Is it fair for newer, more diverse authors to have to compete on the marketplace with established, dead white men?

>going to a huge corporate bookstore like B&N and being upset that they appeal to the lowest common denominator
If you haven't found a good local independent bookstore then you're honestly missing out

I can understand non whites and non males wanting to read non whites and non males
Expecting me to read non whites (exceptions for based nips and a few not-too-commie Latin Americans) or non males (Exceptions for Yourcenar and Woolf) is too much to ask.

My local used bookstore is at least twice as large as the B&N, and the books there are also overpriced. Five dollars for a beat up copy of The Count of Monte Cristo? Fuck that!

I dont understand this complaint. I am pretty sure dead white men who get no cash themselves but sell book, subsidize the publishing of books by living authors.

I literally can't read eBooks. They have to be paper. It just feels better.

You can get physical books for amazon, dumb mongrel.

NEW NEW NEW BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT HOT OFF THE PRESSES NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW FRESH FRESH WOW! WOW! WOW! CUTTING EDGE FRESH AND NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW WOW! OMG! FRESH AND NEW CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE? NEW NEW NEW NEW BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT CLEAN AND PRISTINE CLEAN AND PRISTINE CLEAN AND PRISTINE CLEAN AND PRISTINE NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW BUY IT NOW BUY IT NOW BUY IT BEFORE IT GETS OLD NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW BUY IT NOW BUY IT NOW BUY IT NOW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW OLD IS FILTH NEW IS FRESH OLD IS FILTH NEW IS FRESH NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW

you sound like a hella fuckin epic dude.

>Although there's perhaps a karmic cost, spiriting unpurchased reading materials to the commode remains my favorite past time. There's just nothing like those climbing rushes, how they build into a fugue as you pass various stages, the dreadful darting, then confidence, nonchalance, zen. And then you're there, pushing open the bathroom door, the thick of it, no turning back. Should a Barnes and Noble employee be washing their hands, which is mandated by policy and so highly likely should a B&N worker's toiletry habits collide with my exfiltration of encyclopedias, Cosmopolitans, nudie art books and in case of such a coincidence my armfuls of immaculate new books, slip-covers and all, would earn me a disruptive measure of attention if not reprimand, to say nothing of the impact of even one such detection on the feasibility of future operations. But I never tire of the ingress and every tense high stakes moment before I've stepped into the handicap accessible stall which includes its own sink and mirror and a built in tile shelf, where I can fold a couple magazines or soft covers while I'm cracking open the primo materials, maybe the latest Friedman or a classic Krugman or maybe instead a Sullivan or Kristol from the motley bargain heaps. I feel dangerous holding the words of these inveterate war-mongers in my naughty, unscrupulous hands, turning their pages as water wooshes through piping at very high pressure, bursting noise against the tiles. Collecting their bloodied moneys from the same society they reaved, its tough to feel sympathy for them, or their editors and publishers, altogether servile entities who want their cut of the blood money same as any other parasite. And you cannot simply call Thomas Friedman a "parasite" anymore, not in this day and age. There's a thousand taboos you'd transgress by brandishing that epithet, but its the concept that haunts America's elite, the notion that their means and fortune are just a prettier ant colony and they are nothing special, barbarians with better grooming, undistinguished and undifferentiated because they are just a parasite, a predictable and unmysterious type as any, an appendage to the greater human project that just sucks and imbibes and draws into itself pointlessly, actually harming if anything, sickening society slightly always, periodically horribly, all their privilege and capabilities rendered as more morally complicated, burdensome, weighty. That is the likes of Thomas Friedman and Andrew Sullivan too, the suckling lampreys upon our confused and beleaguered civilization, the same one that educated them and whose sons they so readily sent off to some god awful military adventure and they bent every fiber of professional training to persuade the American public that these were the unexpected correct courses and still write and publish prominently today.

>But the copies in my hand are one set of copies that will not be making it across any Barnes and Noble point of sale system because those pages of "Hot, Flat and Crowded" are destined for radical repurposing for post-defecatory wiping and what they lack in pliability and absorption they more than make up for in volume.

Yes. I actually did it just a few weeks ago.
Bought Herodotus. Next time I may pick up Beowulf

I'm consistently amazed at how shit most books stores are. Literally 99% lowest common denominator books and then they have the audacity to wonder why no one but perennial readers who are to ignorant to even know what they're missing out on walk in.
Used book stores are the only thing even close to decent because at least people who actually read may have donated their books.

Mine's not that bad. It has Jung. Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" is even one of those cheap mass-produced classics they print. It's frustrating that the philosophy all fits on a single shelf though. And at least 75% of that is Plato, Nietzsche, Marx, and those "The Philosophy of Rick and Morty" books. The only thing I find enjoyable about it is that the selection is small, but it seems to rotate. You can go in there every few months and see something new. It's always nice to see a book you've only seen/heard of online IRL; I don't know if anyone else understands that feel though.

B&N starts to get good if you're interested in history, biographies, and religious or military stuff. The fact that they take these massive swathes of the story and give it to anime fags, kids play-areas, CDs, the clearance section, and a coffee shop make me ding-dong diddly SEETHE. I swear that there's only a single small stretch of shelves I look at. Those shelves have all their political, religious, historical, military, scientific, and occult books. They still find room in that area for the self-help books and cookbooks! If everyone shopped like I did then B&N could save a fortune in rent payments by moving to a smaller location.

>piracy
>not supporting authors

i refer to it as dragon porn then people who haven't seen it yet say "oh really? I never knew that show was like that" and then they don't watch it. Feelsgood

>thinking authors give a damn if 95 years after their death some trust gets 50 cents.

>waaaah buy my garbage

>exclusively reading books by dead (in the literal sense, not the Barthesian sens) authors

Indeed, only in the public domain, as I'm to lazy to even pirate. But nothing wrong with it. Other 18th century ideas I'm opposed to include slavery and mercantilism.

based

>going to bookshops
I order all my books online (fuck e-readers)

>walk into B&N
>get a coffee at starbucks
>read through latest magazines
>leave
>spent a couple bucks on an enjoyable afternoon
Why do you autists get so upset about things. Just relax.

>Psychology section only has self-help garbage. No Freud or Jung
Both Freud and Jung were wrong about almost everything.