Tyler van Opstal "What's in a Binding?"

     I own more than one copy each of my favorite books. I own more than one copy of a few non-favorite books as well, but that is by accident and not design. For the books of which I purposely own multiple, the additional ones usually have something special about them. I own anywhere between four and six copies of the omnibus Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at a time- my first copy in softcover, my reading copy in hardcover, a fancily bound imitation-leather copy, and at least one (often more) spare copies to give to people who are sadly lacking a copy of their own. I also possess multiple copies of complete Poe anthologies, and Bulfinch, several Alice's and I used to have more than one complete Sherlock Holmes before I gave my extra away. 

    Something all of those have in common is that they all have been deemed "classic" stories, leading to many reprints and quite a few of those reprints being fancily done. I own multiple copies of a few other favorites as well, but they are hardly worth talking about as it is just a backup mass market paperback in case my first falls apart. I also own several books that are certainly not valuable, but are rare due to a lack of reprinting and would be a pain to reacquire if I lost them. So who is it that decides which works are worthy of reprints at all, especially deluxe reprints (which give a certain air of authority to a text), and why does that matter to myth?

    Reprints are unfortunately not decided by the quality of the content. The publishing industry is understandably very money-oriented and publishes what it thinks will sell, which can often mean neglecting great titles and churning out poor ones that are popular in the moment. There are of course some presses that avoid this trap at least somewhat- the non-profit Library of America comes immediately to mind- but even they are beholden to some monetary pressure. Where myth and fable are concerned, the core stories as recorded by well known mythologists and folklorists (Hamilton, Grimm, Anderson, Bulfinch, etc.) will fortunately always remain in print. But this comes at a cost- when Hamilton and Bulfinch sell reliably, a publisher has no reason to publish other author's versions of myths. If Grimm, Anderson, Aesop, and Lang provide all the needed fairy tales to make a profit, what motive do publishers have to produce lesser known versions of those stories, when much of their poorly educated audience will cry foul for being sold what they see as a knock-off product.

    A product is regrettably what stories are for publishers. The mythos of the world is constantly expanding, but don't rely on it getting printed again anytime soon unless you can convince Penguin Random House that it'll sell.

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