~~puzzles & book-sellers & more evil

[reenka]

ok. so i have to ask-- the world-- the universe-- god-- amazon.com-- someone. why. why....why people sell used paperbacks for-- get this-- $85.40-- and $197.00-- and $35.76-- and $11.70-- and $4.11-- and $39.95-- $257.00-- and $51.25-- and this is all the same book. first edition was in 1984. and ok, if this was a Big Name-- but nooo, it's just diana wynne jones, only interesting to weird fantasy-reading girls who've outgrown jkr, and obscure-fantasy freaks like myself.

i'll never understand humanity at this rate. *cringes* and i don't think i -want- to.
this can't be explained by "open market theory" and "capitalism"-- except if you think both ideas are amazingly stupid, and this proves why. why would you sell things at 10 times their value? that aren't even popular enough to be bought for the "prestige" by people with money to burn? like i said, she's read by teenage girls and older fantasy t00bs like myself. we aren't exactly known for our bank accounts. but we -are- known for our above-average intelligence, which whispers to us that hell, we can walk to the library, if the alternative is to get the book at those prices-- or well-- we could just get it under $5 in our local store, no shipping.
     explanation has to be, they aren't really book-sellers-- they don't even notice what book they're selling-- they just stick the price-tags on randomly. which, you know, make sense, in that, "they're all stupid" kind of way. i hate having to resort to "they're all stupid" for an explanation, but there you go. nothing else fits, does it.

book-sellers have pretty much become evil, it seems, in these lean times. i used to think bookselling was a cool thing, you know. i love bookshops-- their smell, their musk, their close quarters, their-- air. yum. it makes me shiver in pleasure, just imagining it. books are my crack. i didn't expect anyone to, charge me, accordingly, heh >:0

Comments

[lucretius.livejournal.com]

I've noticed this. Here's my theory:

They're just folks like you and me, with a decently sized stack of books on their shelves at home. Most of the books, they'd be glad to keep, or glad to get rid of. So they put fifty bucks on every book. If they sell /one/, imagine: it'll be like hitting the lottery! And if they don't, well, they have lots of shelf space. They don't really wanna be in the bookselling business. They don't really like packing and shipping books. It's an experiment in human dimwittedness and desparation: will you pay fifty bucks for a six dollar book? Will anyone?

I'd like to see the stats.

Lu

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

this -has- occurred to me (sort of a variation on: they know what they're doing & they're just playing with our minds), but then i think, noo, that's too much like a conspiracy theory. all those people. secretly making up experiments on us. masquerading as book-sellers. it's just too disturbing~:)

although i can come up with a lot of examples of things in life that make you unable to choose between, "are they that stupid", or "self-aware & they're playing with our minds", heh

it's a tough call. but, so far, i'd have to say people really are as stupid as they seem 85% of the time, and the other 15% they're really that stupid, just not all the time, heh~:)

um. not that that helps with anything.....