Monday, May 30, 2005
That Explains the Price
About a week ago I was at a bookstore in Kolkata and bought a classic work for a mere 50 rupees (remember 1 US dollar = 43 Indian rupees). Previous classics that I have bought were all from another publisher, and cost more like 88 rupees. I started reading it a couple days ago and found that the quality of this reprint is noticeably lower than that of the first publisher. I think it has averaged more than one typo (that I noticed) per chapter. Some of the pages are printed crooked. There were even a couple pages that were starting to fall out. My guess is that this is a really small publisher in India that has simply taken a classic work, republished it (I have no clue how copyright laws are in India), and then sold it dirt cheap. This theory is somewhat confirmed by the publishers email address, publisher_name@hotmail.com, and address in Delhi. In any case, the book is still quite readable and enjoyable. For a bit over a dollar it's really hard to complain all that much.
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1 comment:
Yeah, classic in the sense of really old and well known. I'd never thought about that expired copyrights thing, but it makes sense. If Amazon is a reasonable indicator, then classics in America are more in the $4-$6 range. I'd somewhat expect them to be a bit cheaper here since most things are cheaper here, which in theory makes production cheaper too.
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