Re: Here it is...proof Dave is wrong....



On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Old Pif wrote:

On Jul 12, 5:39 pm, Straydog <a...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

For anyone who cares, I found it on Amazon.com as a used book, and for
whatever reason the hardback price was $ 0.84 and the mass market
paperback was $ 8.99. It did not show up by ISBN (I've had that happen
before) but by going to advanced search and put in the exact title and the
exact author name. I got my copy for 25 cents.


It is actually a bad news that the book is cheap.

It depends on whether you are buying or selling. I find lots of very nice books for cheap. This morning, at another thrift store, I bought several hardbacks for 25 cents each. One will be a gift to someone at my local bank. One is a scholarly work on recent history/economics in Guatemala (complete with photos, graphs, tables of data, going back 150 years, and involving a major trade with foreigne countries including imperialist USA), another book is on early history (looks like a college textbook) and I may read it. One is a fairly recent scholarly book on the famous indian, Sitting Bull, and the dealings and wars between his tribes and the US govt (many photos, maps, lists, many refernces & sources). And, a couple more.
One is another "anit-Dave" book on management which compares Machiavelli to a modern manager's job (I may look more closely at that book, too).

Of course, it can be profitable to find such books for 25 cents to buy and, say, $5-10 or more to sell on Amazon.com.

But, yes, there are a lot of books on Amazon for very cheap, too.

Famous fiction authors (Clancy, Danielle Steele, etc) come out with a new book and all of the hungry hoards clammor to get the latest book (like the iPod herd, the iPhone herds), and buy it at $25-30. What is happening, is that a lot of these people buy the book at the high price, read it as quickly as possible, then re-sell it on Amazon to get as much money back as possible and recycle that money into a new purchase. If you wait months after a new book comes out, you can buy a used copy for very cheap. And, if you go to www.booksalefinder.com, you can find the book sales where the books are usually $1 for hardbacks, all kinds.

Jared Diamond's famous books (Guns..., collapse...) are now down to around $5 (+/- $1) as used on Amazon, if you want to read either one.

It is good that it
exists but apparently is it not in the mainstream of thinking
(positive or otherwise).

It is also a fact that about 98-99% of all books end up being almost worthless after 1-5 years, roughly, and at book sales I go to, almost no one is interested in any fiction, and there are many tables of books in beautiful condition, with fine dust jackets, and almost no one wants them. At least I never buy fiction (but there are people who do read fiction, as an escape and for pleasure).

Amazon has brought 188 results on "positive
thinking" as a subject keyword. Some of them are dated back to 60th
and many costs 15 bucks and up.


There may be details that will explain this if one looks. Rare, interest, value, author signature, etc. Some books on Amazon are priced too high, too. You have to also look at sales rank which is also available if you click around. Very low sales rank (i.e. very high number) prices are usually unreliable or too high or both.

Rare books are a specialty: its a very small buyer market and the prices can be very high to tens of thousands of dollars for the right book and I think these guys are slightly nuts. Most of them don't even read the book. Some consider the book as an investment, only but the technical knowledge goes way beyond my interest. I saw, but did not touch, a book from the 1500s that was worth $12,000. The oldest book I ever touched was 300
years old and the pages felt very different from anything in any book I
ever touched and if I wanted to buy it, cost $200 and I actually thought about it.



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Palins Book Being Sold "AT BELOW COST" Prices
    ... and Newsmax has used the book as a loss leader ... to promote its magazine, ... Amazon, Walmart.com, Target.com in price war over book ... Walmart.com dropped price from list price of $28.99 to $10, ...
    (rec.sport.golf)
  • Re: showing code in vb2005
    ... Amazon might well simply be ... I don't know much about American law, but I think that the Consumer Goods Pricing Act of 1975 makes it illegal in America for manufacturers to fix the price of goods sold by retailers, and the retailer is free to set his own prices in America just the same as here in the UK. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: iPad Sucks
    ... This month Amazon conformed to Apple's 30-70 split, ... Apple will charge 12.99 - 15.99 for what Amazon is ... "Apple and the publishers have agreed to a formula that ties the maximum ... e-book price with the physical book price, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: showing code in vb2005
    ... Amazon are in on it okay, but it is basically Micro$oft who are running the scam. ... Microsoft have no right to sue any legitimate retailer for selling a product, or for selling at at whatever price the retailer chooses. ... While we're on the topic, it also happens that bikes, cameras, and any number of other things I've heard of over the years are roughly twice the price in the UK compared to anywhere else. ... Perhaps NEITHER MS or Amazon have anything to do with it, and it has more to do with duties, taxes, or something like that. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: iPad Sucks
    ... greedy Amazon was taking 70% of the retail ... "Apple and the publishers have agreed to a formula that ties the maximum ... e-book price with the physical book price, ... It says the publishers can charge 3-5 bucks more. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)