Four Books

[Jim Harper]

I have indeed noticed that trend- it's happened with
both of my previous books, although they are not
academic texts as such, just studies of cult movies
around the world. It seems to occur most often with
books that have gone out of print. In the Amazon
Marketplace by first book was hovering between £15
and£30 while it was in print- twelve months later, the
book is OOP and secondhand sellers are charging £150 a
copy. Naturally, I do not see a penny of that, since
the copies were bought by the sellers at the usual
price.The idea that someone can mark up the price so
much that he gets £150- which is the amount of profit
I would see from sales of 150 copies!- is more than a
little irritating.

I personally don't see who is going to pay that kind
of price for a used book- but when you're charging
£150-200 a copy, you don't need that many people to
buy it. 

Jim.

--- "Mark D. Roberts" <mroberts37 at mail-central.com>
wrote:

> Parenthetically, has anybody else noticed that the
> advent of online  
> book selling has driven costs of these academic
> books *up* rather  
> than down? I.e., Bordwell's book on Ozu is at least
> $150 for a used  
> copy today, and there is a shop in Florida asking
> US$378 for it (I  
> know there's an online PDF version of this book, but
> that is a recent  
> development). The same pattern seems to apply in the
> case of other  
> books.
> 
> Not that I believe in all the toss about the free
> market making  
> commodities more affordable, etc., but I'm baffled
> by these  
> exorbitant prices.
> 
> Is anybody on this list actually going to pay US$150
> for a used  
> paperback academic study, even the "definitive" one?
> 
> 
> 


http://www.flipsidemovies.com
http://jimharper.blogspot.com


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