Re: Hathi Orphans?

[<jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>]

Thank you, David.

And thank you, Sandy, for expressing so overtly, openly, single- 
and simple-mindedly that the quest for returns trumps everything 
else in life.

Sorry, but I believe there are other values in life, especially 
when it comes to means of communication among human beings.

And Joe Esposito has also sweetly (!!!) reminded us that for him 
(or at least for publishers as he portrays them), value is 
exclusively linked to market demands. In this perspective, the 
value of a book is its economic value. Period!

It is true that print has transformed documents into merchandise, 
into goods; that does not mean that other forms of value are not 
present. Henry James' novels were sold less and less as he grew 
older. By Joe Esposito's criterion, Henry James' novels were 
worth nothing or little more than nothing for a while before 
coming back to some (moderate) level of (commercial) value more 
recently.

And it demonstrates neatly what happens when publishers are given 
the first role in the circulation of texts, and other types of 
documents. They tend to judge everything in economic terms, tend 
to give primacy to markets, tend to practice market 
fundamentalism or fetishism, as if economics were the fundamental 
science of humanity.

Jean-Claude Guedon