Ridiculous Prices for Out-Of-Print Materials?

[rdearman]

Not being a "conspiracy theorist" myself, I would not be surprised if someone were to circulate the rumour that the savvy booksellers, that Theodisce alluded to, have contracted with very capable hackers to develop and deploy Malware on Amazon for the express purpose of playing with the prices of their competitors, thereby making their own ridiculous prices seem reasonable ... I dunno man, I'm jus' sayin'!

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[aokoye]

I'd also like to point out a link to Goodwill Books. Goodwill is a US charity organization and sells mostly used/donated items. The great thing about used language-learning material is that it's hardly ever actually used very much at all and sells in generally good condition! Some of the larger charities in the UK also have online outlets, Goodwill has a "Foreign language Study" section with a lot of very good deals on used books and some with audio. It's worth a look.

I love Goodwill Books, though I generally buy from their Amazon storefront. That said, I just want to clarify that that specific Goodwill Books is specifically tied to the Goodwill in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The money they get doesn't go to various other Goodwill branches nationwide. There are various other Goodwill Bookstores that are online and some of which you can visit in person (which you sadly can't do with the one that you linked - I shouldn't complain, I have Powells to visit).

I suppose that's also a nice segway into mentioning Powells Bookstore, which I wasn't planning on mentioning when I started this. They have a very large new and used foreign language selection and I've seen a number of older editions of the Teach Yourself, Colloquial, and Living Language Ultimate on their shelves. Their prices, at least for language books, tend to be very reasonable and they ship worldwide. Their website is sometimes really slow, but it's worth it if you can't go to any of the stores yourself. They also sell rare books though most of them aren't foreign language primer specific.

[vm_nm]

The most likely explanation is that those sellers are using automatic pricing software, which is very common. Pricing software requires users to enter a lower and upper limit - so maybe the seller just entered $2000 as upper limit for all their books, because they had to enter something and 2k seemed safe.

If at some some point they are the only seller left offering the book (or at least in that condition), the pricing software would adjust the offer to the maximum price.

https://sellerengine.com/top-5-myths-ab ... -software/

[Montmorency]

Not being a "conspiracy theorist" myself, I would not be surprised if someone were to circulate the rumour that the savvy booksellers, that Theodisce alluded to, have contracted with very capable hackers to develop and deploy Malware on Amazon for the express purpose of playing with the prices of their competitors, thereby making their own ridiculous prices seem reasonable ... I dunno man, I'm jus' sayin'!

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Not forgetting that they are not mutually exclusive.

[Serpent]

And don't be shy about asking for a truly reasonable price, like 20$ or so. AFAIU they understand that not everything they're selling is valuable just due to being rare.

[aravinda]

So then, my question is “What does it serve the seller to quote prices that will not result in firm orders?” Can anyone comment on this phenomenon?

I thought the same sellers were advertising the same products with different prices (not necessarily at the same store). For example, when one finds a copy of an out of print textbook for $160 when all other copies are advertised above $1500, one tends to think they are making a bargain. My guess is sometimes they only have one copy, sometimes none. Obviously, I have never tried to check by buying any expensive items. Once I found three hardback copies of the Sanskrit method by Maurer for sale (at a reasonable price) on three different Amazon sites by three different sellers. While the single volume paperback version was still in print, two volume hardback edition was generally very expensive and difficult to find. I decided to buy all three but could buy only two because the third one became unavailable as soon as I bought the other two. Later, I got identical messages from the other two sellers telling me that they had searched extensively their databases but could not find the hardback version but could send me the paperback version. I refused but the items were marked shipped. Amazon refunded me even without asking but the books are still in transit!

[zenmonkey]

There is an 1820's handwritten book of Ladakhi - one of the first historical grammars that goes for about $2000 - copies go for about $40. Well, except for the copies that go for $1500.

Yeah, that's outright malice there.

Used bookstores, OXFAM, eBay ....

[DaveBee]

Somewhere in the back of my mind is a suspicion that it is robots running amok on Amazon. Some program notices the book is out of print, raises its price, and then another storefront robot sees that and raises their price, then another, then the first one again, etc.

I have no idea if this is accurate, or even possible, but the thought amuses me...

This gets extra weird when the book is still in print, and you see it being offered for several times the publisher's recommended retail price.

[Cainntear]

Somewhere in the back of my mind is a suspicion that it is robots running amok on Amazon. Some program notices the book is out of print, raises its price, and then another storefront robot sees that and raises their price, then another, then the first one again, etc.

I have no idea if this is accurate, or even possible, but the thought amuses me...

This gets extra weird when the book is still in print, and you see it being offered for several times the publisher's recommended retail price.

Yes, the issue is that the algorithms log it as rare based on the low volume of sales on Amazon, and think they can get whatever price they want for it; what the algorithm doesn't realise is that the sales are so low because it's just a little book that hardly anyone's interested in. There was a little school grammar of Scottish Gaelic that this happened to. Because it was sold mainly direct to schools, not many of the print-run ended up sold via Amazon, and those that did tended to go out at certain times of the year (probably linked to evening class timetables and revision periods before high school exams). The algorithm probably took the rush periods as indicating a high demand, and the drop in sales as an indicator that it was low stock elsewhere, and as a result the price while it was still listed as in print went up into the hundreds, despite it being a pretty flimsy little paperback.

[tommus]

I suppose that's also a nice segway into mentioning Powells Bookstore

Thank you for increasing my vocabulary by one. I know that a segway is a recently-invented two-wheeled vehicle. I did not know it was also a "smooth transition from one topic to another". However, despite a lot of differences of opinion throughout the Internet, it appears that it should be spelled 'segue" for the latter meaning.

Merriam-Webster's position