[Ditchleyportrait]

i bought a few very experience expensive out of print books by an author who was much like the jay leno of his day, except more literary, as there was no television--cobb is his name. he was a favorite of zora neale hurston

anyway the books were digitized and are available for free all over. :doh:

i find the prospect that good books and important voices are being "lost" daunting. i don't think that would be possible today, especially not a fahrenheit 451 scenario. i do think that ebook stores should do more to showcase extant ebooks that do not find a large audience today whether they be from the 70s or 10s, either century.
it wouldn't cost amazon or other booksellers much to have a blog, if they don't want to muck up the front page cash cow they have in the kindle store,--which hawks trashy bestsellers, imo. the blog could showcase these older, extant works and the men and women who wrote them. handsome black and white author photos could be produced on the blogs front page with big underlined book links over the photos or below them, etc.

i think the question that your thread raises is: does amazon care about books? they do, certainly, and i guess, ultimately, their job isn't to be an archivist or showcase or smithsonian for forgotten titles of bygone eras.