The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by nana77

Sorry, maybe i didn't undertood, but, what's wrong with:

Marquis is a noble title in various peerages. Apparently below a duke and above an earl.

Americans might have heard of the Marquis de Lafayette, who played a part in their revolutionary war.

So writing "marquis contributor" is just wrong. The French pronunciation of "Marquis" is the same as the English pronunciation of "Marquee".

(The English pronunciation of "Marquis" is 'mah-kwiss', unless it's in reference to a French Nobleman.)

It's like writing "their" when one means "there".

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

...
(The English pronunciation of "Marquis" is 'mah-kwiss', unless it's in reference to a French Nobleman.)
...

Or marrr-kwiss if you come from the West Country like me.

Although now I Google it, apparently it was the Marquess of Bath that I heard about. Alternate spelling?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Or marrr-kwiss if you come from the West Country like me.

Although now I Google it, apparently it was the Marquess of Bath that I heard about. Alternate spelling?

Both spellings are used in the English peerage.

[nana77]

Not willing to try on your patience, and bother you: but might it just be an implicit reference to his writings?

It's of no use to keep it back-- particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I am a Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because the peerage is not so well known, and the country is better adapted to romantic incident-- a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in the nobility. My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my country seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau.
[...]
Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages, changed places before my window. The sharp outlines of the distant hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened in the dry, cold, dewless air of a California summer night.

https://www.online-literature.com/bret-harte/1680/
He seemed to have had used that word, https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/king-7.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by nana77

Not willing to try on your patience, and bother you: but might it just be an implicit reference to his writings?

No. “Marquis contributor” makes no sense as written and it’s so clearly a case of substituting a homonym for a word that would make sense in that context.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by issybird

No. “Marquis contributor” makes no sense as written and it’s so clearly a case of substituting a homonym for a word that would make sense in that context.

Got it, ofc @pdurrant wrote already a solution.
Both "marquis" or "marquess" would had be not correct, "marquee contributor" instead could have meant "leading contributor" (as contributing writer).
Thanks.
Ps:

Spoiler:

Henry's father was Bernard Hart, an Orthodox Jewish immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange. Bret's mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Ostrander Hart, was from the English and Dutch culture and raised her child in a Dutch Reformed church. Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte. Harte was of French Huguenot and Dutch ancestry and descended from prominent New York landowner Francis Rombouts

He wasn't that far to be a noble don, btw.

Pps: ..Understood, anyway. Sorry again (no need reply).

[maddz]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Although now I Google it, apparently it was the Marquess of Bath that I heard about. Alternate spelling?

Was that the one that involved wifelets?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by maddz

Was that the one that involved wifelets?

74 of them.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by maddz

Was that the one that involved wifelets?

Originally Posted by DNSB

74 of them.

I didn't know that or I'd forgotten. We lived near Longleat so it's the lions I remember, not loins.

[issybird]

The insane prices of backlist ebooks. There are books I'd love to revisit, but not at $6, $8, $10 for what realistically are trivial and dated mysteries. Who's buying at these prices? Certainly not moi. $2? That strikes me as the sweet spot.

I can't resist noting that under the old system of copyright, (the one in force when the contracts were signed!), so many of these books would be in the public domain by now or very close.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by issybird

The insane prices of backlist ebooks. There are books I'd love to revisit, but not at $6, $8, $10 for what realistically are trivial and dated mysteries. Who's buying at these prices? Certainly not moi. $2? That strikes me as the sweet spot.

I can't resist noting that under the old system of copyright, (the one in force when the contracts were signed!), so many of these books would be in the public domain by now or very close.

This is one of the secret weapons of ebooks from the publisher's perspective. There are no "used" ebook stores. There are no "batches" of ebooks that the publishers pay to print, and are then incentivized to lower the price on when they want to liquidate stock. The cost of distribution approaches zero. They can set a static price on an ebook, and keep it at that price forever.

You want it cheaper? What are you gonna do, buy the physical book?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by issybird

The insane prices of backlist ebooks. There are books I'd love to revisit, but not at $6, $8, $10 for what realistically are trivial and dated mysteries. Who's buying at these prices? Certainly not moi. $2? That strikes me as the sweet spot.

Macmillan somehow thinks a kid's book of less than 100 pages from the 1990s is worth CAD$21.99. (The price actually jumped up from 16.99 earlier this year.) It's not on my wishlist anymore.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

This is one of the secret weapons of ebooks from the publisher's perspective. There are no "used" ebook stores. There are no "batches" of ebooks that the publishers pay to print, and are then incentivized to lower the price on when they want to liquidate stock. The cost of distribution approaches zero. They can set a static price on an ebook, and keep it at that price forever.

And yet the flip side is that the publisher can make money at low price points on ancient ebooks and I can't help thinking that no one is buying at these absurd prices. Sure, keep it at that price forever; there's no inventory cost. And no profit, either. Also noting that once the original readership of old "popular" books ages out of it, there won't be a market at all. Dead men read no ebooks.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Macmillan somehow thinks a kid's book of less than 100 pages from the 1990s is worth CAD$21.99. (The price actually jumped up from 16.99 earlier this year.) It's not on my wishlist anymore.

The prices on my wishlist books never budge anymore. It's pointless, really.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by issybird

The insane prices of backlist ebooks. There are books I'd love to revisit, but not at $6, $8, $10 for what realistically are trivial and dated mysteries. Who's buying at these prices? Certainly not moi. $2? That strikes me as the sweet spot.

I can't resist noting that under the old system of copyright, (the one in force when the contracts were signed!), so many of these books would be in the public domain by now or very close.

I'm still bitter about the Canadian public domain getting halted 20 years. We were 1 year away from LOTR!! Agatha Christie would have been next year! Arg!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

I'm still bitter about the Canadian public domain getting halted 20 years. We were 1 year away from LOTR!! Agatha Christie would have been next year! Arg!

Almost none of the books with extended copyright benefit anyone connected to the writer, or not very much. It's a scam.