My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water.
–Mark Twain
I thought of this quote above while reading the highlights of Russ Roberts’s interesting EconTalk with Janine Barchas on the Lost Books of Jane Austen.
The economics were fascinating. If not for the fact that an entrepreneur drove down the price of Jane Austen books to make them affordable to the masses, we probably would not have heard of Jane Austen.
That made me think of the Mark Twain quote above, which is about the content of the work, not the price. Nevertheless, there’s probably a connection: if you sell water, make sure you price it below the price of wine. Interestingly, just as I made the link between the price of Jane Austen books and the Mark Twain quote, along came a mention of Twain in the interview that was not flattering to him. The green-eyed monster is a tough one to get under control.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 29 2020 at 9:21am
With Project Gutenberg, all the Austen books are free to read using a variety of e-reader applications. More books would be available had not the late Congressman Sonny Bono been a water carrier for the Disney Corporation and changed the US copyright laws extended their length.
Matthias Görgens
Jan 29 2020 at 9:46am
The greater tragedy is in fostering US copyright ideas on the rest of the world.
It’s your democracy, vote for whatever you feel like over there.
MarkW
Jan 29 2020 at 10:16am
Yes. But fortunately, the copyright period hasn’t been extended yet again, so works are finally beginning to enter the public domain again. While checking on the status of that, I ran into this little trick used to extend the copyright for some of Twain’s own works.
Henri Hein
Jan 29 2020 at 1:52pm
Mark Twain is available on Project Gutenberg as well. I also prefer water to wine.
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