Friday, August 03, 2007
The Book Depository
Grumpy Old Bookman draws our attention the The Book Depository which acts both a bookseller and publisher, concentrating on fast service and with a core philosophy of making 'All books available to all', a key feature being the reprinting out-of-copyright works. Grumpy says that as far as he knows this venture has had little publicity, and I too have noticed little reference to it in discussions about either copyright or bookselling. I can't help agreeing with him that for readers (and authors with an eye on their own longevity) it would seem to be only a good thing, but that potentially it presents yet another threat to the independent bookseller.
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5 comments:
Tis a very good thing (and its webmaster is ReadySteadyBook's Mark Thwaite), a little diversity in Amazon world. I got an academic book on the "straightedge" movement from there, despatched with speed and at a decent price.
Book Depository have totally shafted me this Christmas. They list items on PlayTrade with a quoted delivery time of 4/5 days. But I ordered them on December 12th, and on the 20th they are not here. No phone number on their website, and they aren't responding to my emails. So it's beginning to look as if my Christmas presents are not going to be here on time, and they don't seem to give a damn about customer service.
Oh dear, not so good then....
So is this why some of my books from the book depository look like cheap photocopies? Because they 'publish' them? I keep buying them, since I'm a student and can't afford full priced books yet, but I do wonder if there is something dodgy going on. I'm sure the books I've ordered haven't been out of print but they look like nicely-bound photocopies on cheap paper. Hmmm.
Hm. Books that are out of copyright are not necessarily out of print of course, as they are free for reprinting by anyone, so more than one publisher at once can reprint them.
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