Be careful what you buy

I had a quest today that took me off course and found something quite interesting. Since the weather has been getting cooler, I started my quest for a new horse blanket and of course looked online for a good one on sale. During that process I discovered a book on wholesale horse equipment manufacturers. Since the book didn't look quite right to me I Googled the ISBN number of the book. My results were quite interesting.

One of the first things I wanted to know about the book, but was unable to find at first, did the book contain wholesalers in the USA or somewhere else? During my ISBN number search, I found that the book, even though it was printed in Ohio, was available in India, England and a few other countries. I only found 2 reviews of the book and one of them mentioned it was a list of manufacturers in India, the other review was that the book was a re-print of a book that was printed years and years ago.

Now I know for a fact that once a book is over 90 years old, it becomes a "public domain" property unless the author's family had retained right's to the work. So it is very possible that someone had an original book that was nothing more than a list of wholesale horse equipment manufacturers from the early 1900's and then re-printed it for sale to today's market or that the book was indeed a list of saddle makers in India.

Well, that was my interesting side trip for today. Now back to looking at horse blankets.