Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Will more become less?


I noticed the above ad in a recent issue of the New Yorker and wondered about it since the two titles weren't familiar. Following the link to this page and doublechecking against Amazon shows that at least 4 of these books are self-published - The Book of Moms, The Book of Dads, The Graduation Collection and Will You Be Mine? I'd rather see more in print of course, but this does highlight a problem with both collecting and bibliography that's accelerating rapidly. It's very unlikely that any of these four books will end up in a library collection for example, unless they're actively sought out. I probably won't buy them as the price is a bit steep - $25 for 100 pages? Or$100 for four slim books?

Andrews McMeel's publishing through Lulu.com leads to the same problems. I can see a return to the earliest days of print when small publishers brought out items and now copies may not exist of their publications...

No comments: