[mdp]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Book publishing in your country (Spain?) must be very different than American bookstores

Not Spain really, but yes Europe. (Of the examples: Odile Jacob is an excellent French publisher, focalized on scientific divulgation. Einaudi has been one of the most prominent Italian publishers, employing in the golden years, handpicking, Italo Calvino. Debolsillo is a Spanish publisher related to other big players such as Penguin; I have their omnia for the works of Cortázar. Diogenes Verlag is a Swiss publisher important in the German speaking "market".)

Incidentally: keeping an eye on other markets (other countries/languages) is relevant for the theme of "completeness". I found for example that it is good "to keep an eye on the French" as they may publish pearls that will hardly pass their borders; I was thinking of data science as the trigger of this sentence, but really they are for instance very attentive towards data-oriented geopolitics... Material that if not actively met, if you do not move to find it, will be missed (largely untranslated).

About "different publishing practices", as I wrote that list, none of the anglophone books I could immediately find in my shelves seemed to contain series references. It is very typical instead in other regions - "strict monographies" typically occupy a specific series (which I could name "Flamboyant Coverpages").

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

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.

You would find Foundation because you would locate the corridor of "Science Fiction" in the hall of "Narrative", and large number of Asimov books would appear together (not because of an all-embracing alphabetical order but because this author would hardly be scattered in many publishers). Reasonably, the grouping by publisher would start under the Science Fiction classification (all of the series devoted to S.F. would be collected there).

I understand looking for a specific title would normally require asking for assistance (as I do when I cannot immediately locate it myself) or checking the catalogue. But on the other hand, the publishing enterprise, the intellectual work behind the publications, emerges.

I have the same issue you indicate with the other classification method: I entered a bookstore which would be supposed to be the most interested in hosting series X, say, as the owners of the bookstore itself published it, and it was scattered on many tables... Now, I wanted to see what I was missing of the series, titles I did not know - I wanted to have them all together, and I gave up. I did not even think to ask for the catalogue... But then, the catalogue at hand, I would have needed constant assistance and 50 trips to check them. If you are not looking for a specific title, it is much better to have a well done grouping in front of you. And to my experience, "Series [professionally done]" beats "Dewey" (which certainly beats "pretty much sorted in broad categories only, we only have a thousand books here").

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

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.

Very, very, very few bookstores are organized as I mentioned. I do not believe it is a matter of Country.

I think it is also a matter of the quantity of your collection. Most bookstores I meet have a meager selection: it is meaningless then to organize it outside broad categories. But when you have books in the order of the hundreds of thousands, you need a very good grouping system...

And there is where the factor of completeness, which you can benefit from, emerges. Browsing what you have in front in this case is already, so to say, "bibliographical research".