Apparently people are talking about this again. This isn’t so much a post as a way of directing people who are interested to fantasyecho’s collection of links (which I found via Shweta Narayan).
Also to quote this, from qian’s first post there, because it is so familiar*:
“Order it from Amazon!” It takes a million years for the book to arrive, you pay a swingeing amount**, it’s held up at the post office and you have to drive out and pay taxes to collect it, and all the while you’re aware that it cost you four times the amount it cost an American to buy it. The worst insult? In almost every case, the author is not even contemplating that somebody like you will be reading it. You quite simply do not exist in their world.
*It’s not quite as bad as this in India anymore, because we’ve had a few really good online bookstores (Flipkart!) start up in the last few years. Plus there always have been a few good bookshops that could surprise you, if you lived in one of the major cities.
** “But the book depository has free worldwide delivery!” Here is the list of countries they ship to. I appreciate them and the work they do, but I really think they need to remove that “worldwide” from all over their site.
