[ih] New history of the Internet

[Dave Walden]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:

> What is interesting is that Amazon has it for pre-order but also there
> are three listed used for ~$65 ??


My last several years experience experience with publishing tells me that
the on-line bookstores may not actually have the book even when they say "in
stock".  When they get an order, the do an electronic order to wherever the
book actually is (which might mean the printing plant), and the
actual-book-is-place drop ships the book as if it was from the on-line book
store.  Furthermore, in my experience, the publisher offers the book to the
bookstores with a list price and a wholesale discount from list price, often
50 or 55 percent off list.  Thus, the bookstore can sell the book for any
price it wants above the wholesale price and still not lose money.   All
this leads different on-line bookstores to set different discount prices
from list and claim different reasons for it including "used" when the book
is actually not used and may not have been published yet.  These prices (and
probably the claimed book state) are surely done by computer algorithm in
some cases (e.g., Amazon) and might change daily.  Of course, I don't know
anything about what is happening in the case of this particular Internet
history book.   -Dave
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