Books as commodity

"The Great Gatsby" sells 500,000 copies a year. Good art and good business. In the future, will there still be room for books that might not make money in the short term? The new ecosystem is a boon to many, but we shouldn't pretend that it doesn't come with costs." (source infra)

Books as commodity
Chicago Tribune
....These trends increase the commoditization of books, and one book becomes as useful as the next in generating a fee-gathering download. The "best" books are the ones that sell the most. We know that high sales and quality do not necessarily intersect. While I accept that the exchange of money for product makes books a kind of commodity, I also believe they are something more meaningful. Books are a repository of our culture. They hold meaning and importance greater than their utility to extract money from consumers. For more than a century, the market inefficiencies of traditional publishing protected "literature" from commerce. Publishers were literally family-owned businesses that viewed publishing good books as a responsibility, which led them to subsidize and produce books that otherwise might never have existed. Newspapers used to run under this model as well. .." (read more at link above)

Witty book reveals pitfalls of contemporary dating

StandardNet
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StandardNet

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The Courier-Journal
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Lance Armstrong's Books Are Lies, but Are They Illegal?

The Atlantic Wire
Lance Armstrong's latest legal headache centers around two autobiographical books he published in the early 2000s, It's Not About the Bike and Every Second ...See all stories on this topic »

The Atlantic Wire

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