A couple of days ago, I had a little fun on the Totally NOT Fake News thread with the announcement by Dr. Seuss Enterprises that they would stop publishing a few of Seuss's more obscure books for being racially insensitive or some such thing. However, the Invisible Hand of the Market is giving one of these to them, because as of 2:23 pm on March 6, Dr. Seuss books represent eight of the top ten best-selling books on Amazon, with more of his books in the top one hundred. Number One is The Cat In the Hat, with Green Eggs and Ham at Number Four, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish at Number Five.
The cynical part of me wants to say that this was a clever bit of market manipulation by Dr. Seuss Enterprises: make a big production out of dropping some of the lesser-known titles that probably aren't selling that well, anyway (when's the last time anybody read McElligot's Pool?) , and then tell every media outlet in sight that they're doing it only for the most virtuous of reasons. This will give them brownie points with the people who care about that sort of thing. And of course, once the rest of us hear about how "OMG, they're 'cancelling' our beloved Dr. Seuss!" , we're all going to go out and start buying the Seuss books that are still available, just to show those people that they can't tell us what we can or cannot read!
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A couple of days ago, I had a little fun on the Totally NOT Fake News thread with the announcement by Dr. Seuss Enterprises that they would stop publishing a few of Seuss's more obscure books for being racially insensitive or some such thing. However, the Invisible Hand of the Market is giving one of these
The cynical part of me wants to say that this was a clever bit of market manipulation by Dr. Seuss Enterprises: make a big production out of dropping some of the lesser-known titles that probably aren't selling that well, anyway (when's the last time anybody read McElligot's Pool?) , and then tell every media outlet in sight that they're doing it only for the most virtuous of reasons.