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Originally Posted by mdp
No prob ; ) I thought I could add some examples. Also because, bookstores as I intend them are VERY hard to find.
In a bookstore "worth that name", I will visit a spot and I will find (depending on the Country):
-- Publisher: Odile Jacob. Series: Poches, Sciences. Volumes: #1 to volume #345, latest published (understandably with some gaps, depending on sales, availability etc.)
-- Publisher: Einaudi. Series: Nuova Universale. Volumes: #1 to #369
-- Publisher: Debolsillo. Series: Contemporanea. Volumes: #1 to #248
-- Publisher: Diogenes. Series: De.Te.Be. Volumes: #1 to #567
(I find it strange, but anglophone publications hardly seem to have "Series".)
For example:
Gallimard, Folio, #1000 happens to be Les fleurs bleues from Queneau;
Alleanza Editorial, Biblioteca Borges, #1 happens to be El Aleph.
A "series" corresponds to an editorial effort of a publisher - to publish the worthiest material in the spirit of the said series.
This allows you to check "within a totality". What is available (all is available) is there in front of you: check, taste, browse, sieve.
The best bookstores I have known organize their collection through either "publisher, then series, then number (or alphabetically, depending)" or "topic, then publisher, then series, then number". And they strive towards the completeness of their collection.
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Book publishing in your country (Spain?) must be very different than American bookstores. I have never seen a bookstore organized as you describe it and it feels like that would be a terrible browsing experience for me.
If I was in one of your stores and wanted to find Asimov's Foundation, first I would need to know who publishes it and what the series the publisher put it in.
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Poor bookstores I meet organize their selection topically: on that wall cooking, on that travel, on that narrative etc.
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That is how every bookstore I have ever been in is organized. Including ones I visited in Japan, so it's not just the Yanks that do this.
In one of your 'poor' bookstores, if I wanted to find Asimov's Foundation, I would find Science Fiction and Asimov would be one of the first shelves in that section.