That seems, actually a reasonable price, judging by the listings on Abe Books.
However, you can also get an anthology containing same, plus:
ALPHA (3) Three: The Gift of Gab; Beyond Lies the Wub; Under Old Earth; Total Environment; The Shadow of Space; Rescue Party; Nine Hundred Grandmothers; Day Million; Come to Venus Melancholy; AND Aristotle and the Gun
For under a tenner, including postage, from one Canadian seller.
Bastards with web spiders scrape all the bookstores they can find for content, shovel it into a database, and readvertise the contents with a mark-up of between 1,000% and 10,000%. They then use SEO (bluntly: web spam) to shove up their google/amazon search rank so that they're the first vendors a naive searcher will see. If someone is dumb enough to buy a paperback for £150, the scammer then goes and sources a copy for £3 or so. It takes very few sales a month to make a tidy living off this sort of exploitative strategy.
Jesus. Thanks - I did wonder. I love Lafferty myself but every library used to have a copy of 900 Grandmothers and it's hard to beleive it;s an ultra rare curiousity..
A book doesn't need to be ultra-rare to be hard to find online. Some of the books I'm selling for > £5 are not what I'd call rare, though apparently they're rare now. (Just had entertaining email exchange with a happy customer who's attempted to buy Beagle's Last Unicorn from multiple sellers, to no avail.)
I've cancelled my GoH slot at minicon due to [family medical issue]. However, if [family medical issue] is resolved prior to that weekend, we might make a brief foray as far as Birmingham -- which is easier to get to than Minneapolis.
But it entirely depends on surgical outcomes and recovery times that haven't happened yet.
The silly prices are not always a scam. Some books are, for whatever reason, hard to buy online. More often it's particular editions that have prices hiked: if any version of a book is listed at a penny on Amazon, I don't bother trying to sell the edition I have.
I'd say that out of the ~600 books I'm discarding, about 5 have had the 'hard to find'-style pricing shown above.
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Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011 07:25 pm (UTC)However, you can also get an anthology containing same, plus:
ALPHA (3) Three: The Gift of Gab; Beyond Lies the Wub; Under Old Earth; Total Environment; The Shadow of Space; Rescue Party; Nine Hundred Grandmothers; Day Million; Come to Venus Melancholy; AND Aristotle and the Gun
For under a tenner, including postage, from one Canadian seller.
no subject
Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011 09:45 pm (UTC)Bastards with web spiders scrape all the bookstores they can find for content, shovel it into a database, and readvertise the contents with a mark-up of between 1,000% and 10,000%. They then use SEO (bluntly: web spam) to shove up their google/amazon search rank so that they're the first vendors a naive searcher will see. If someone is dumb enough to buy a paperback for £150, the scammer then goes and sources a copy for £3 or so. It takes very few sales a month to make a tidy living off this sort of exploitative strategy.
no subject
Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011 11:53 pm (UTC)Thanks - I did wonder. I love Lafferty myself but every library used to have a copy of 900 Grandmothers and it's hard to beleive it;s an ultra rare curiousity..
OK qu of the day: are *you* going to eastercon?
no subject
Date: Saturday, February 19th, 2011 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, February 20th, 2011 04:38 am (UTC)Don't know.
I've cancelled my GoH slot at minicon due to [family medical issue]. However, if [family medical issue] is resolved prior to that weekend, we might make a brief foray as far as Birmingham -- which is easier to get to than Minneapolis.
But it entirely depends on surgical outcomes and recovery times that haven't happened yet.
no subject
Date: Saturday, February 19th, 2011 11:14 am (UTC)I'd say that out of the ~600 books I'm discarding, about 5 have had the 'hard to find'-style pricing shown above.