public libraries in my lifetime. As a California resident, I can walk into ANY public library in the state and get a free library card with access to physical books, audiobooks, ebooks. Some branches have laptops, hotspots, tablets, e-readers available to borrow. My local…

I'm continually shocked by the number of people who forget that libraries exist, and what they are.

Re: No one buys books

#568

Post by pm215 »

DrBazza wrote: post #502
paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

In the UK many years ago, there was the Net Book Agreement, which was price fixing and Amazon, BooksOnline/StreetsOnline comprehensively broke that. Unfortunately, book shops didn't really learn, and we are where we are. Back to the title. I still buy books. I've stopped buying them from Amazon, and just buy them from my LBS. Though one thing still makes me irrationally angry - "SciFi + Fantasy" as "a genre" in books…

The Wikipedia article suggests that it was not Amazon and online bookselling that broke the Net Book Agreement, but big high street chain bookstores like Dillons. One of the references links to a newspaper article from December 1994 saying the agreement is "on its last legs", and Amazon was only founded in July 1994, so seems unlikely to have been very influential in its demise.

Re: No one buys books

#569

Post by linuxftw »

al_borland wrote: post #567
grepLeigh wrote: post #332

From the article: >>> "Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay $9.99 a month and read all of the books you want?" I sincerely hope nothing "disrupts" public libraries in my lifetime. As a California resident, I can walk into ANY public library in the state and get a free library card with access to physical books, audiobooks, ebooks. Some branches have laptops, hotspots, tablets, e-readers available to borrow. My local…

I'm continually shocked by the number of people who forget that libraries exist, and what they are.

It's almost like it's a totally unnecessary public expenditure at this point, and those funds could be used for, IDK, feeding the homeless?

Re: No one buys books

#570

Post by loup-vaillant »

bumby wrote: post #559
loup-vaillant wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realise you're not contradicting anything I've just said, right? Quoting myself, "I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people" .

But then you go on to say, > Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth. The irony is that one of the most ludicrously wealthy people in history was also probably the single largest contributor to public libraries. Whether or not he was simply an outlier, I think that’s an important thing to point out. Further, some data suggests that as much as 5% of the general population are narcissists. So…

> But then you go on to say,

I said "tend to". A tendency does not make an absolute and complete genocide. I also said "I'm afraid", which is supposed to convey some level of uncertainty. Carnegie's donation doesn't invalidate my point, even if he wasn't an outlier.

> The irony is that one of the most ludicrously wealthy people in history was also probably the single largest contributor to public libraries.

Where you see irony, I see expected statistics: the largest contributor to pretty much anything has to be ludicrously rich. Because the only way to give that much, is to own even more.

And I will add that one incentive for rich people to donate is their public image. And in many cases their "donations" are largely neutered by tax cuts or by increasing the return on some of their other investments (basically their donations causing other of their investments to increase their returns). Donations by rich people aren't always genuinely generous.

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