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Originally Posted by meeera
No one has censored or burned it. The copyright holders have made a business decision not to reprint some books from their catalogue. The existing hardcopies in the world exist just as much as they did a couple of weeks ago.
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People who consider collectables an investment, to be locked away, have increased the price to where the average parent can't buy them. That's why the Seuss Enterprises action has been far more effective, at book suppression, than, for example, the thoroughly wrong effort to suppress
Heather Has Two Mommies
As for libraries, if they do not withdraw these titles from circulation, they are at high risk of being stolen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
If you don't like their decision, what is your proposed solution?
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Moral suasion. Of course, it doesn't always work. That's why freedom to read is seriously limited in many countries.
I read banned and challenged authors. In the Seuss case, that might not apply for several reasons. One is that I don't use my grandchildren for what would feel like a political gesture. Another is that the Seuss books are going to be genuinely hard for middle class people to get. I did put a title, that Amazon withdrew for ideological reasons last month, on reserve at a public library.
Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
And which other books that went out of print in the past year are you also up in arms about?
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issybird warned us, in #1, not to be up in arms
Very few books are dropped from both print and eBook releases for ideological reasons. Normally they go out of print when there is no eBook and print sales that approach zero. These books are most typically available used (see one of my favorite web sites,
www.bookfinder.com) for a price much less than they sold for new. As a result, freedom to read is maintained.
For whatever reason, many of the books that are being challenged this year appeal to a different cliental than most of the titles that were challenged in past years. As a result, it seems like some of the people who were in favor of freedom to read, in past years, are up for making excuses about how, this year, making it hard to read a book isn't so bad -- and vice versa. I hope I'm wrong, but that's how this thread feels to me.